English Cultural Background Paper

Education System in Singapore

Group 6 :

Anas Jati Pamungkas (17320152)

Ilham Akbar Dinullah (15320025)

Widatul Fajariyah (17320194)

Abstract

This chapter introduces the education system in Singapore by discussing its educational
developments from pre-school education to university education. It also highlights three salient
features of the current system: an educational system that offers different types of schools and
programmes, a curriculum that fosters customised and inter-disciplinary study, and the changing
role of teachers from just experts and dispensers of content knowledge to resource persons to
facilitate the students’ learning through creative and student-centred activities.

Key Words: education system, Singapore, Thinking School, Learning Nation, curriculum, role
of teachers.

Introduction

Among the Asian educational systems, Singapore stands out for its stellar academic performance
in international assessments. For example, the primary 4 and secondary 2 students in Singapore
have consistently outperformed students from other countries in mathematics and science in the
Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In the most recent TIMSS
2011, Singaporean students were ranked in the first two positions for both the subjects and
grades. The latest achievement was its number one position in the global school ranking
organised by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) among 76
countries based on test scores in mathematics and science. Singapore’s education system has
been acknowledged as a “sustained improver” and described as “Great” in the McKinsey report.

The impressive academic performance of Singapore within a short span of fifty years signifies
that it has achieved educational success, with the support of an effective school system, well-run
schools, highly qualified teachers and resilient students. It is therefore instructive to understand
the evolution, success factors and on-going challenges of the educational system in Singapore.
This chapter introduces the education system in Singapore by discussing educational system, its
salient features and the key challenges it faces in an age of globalisation.
Education System in Singapore

The majority of the schools from the primary to the pre-university levels are state schools
(known locally as ‘national schools’) under the Ministry of Education (MOE). This means that
these schools are administratively controlled and funded by the MOE. Prior to primary school,
children may be enrolled in a pre-school institution that is for children aged 4 to 6 years. Pre-
school children in Singapore generally learn basic literacy and numeracy skills as well as
bilingualism: English as the first language and a second language such as Chinese, Malay and
Tamil.

The MOE acknowledges that the early years are crucial for children’s holistic development, and
that a quality pre-school education will provide children with opportunities to build their self-
confidence, learn social skills and develop learning dispositions. The MOE has also improved
pre-school education by focusing on high leverage areas. These leverage areas include:
delineating desired outcomes for pre-school education; developing a curriculum framework;
conducting research to study the benefits of quality pre-school education; raising the standards of
teacher training and qualifications; and reviewing the regulatory framework of kindergartens.

Children in pre-school institutions would proceed to study in a primary school in Singapore.

Education is compulsory for all Singaporeans at the primary education level. This means that all
children above the age of six years must be enrolled in a national primary school where they
receive six years of schooling and sit for a terminal examination, Primary School Leaving
Examination (PSLE).

Primary school students enrolled in national primary schools study core subjects such as English
language, Mother Tongue Language (Chinese, Malay or an approved Indian language),
Mathematics and Science. They are also encouraged to participate in Co-Curricular Activities
(CCAs) such as sports and music, and Community Involvement Programmes (CIP) where they
are involved in service learning projects. Based on their performance in the PSLE, students will
be placed in either the Express, Normal (Academic) or Normal (Technical) stream in a secondary
school. Depending on the stream, they would receive four or five years of school and sit for a
national examination: General Certificate of Education ‘Ordinary’ Level (GCE ‘O’ Levels) for
Express course) or General Certificate of Education ‘Normal’ Level (GCE ‘N’ Levels) for
Normal course.

Depending on the interests and academic performance of the students, they may proceed to pre-
university education where they study in a two-year junior college or threeyear centralised
institute course, and sit for the the General Certificate of Education Advanced Level (GCE ‘A’
Level) examination. Other post-secondary options include being enrolled in a vocational
institution such as a polytechnic or the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), or specialised arts
institutions.
In analysing the success of the educational system in Singapore, we can identify three salient
features in the current ability-driven education. The first feature is an educational system that
offers a variety of school types and programmes. There are also specialised schools focusing on
nurturing students talented in sports, the arts, and science and mathematics.

