Singapore’s education culture has to change alongside gifted programme revamp: experts

Instead, high-ability programmes would be offered in all schools to more students who could also be selected for these initiatives at multiple junctures between Primary 4 and Primary 6, the education ministry said on Monday.

Pedagogy experts This Week in Asia spoke to said while the move was in line with the ministry’s bid to make “every school a good school”, more policy revamps and cultural shifts would be needed to make education more equitable and less stressful on students. This would be challenging since some policies have competing objectives, they added.

Introduced in 1984, GEP tested Primary 3 students, typically nine years old, to see if they were cognitively “gifted”. Currently, the top 1 per cent of students get into the programme which is only available at nine schools, meaning that some students who qualify have to switch schools.

Wong acknowledged during last week’s rally that not everyone was convinced by the slogan that “every school is a good school”. Referring to the schools in his neighbourhood that he attended, he said: “And I think I turned out OK.”

Experts note that in recent years, the education ministry has tried to make the system fairer and less stressful for students, in line with the government’s approach to redefining meritocracy and success.

In 2021, the aggregate score for the Primary School Leaving Examination was replaced with wider scoring bands to enable students to get good scores regardless of their peers’ performances.

Midyear examinations for all primary and secondary school levels were scrapped in 2023 and this year, streaming students according to their overall score was replaced with subject-based banding.

“The system is diversifying. The whole definition of what is good, what is success, what is achievement, that has to be redefined and parents will have to define it for their children as well,” said Ho Boon Tiong, principal consultant of Classpoint Consulting, an educational training and consulting firm.

Jason Tan, an associate professor at the National Institute of Education, noted that when the slogan “every school is a good school” was first used in 2011, the government was paying attention to the issue of social equity in response to criticisms that the education system was too elitist.

A little-known fact was that the criteria set out by the government then for what defined a “good school” paid little attention to academic performance or outcomes and instead focused on having committed teachers and parents who were involved in their children’s education, among other things, Tan said.

Such criteria “means the government will ensure all schools in Singapore are well-resourced and have trained and motivated teachers and education officers”, said Edmund Lin, principal consultant at Singapore Education Consulting Group.

The former school principal added: “It doesn’t mean all schools are similar in terms of academic performance. If you take this definition of ‘all schools are good schools’, then I would say they are.”

Terence Ho, an associate professor in practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said while all national schools followed the “good schools” definition, “brand name schools are still more popular and sought after by parents compared with ‘neighbourhood’ schools”.

“Anecdotally, one reason is the variation in student profile across schools, with some parents concerned about the influence of classmates and friends on their children. So it remains an uphill task to persuade parents that all schools are good schools,” Ho said.

“There is now greater emphasis on creativity and exploration, and cultivating a love of learning. However, it will take time for the mindsets of students and parents to shift away from the current focus on examinations and grades.”

While noting that the GEP revamp would “dispel the notion that one can only get a high-quality education in a few schools”, Tan argued there would still be a need to sort students based on their different needs and meet competing policy objectives in Singapore’s education system.

“This is the tricky thing; they want a system that caters or tries to cater to diverse learning needs instead of a one-size-fits-all programme. They want diversity but that also means that you end up with unequal offerings and unequal outcomes, and not all these offerings and outcomes are equally prestigious or desirable to parents,” Tan said.

“There’s still this prejudice against vocational education and this valorisation of students who can succeed academically.”

On further policy changes to create a more equitable education system, Classpoint Consulting’s Ho, who was a GEP specialist with the education ministry, said more safety nets were needed. “Some students are slow developers, so if you miss catching them at certain points, they may not follow along in the system.”

Meanwhile, Tan pointed out that the Primary 1 registration exercise gave priority, for instance, to children living close to a school and whether parents were alumni or had volunteered at the school.

“If they are serious about rethinking meritocracy and trying to make things as equitable as possible for all children and trying to remove barriers to individual success, then you would have to question any practices, policies or structures that would appear to counter what you want to strive towards,” he said.

Tan noted that even if schools tried to ease the pressure off students, private tuition centres would fill the void by offering parents more mock exams, or co-curricular activities depending on policy changes.

“Many parents unfortunately still view education as a competitive race and still valorise all these high prestige offerings,” Tan said.

“It’s tough for a government to intervene in parental decisions. They can provide the incentives, they can change the policies and the way schools are structured, but they cannot tell parents not to spend thousands every month on private tutoring.”

Jonathan Sim, assistant director of pedagogy at the National University of Singapore’s AI Centre for Educational Technologies, agreed with calls for changing the culture of education rather than just the system.

“For example, we’ve reduced the number of examinations, but it’s not working so well because the culture is against it … Telling people that there will be second chances is a good first step. Now we need to show people that academic grades are not the only way to success,” Sim said.