Aptitude testing to be expanded for ITE admission: Ong Ye Kung
SINGAPORE — More students can gain early admission into the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) based on their talents and interests from the next academic year, as the courses will no longer have a cap limiting the number of students admitted through its aptitude-based admission scheme.
SINGAPORE — More students can gain early admission into the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) based on their talents and interests from the next academic year, as the courses will no longer have a cap limiting the number of students admitted through its aptitude-based admission scheme.
Following a review of its admission system, the ITE will also progressively extend such aptitude testing to its other admission exercises from next year, announced Education Minister (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung at his ministry’s Committee of Supply debate on Monday (March 5).
The ITE’s Early Admissions Exercise (EAE) — which kicked in last year — allows students to apply and receive conditional offers for admission to ITE based on their aptitude and interest, prior to receiving their GCE N or O-Level exam results.
Courses admitting students under the EAE currently have a cap of between 30 per cent and 50 per cent. But as part of its ongoing emphasis on skills and aptitude, the Ministry of Education (MOE) will lift the cap imposed, allowing courses to take in 100 per cent of students through the EAE in a bid to give ITE “more flexibility to admit students based on aptitude”.
But the number of students admitted through the EAE is still subjected to the overall 15 per cent cap of the ITE’s student intake for the entire academic year. Currently, the overall ITE intake through the EAE is under 10 per cent.
Students applying for the EAE will also only have to meet the course’s specific minimum entry requirements and “will not have to compete for admissions solely based on their grades”, said the MOE.
Aptitude testing will also be extended to ITE’s Joint Intake Exercise — for GCE N and O-Level graduates applying for Nitec courses — in order to benefit “a larger group of students”, said the ministry.
For a start, selected Nitec courses in business hospitality as well as information and communications technology will be allowed to take in students based on their talents and interests.
Noting that admission to vocational training pathways should predominantly be aptitude-based, Mr Ong said: “There are practical constraints, such as course capacity, or industries’ ability to absorb the graduates. But where possible, we want every student to enter a vocation of his liking.”
The ministry has been ramping up aptitude-based admission since 2016, when it announced that three autonomous universities — Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore, and Singapore Management University — will raise its intake of students through their discretionary admission exercises from 10 per cent to 15 per cent.
Similarly, the intake of students entering polytechnics through its EAE was also increased from 2.5 per cent to 12.5 per cent.
That figure was later raised to 15 per cent for this year’s academic intake following overwhelming response to the EAE after it took effect in 2016.
In announcing the hike last year, Mr Ong noted that the eventual EAE intake for polytechnics was close to 12 per cent of the total polytechnic intake, with two polytechnics slightly exceeding the 12.5 per cent quota.
But aptitude-based admissions do come with challenges, with Mr Ong citing that polytechnic principals are receiving many more appeals from students and parents.
“What students and parents need to understand is that passion and aptitude need to be demonstrated and not merely declared, and that has to come through in the admission application,” he added.