Contemporary Concepts of

Education
in
Singapore
By: Apple Grace Marie S. Sebastian
(Comparative Education)
What is Contemporary Education?
Contemporary Education is, most
fundamentally, a framework for teaching and
learning.  Based on this framework,
Contemporary Education offers curricula,
institutes and a blog to reimagine education for
the 21st century.  The Contemporary Education
mission is to transform education to empower
students to make meaningful decisions in their
lives.  The vision is to transform schools into
centers of meaningful reflection on how we
respond to our human needs practically and
theoretically, in the pursuit of healthier lives and
more just, peaceful and sustainable societies. 
What is Contemporary Education?
There are 5C Principles of Contemporary
Education: Connect, Care, Critique, Collaborate
and Create.  The core values of Contemporary
Education are: Health (Mental, Physical &
Spiritual); Social Justice and Peace; and
Environmental Sustainability.  Contemporary
education involves the implementation
of learning activities which draw upon
students' experiences, both in and out of the
classroom, thus helping them to recognize that
they are developing specific skills which they
perceive to be significant for the world outside
of school.
 Areas of Contemporary Education
• Contemporary learning which prepares
students across all curriculum areas and learning
stages with skills and capabilities to thrive in a
rapidly changing and interconnected world. It
connects students and engages their sense of
curiosity.
• Contemporary teachers who know and
understand the needs and talents of their students.
They are flexible and select from a range of
effective teaching strategies.
• Contemporary learning environments that
inspire students to be leaders of their own
learning. Students collaborate and use critical and
creative thinking to solve complex problems and
 History of Education in Singapore
The island of Singapore boasts a strategic position
that serves as a gateway between the Indian Ocean
to its East and the Pacific Ocean to its West. Its
small geographic size, lack of natural resources, and
well-managed, meritocratic government has
contributed to making education a priority. The
emphasis placed on the development of human
capital, considered the road towards economic
advancement and stability, began early in the
formation of this small city-state. Furthermore,
education was a means for unifying Singapore’s
pluralistic society under a bilingual education
system that was respectful all four of its official
languages— Malay, Chinese, Tamil, and English.
 History of Education in Singapore
Singapore’s education system has been placed at
center stage, recognized globally for its success in
recent international assessments, including
Program for International Students Assessment
(PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics
and Science Study (TIMSS). According to the
PISA 2009 assessment results, which evaluated the
competencies of 15-years-olds’ in 65 participating
countries across the globe, Singapore placed 5th in
reading, 2nd in math, and 4th in science. In the
TIMSS 2011 assessment, Singapore’s 4th graders
placed 1st in Math and 2nd in Science, while their
8th graders placed 2nd in Math and 1st in Science.
 History of Education in Singapore

The Tripartite Cooperation-The

achievements of Singapore have been the
product of a system that believes in
continual improvement. This philosophy has
been reinforced by strategic partnerships
between the country’s National Institute of
Education (NIE), the Ministry of
Education (MOE) and local schools,
unified by the holistic goal of developing a
nation that can successfully compete in
the global marketplace through
 HIGHLIGHTS OF SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN SINGAPORE
• The Teachers-Policymakers are aware that the
key to educational quality is through the teacher—
that no education system can be greater than the
quality of its educators. The NIE’s educational
reforms, which focused on the teaching craft, were
sparked by TSLN’s lifelong learning initiative,
“[fueling] significant changes in the recruitment,
preparation, compensation, status, and
professional development of teachers,” forming a
comprehensive system for improving teacher
quality in Singapore. Senior Minister Goh Chok
Tong claimed that this reform would “redefine the
role of teacher…teaching itself will be a learning
profession”.
 HIGHLIGHTS OF SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN SINGAPORE
• The Teachers-Policymakers are aware that the
key to educational quality is through the teacher—
that no education system can be greater than the
quality of its educators. The NIE’s educational
reforms, which focused on the teaching craft, were
sparked by TSLN’s lifelong learning initiative,
“[fueling] significant changes in the recruitment,
preparation, compensation, status, and
professional development of teachers,” forming a
comprehensive system for improving teacher
quality in Singapore. Senior Minister Goh Chok
Tong claimed that this reform would “redefine the
role of teacher…teaching itself will be a learning
profession”.
HIGHLIGHTS OF SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN SINGAPORE
• The Curriculum and
Instructional Regime- In
general, classroom instruction in
Singapore is highly-scripted and
uniform across all levels and
subjects. Teaching is coherent, fit-
for-purpose and pragmatic,
drawing on a range of pedagogical
traditions, both Eastern and
 HIGHLIGHTS OF SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN SINGAPORE
• Innovation through ICT
The development of ICT skills as a
21st century competency has been a
central focus for education systems
worldwide, not only to better prepare
citizens to be active participants of a
globalized knowledge society, but
also as a tool used by teachers to
motivate and engage learners”.
HIGHLIGHTS OF SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN SINGAPORE
• Innovation through ICT
 ICT has been used as a
student-centered approach to
learning, allowing educators
to act as facilitators of
knowledge. (ICT Masterplan
1, 2 and 3)
HIGHLIGHTS OF SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN SINGAPORE

