Special Needs Education

Mr Chairman, Sir, the character of a society is reflected in the way it treats members who are different or disadvantaged. In 1999, when I first took my autistic son to enrol in a special school, my Filipino helper exclaimed: "Madame, so this is where Singapore hides all its disabled children!" It did not take long for me to find out that while Singapore boasts of excellence in many things, educating the special needs child was not one of them, whether in the mainstream or special school.

But in the last three years, something changed. The MOE has come of age and is now openly taking ownership of some important aspects of educating these children who are different, and I applaud the Minister and his team for this.

As the Chairperson of the education component of the Enabling Masterplan for the Disabled, together with my volunteers, I identified six strategic thrusts to achieve excellence in educating special needs children. The thrusts were:

(1) The call for leadership revamp in the special education scene. Many people could not fathom why the National Council of Social Service (NCSS), with its core competence in social service, was tasked with setting performance standards and auditing special schools;

(2) To ask for a planned and purposeful integration with mainstream students for all special needs children, and other critical success factors identified;

(3) To have quality curriculum, quality professional staff;

(4) To empower family caregivers;

(5) To have a smooth transition management; and

(6) To provide adequate funding in educating these children.

We spoke to close to 300 parents and professionals and they were mostly concerned about two primary issues, namely, the inconsistency in quality of curriculum, pedagogy and teachers; and governance, ie, why MOE did not take any active leading role in educating those who are placed in special schools run by charity.

Sir, I am confident that the Ministry has studied the recommendations closely in the Enabling Master Plan and I know they will do something about them. I have three points to make to the Ministry as they consider the next steps to level up educating these children, whether in mainstream or special schools.

First, I hope MOE will one day be technically ready and morally strong enough to take its rightful place in the leadership of special schools. There is no reason why it needs NCSS to co-fund special schools and why it needs to still hang on to NCSS in supervising special schools. There is a dearth of adult services that are required for NCSS to look into and for them to lead in those areas. Let NCSS be one of the many-helping-hands in a configuration with MOE taking 100% lead.

Second, I hope MOE will not compromise in assembling the right execution team members to make things happen as they consider implementing some of the recommendations in the Enabling Master Plan. Draw the best available from the Special Education Department (SPED) in MOE, the Curriculum Department, the Mainstream School Operations, VWO specialists with supporting members from MCYS and even MOH. Be careful that we do not fall into the proverbial "old wine in new wine skin" syndrome where only the packaging looks different but same people, same mindsets and same methodology remain. I pray that that would not happen and I know that it would not happen under the leadership of Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam and MOS Mr Gan Kim Yong. As Jim Collins says in his "Good to Great" management classic, first, get the right people on the bus. I hope we will be able to do that.

Third, I also ask the Ministry not to let up and to develop a good execution blueprint with agreed upon Key Performance Indicators and milestone reviews by the Minister. As they say, one does not gain a reputation by just declaring what one wishes to do.

Many children with special needs grow up to become adults with special needs underperforming in life because they did not receive intervention early enough nor have a quality education that could help them.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank the Ministry for beginning to take leadership and ownership of educating students with special needs in mainstream and special schools. As they say, leadership is a choice, and I thank you for making that choice.