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In 2019, expect further moves towards greater equality in education

The year 2019 promises to see more education reforms towards the ideal of a system that offers a level playing field for all students to enjoy diversified educational pathways while developing a lifelong joy of learning.

There is room for further changes to the primary school admission system to ensure greater student diversity, says the author.

There is room for further changes to the primary school admission system to ensure greater student diversity, says the author.

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The year 2019 promises to see more education reforms towards the ideal of a system that offers a level playing field for all students to enjoy diversified educational pathways while developing a lifelong joy of learning.

One of the key changes this year is the reduction of school-based assessments in both primary and secondary schools.

All weighted assessments and examinations for Primary 1 and 2 students will be removed, as will the mid-year examination in Secondary 1. Schools will only be allowed to conduct no more than one weighted assessment per subject per school term from Pri 3 through to Sec 5.

In addition, students’ report books will no longer provide academic indicators such as class and level positions.

These reforms are the latest in a series of moves to discourage excessive peer competition and to lessen the focus on exams in a bid to encourage students to develop greater intrinsic motivation and joy in learning.

Another significant change is in admission systems. First, the Direct School Admission scheme at the secondary level has been simplified in order to encourage more students to take advantage of the expansion of the scheme to include all secondary schools.

Next, all secondary schools with affiliated primary schools will set aside 20 per cent of their places for students from non-affiliated primary schools.

The polytechnic foundation programme that was introduced in 2013 as an alternative to Sec 5 for normal (academic) stream students will be expanded to provide more places.

Furthermore, the polytechnics will expand the number of common entry programmes to include those in  Business, and Information and Digital Technologies. These programmes will allow students to learn foundational skills and be exposed to different specialisations before deciding on their preferred pathways.

At the same time, the Institute of Technical Education will increase the number of aptitude-based admissions and will be granted greater flexibility in its early admissions exercise.

These changes in admission systems at various levels represent continued efforts to enable more students to benefit from diverse educational pathways.

A third cluster of changes concerns the affordability of education.

The government will increase its annual Edusave fund contribution rates for primary and secondary students. It will also reduce fees for low- and middle-income students at all independent schools and specialised independent schools.

The reduction in independent school fees, along with the move to diversify the student body in secondary schools with affiliated primary schools and the reforms to the Direct School Admission scheme, indicate official concern over the less-than-ideal extent of social diversity in some secondary schools, especially those that are more popular and prestigious.

There is growing official recognition of the harsh reality that the playing field is still far from level for all students.

The publication last year of Teo You Yenn’s book This Is What Inequality Looks Like highlighted the need to tackle educational disadvantage beyond the confines of schools and consider a whole plethora of social and workplace inequalities instead.

In this regard, the government has set up an inter-agency taskforce involving various ministries, government agencies and ethnic self-help groups to focus on strengthening support for students from disadvantaged families, especially during the early years of schooling.

The taskforce, known as Uplift (Uplifting Pupils in Life and Inspiring Families Taskforce), will present its findings and recommendations later this year.

The efforts of the Uplift committee coincide with the emergence of the National Institute of Early Childhood Development (NIEC) as a major provider of training for early childhood educators.

The NIEC will launch a new diploma in early childhood development and education at its Ngee Ann Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic campuses.

The year 2019 will also see a long-overdue reform with the extension of the Compulsory Education Act to include students with disabilities. This will send a strong signal that Singapore is further making education accessible to every child.

All of these reforms that will be implemented in 2019 are consonant with the general direction of education reform over the past decade.

They signal the importance of keeping the dream of social mobility alive through education.

Second, they recognise the need to expand opportunities for all students to benefit from diversified educational pathways.

Third, they aim to swing the pendulum away from the detrimental effects of high-stakes examinations on the behaviour and attitudes of parents, students and educators, and towards encouraging more joy in learning.

What more needs to be done? For one thing, the issue of private tutoring has yet to be satisfactorily addressed.

The ubiquity of private tutoring sits rather uneasily with an education system that claims to foster opportunities for every student and that is internationally well-regarded for its students’ achievements in international comparative tests such as PISA.

The Ministry of Education needs to engage all stakeholders in an informed and honest debate about the need for private tutoring and its role vis-à-vis mainstream schooling, along with the possible effects on social and educational inequalities.

Another area that needs to be looked at is primary school admission.

The current primary school admission system gives prominent weightage to various family-based factors such as place of residence and parents’ affiliation with the school.

It is one of the anomalies in a system that otherwise prides itself on aspiring towards the ideal of meritocracy. There is room for further changes along the lines of those being made to the secondary school admission system in order to ensure greater student diversity.

Devising such a primary school admission system is tricky because, among other things, the priority given to geographical proximity of students’ place of residence tends to work against promoting greater student diversity in some schools.

At the same time, there is the question of how to assess a child’s ‘merit’ for admission to primary school. In addition, the primary school admission system works rather differently from that at the secondary school level.

There are factors, such as parents’ volunteer service and parents’ religious affiliation, that aren’t taken into consideration for secondary school admission.

Education in Singapore is of key interest to many stakeholders such as parents, students, educators and employers.

It embodies our collective dreams and hopes for social mobility, social cohesion, and a better future.

The education reforms that will be introduced in 2019, as well as any new reforms that are announced, will therefore continue to attract a great deal of public interest and comment.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jason Tan Eng Thye is an associate professor of policy and leadership studies at the National Institute of Education.

Related topics

Education primary school secondary school

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