• Innovation through
ICT
Use of Twitter and
smartphones in math
class.
HIGHLIGHTS OF SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN SINGAPORE
• Innovation through ICT
 use of social media platforms,
like Facebook, as a tool to
communicate with parents
and foster school pride (MOE,
2013).
 HIGHLIGHTS OF SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN SINGAPORE
• Internationalization of
Education
 Established the Centre for
Research in Pedagogy and
Practice (CRPP) to evaluate
reforms and enable the MOE to
plan medium and long-term policy
interventions.” Research has really
centered on pedagogy, what
HIGHLIGHTS OF SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN SINGAPORE
• Internationalization of
Education
 International
benchmarking as a tool for
improvement and to move
up the educational value
chain”.
HIGHLIGHTS OF SUCCESSFUL
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN SINGAPORE
 Internationalization of
Education
• Internationalization of its
higher education system in
order to become a research
hub for scholars from all
over the world.
 Conclusions
• Singapore has created a culture of lifelong learning, a
philosophy that drives the effort of continual improvement
to seek excellence. It has demonstrated that its strong
performance is linked to successful, collaborative reform
efforts between the MOE, NIE, and local schools, united by
the common goal of shaping a country through education.
• Singapore knows that its education system is not perfect, and its
tripartite will continue to develop its quality for its citizens.
Singapore continues to adopt reform efforts gained from
comparative international learning contexts. For this reason,
the MOE has most recently concentrated in a kindergarten
initiative to better prepare students for Primary One. They are
currently enrolling students in the first five kindergartens to
begin in April 2013. The MOE also hopes to increase the
teacher workforce to 33,000 by 2015 in order to decrease the
student to teacher ratio from 40:1 to 30:1 (MOE, 2013).
 Conclusions
• By dedicating all efforts to the development of its most
precious resource—manpower— Singapore knows
that investing in a world-class educational system will
help it to sustainably thrive as a competitive nation
in the today’s modern, globalized society. By
continuing to monitor a well-managed, comprehensive
system, and creating further opportunity for innovation,
research, and learning, Singapore hopes to remain in the
international spotlight.
• Singapore’s education system is the product of a
distinctive, even unique, set of historical, institutional
and cultural influences. These factors go a long way to
help explain why the educational system is especially
effective in the current assessment environment, but it
also limits how transferable it is to other countries.
 Conclusions
• The alignment of curriculum, assessment and
instruction is exceptionally strong. National high
stakes examinations at the end of primary and
secondary schooling stream students according to their
exam performance and, crucially, prompt teachers to
emphasise coverage of the curriculum and teaching to
the test.
• The institutional environment incorporates top-
down forms of teacher accountability based on
student performance (although this is changing),
that reinforces curriculum coverage and teaching to
the test. Major government commitments to
educational research (£109m between 2003-2017) and
knowledge management are designed to support
evidence-based policy making.
 Conclusions
• Strongly commitment to capacity building at
all levels of the system, especially the
selection, training and professional
development of principals and teachers.
• Effective teacher training and professional
development
• Innovative teaching through the use of
Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT)
• Internationalization of higher education have
helped make Singapore a model system
worldwide.
 References
http://www.contemporaryeducation.com/2019/08/w
hat-is-contemporary-education.html
 
https://www.quora.com/What-is-meant-by-the-term-
contemporary-education
 
https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/s
chool-learning-environments-and-change/future-focu
sed-learning-and-teaching
 
http://sites.miis.edu/singapore/sample-page/
 
https://
theconversation.com/why-is-singapores-school-syste
m-so-successful-and-is-it-a-model-for-the-west-22917