Future Education Workforce and Institutions

Sir, building inclusive education institutions – every Singaporean, whatever his or her potential or family background, deserves a quality education.  While we cannot guarantee equal outcomes in life for everyone, we can and should ensure that everyone has equal access to learning to have their potential maximised.

Students from needy backgrounds – Sir, all things being equal, the child with a more affluent family background will surely have more resources and get a better shot at maximising his potential in life.  My concern is with children from chronically poor and/or dysfunctional families.  My ground experience has convinced me that it is beneficial to keep these children away from their unconducive family environment for most of the day so that they can spend their day more gainfully.  I therefore ask MOE to sponsor school-based before and after-school programmes for identified students from disadvantaged backgrounds. With these additional resources, schools can choose to either outsource the service or run it themselves.

Students with special needs – like all mainstream school students, students with special needs should not be treated with low expectations.  They, too, deserve the world-class mainstream education the MOE team should be credited for.  In the past, special school students in Singapore are remembered as appendices after a main education policy is determined.  Thanks to the political leadership, special education is very much now on MOE's radar and much has improved over the last seven years.

I seek the Education Minister's consideration of five recommendations to plug some gaps I have observed.  First, make satellite classes for the disabled a common feature in our mainstream education landscape.  Sir, last Friday's Straits Times carried a plea for a third mainstream school partner by Pathlight School, a special school that I run.  With MOE's help in the past, Pathlight sends its secondary school students, intact with teachers and psychologists, to study in classes in its gracious mainstream neighbours, Chong Boon Secondary School and Bishan Park Secondary School.  This way, they interact daily with their mainstream peers and are nudged out of their segregated setting to be more prepared for the world outside.  It has not been easy for the diligent and gracious MOE HQ officers to identify and coax suitable mainstream schools to accommodate students from special schools in their premises on a daily basis – doing an external community involvement project (CIP) on a special school is a much easier option.

Sir, unlike academic value-add or CCA achievements, inclusiveness is not regarded as an important factor when rating the success of mainstream school leaders.  I urge MOE to accord more official recognition to schools who take tangible steps to support the disadvantaged, especially the poor and those with special-needs.

Next, I also urge MOE to be bolder and make the satellite school model a common feature in education.  The School for the Deaf, for instance, has less than 20 students.  There is talk for a plan for a new special school to combine the deaf students with the few visually-impaired students from the School for the Blind for efficiency purposes.  Instead of doing this, MOE should seriously consider co-locating these students in willing mainstream schools.  To lessen any burden on the mainstream host, send in competent VWO expertise to support them. Let the hearing-impaired and the visually impaired students of these two small special schools integrate, physically and socially, in a mainstream school setting.

Next, I would also urge MOE to continue to provide more structured support for services for special-needs students in post-secondary tertiary institutions like the ITE, polytechnics and universities.  Sim Zi Ling, a top Raffles Institution alumnus who works with me, returned after obtaining her degree at UC Berkeley.  Zi Ling shared how impressed she was by the college-based Disabled Students' Programme (DSP) at Berkeley.  When students are determined to have disabilities impairing educational access, DSP specialists plan a programme of services with them, ranging from buddy note-takers, sign language interpreters, Braille textbooks and the like.  To be fair, I have heard of very good and kind teachers in ITE West who are very accommodating to special-needs students.  However, in the micro level, support is neither consistent, systemic nor hard-coded for sustainability.  MOE has done very well in support for special-needs students at primary and secondary schools.  Why deprive the students when they move on to the tertiary level?

Next, doing more for lower-functioning students in special schools.  Sir, I recall with mixed feelings when I attended the 2010 graduation ceremony of students at the Delta Senior School.  Some 40 graduates, whose education was funded by MOE till age 21, received WSQ certification and found jobs.  However, I notice at the sideline another batch of younger graduates who had to leave school younger at age 18 because they are slower, and do not qualify for WSQ certification. They have to exit school even if they are not ready into a bleak future.  Sir, I ask MOE to allow and fund even these lower-functioning students to continue schooling till age 21 so that the school has more time to prepare them for adulthood.

Sir, in my work with special-needs students of all abilities, I find a group of them, usually about 5%, with high needs, for example, behavioural challenges, and they require higher than normal teacher-student ratio.  Some of them are cause for disruptions in classes and even lead to resignations of teachers and face a longer waitlist.  Sir, I ask for more support for this small group of students so that they can continue to stay on in school and teacher turnover can be reduced.

Sir, finally, at the macro level, the Ministry has ably crafted the 21st Century Competencies Framework for students in the mainstream schools.  But what are the 21st century skills and attributes required of teachers and leaders who will guide these students?  What kind of changes does MOE need to make in future education workforce, taking into account the strong reliance on tuition to supplement its work; students who speak digital as their first language and the need to build more resilience in our young who are afflicted by an upward trend of mental health problems such as depression and eating disorders?

I thank the MOE for the great work done and I look forward to their help to plug these gaps that I have observed.