Secondly, the curriculum has been revised to promote customised and inter-disciplinary study,
which is a departure from the former curriculum that was common, rigid and classified under
different subject-matter disciplines. The MOE has fundamentally reviewed its curriculum and
assessment system to better develop the thinking and learning skills required for the future.
Secondary students are given more choices to decide on their subject combination in schools,
and could even study new subjects such as Economics, Computer Studies and Drama. The
postsecondary curriculum is also revised to develop thinking skills and nurturing the spirit and
values required for Singaporeans to thrive in a more globalised, innovation driven future. It aims
to imbue students with a spirit of learning and exploration by developing the mental capacity to
question and seek answers to observations and phenomena. It adopts an inter-disciplinary
approach to an investigation of the nature and construction of knowledge, drawing from various
disciplines such as the sciences, arts and humanities. The students are expected to articulate and
define their learning, and be responsible for their own learning experiences, and KI teachers
should create a learner-centred experience by acting as facilitators, resource persons and models
of learning.

The third feature concerns the shift in the role of the teacher under an ability-driven education.
Teachers are no longer just experts and dispensers of content knowledge; they are expected to be
resource persons to facilitate the students’ learning through creative and studentcentred activities.
A significant policy initiative from the government is to encourage schools to ‘Teach Less, Learn
More’ (TLLM). The aim is for teachers to teach better by engaging the students and preparing
them for life, rather than merely teaching more for tests and examinations. To support the
implementation of TLLM, the MOE has reduced the content in the curriculum so that teachers
have more space to make learning more engaging and effective. This also means that students
will have less to study and more time to explore areas of learning in which they are interested in.
To further encourage teachers to break out of the old mode of talk-and-chalk pedagogy, schools
have set aside time-tabled time, known as ‘white space’ for teachers to engage in professional
planning, reflection and sharing. The MOE explained that schools can use this space to
customise and develop instructional content and materials, and use effective pedagogy and
authentic assessments that best suits their students. All these changes promise to enable and
empower teachers to identify, adapt and design appropriate pedagogy to nurture creative and
critical thinkers in their students.

In terms of assessment, Singaporean teachers are urged to move beyond the focus on rote
memorisation of content knowledge and low-level thinking skills. The government values
students’ holistic development of competencies such as critical thinking, innovation and
creativity, communication, collaboration, independent learning, lifelong learning, information
and communication technology, and active citizenship. As such, alternative forms of assessment,
such as project work and Science Practical Assessment have been introduced as school-based
assessments into Singaporean classrooms at various key stages of schooling. At the secondary
school level, coursework is also recommended as a school-based assessment. Coursework marks
count toward the final grades in the examination of subject areas including Design and
Technology, Food and Nutrition, Art, and Music.

Conclusions

Singapore offers a good example of a young nation that has successfully transformed itself from
an impoverished and weak country into an economically and educationally advanced country
within 50 years. A large part of Singapore’s success was due to its emphasis on investing in
human capital and building a world-class education system. Education in Singapore is the
vehicle in nation-building by producing a competent, adaptive and productive workforce and
promoting social cohesion among the various ethnic groups. The long-term objective of
education in Singapore is to prepare students to meet the challenges of a knowledge economy
and to enhance the economic competitiveness of Singapore. It is noteworthy that the McKinsey
Report points out that high-performing school systems such as Singapore excel in focusing on
the following three fundamental success factors: effective mechanism for teacher selection such
that the right people are employed to become teachers (i.e., the quality of the education system
cannot exceed the quality of its teachers); effective processes for training and development with
strong emphasis on ensuring teachers are professionally developed to be effective instructors
(i.e., the best way to achieve excellent outcomes is to improve the instruction); and effective
systems and support structures are put in place to ensure that every student will benefit from the
excellent instruction (i.e., the best way for schools to achieve the best performance is to raise the
standard of every student). Looking ahead, it is expected that the government of Singapore will
continue to invest heavily in education so as to prepare its future citizens to be active and
successful contributors in a knowledge economy. Singapore exemplifies the importance of
adopting the best educational practices for achieving educational excellence in school within the
education system. It demonstrates that substantial improvement in school outcomes is possible in
a short period of time, and that adopting these best practices system-wide can have significant
impact in improving the school system. The case study on Singapore illustrates that education
policy makers and school leaders need to recognise that effective implementation of system-level
structures will affect the quality of practices of school leaders. This would entail an in-depth

examination of the components that are pertinent to the existing structures so as to contribute to
the success of the system.
References

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Ho, W. K. & Gopinathan, S. (1999). Recent developments in education in Singapore. School

Effectiveness and School Improvement, 10(1), pp. 99-117.

Tan, C. (2006). Creating thinking schools through ‘Knowledge and Inquiry’: The curriculum
challenges for Singapore. The Curriculum Journal, 17(1), 89-105.