Madam, I fully support the Minister for Education's vision of making every school a good school. I wish to seek Minister's positive consideration of two proposals to further this vision.

One, on online learning platform, I urge MOE to form a Task Force to focus on and develop 21st Century online learning resources that will avail the best of content, pedagogy and assessments across all local schools. Online learning has moved from the sidebar of education to becoming central to many progressive institutions of learning. It comes in the form of self-paced, competency-based programmes that can be taken anytime, anywhere. It can also come as a component of what is known as blended or hybrid learning which offers teaching and learning through a mix of online and face-to-face teaching.

If done well, online learning not only avails excellent education resources across all schools, it boosts productivity of teachers and may also open up opportunities for Singapore to be a serious 21st Century education provider on the global stage.

Two, on through-train pre-school, primary to secondary schools, I would ask the Minister to pilot full schools that offer through-train pre-school, primary to secondary schools without the need for PSLE. This model can be used as an experiment of what good Singapore schools might look like, had we started on a cleaner slate without the sacred cows that have grown so big and intimidating that many hesitate to slay. The sacred cows that I am referring to are the current Pre-School governance model and the PSLE.

Madam, on pre-schools, I find merit in hon Member Christopher de Souza's call for the nationalisation of pre-school education. However, if that is too fast a bullet to bite, I propose that MOE consider incorporating some of the pre-schools it intends to pilot, into a bigger pilot – that of a full school which offers through-train pre-school, primary and secondary school education.

One of the biggest bugbears in pre-school education is the missing link between what pre-schools teach and entry requirements of mainstream primary schools. A seamless transition between kindergarten and Primary 1 will help address this gap.

The PSLE has now become one of the top stress triggers in education. The PSLE T-score syndrome actually drives parents, educators and even students to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy for a place at the desired end of the normal distribution.

Because the PSLE is such a high-stake examination, parents, rich or poor, invest as much as they can to ensure a good PSLE score. Tuition agencies and tutors, with track records in turning out PSLE high-performers, thrive and profit from the insatiable demand for their expertise. Some mainstream schools use the majority of their Primary 5 and 6 years to focus on this high-stake examination. Focus on such high-stake examinations dilutes the efforts to give more attention to the values-based and character education that the Minister is known to advocate. Many of us also know, in the course of our lives, persons who do not perform well academically when they were young because they were late developers.

Foregoing the PSLE does not mean the scrapping of all forms of assessments. In fact, assessments can now be used to identify gaps in learning for developmental purposes, and not for the purposes of getting high scores. Students can have flexibility now to take a mix of subjects according to their ability and interest. Learning can become a joy and habit that can be applied for life.

Madam, there are countries in the world with highly-regarded education systems, such as Finland, that do not feature high-stress and high-stake examinations such as the PSLE. When the stress of high PSLE scores is taken off, there is a bigger space for schools to experiment with 21st century learning methods, such as hybrid learning, flipped classrooms and character education applications. If the proposed pilot through-train school is explained well and led by strong school leaders and boards, I am sure there will be parents who are willing to give this a shot.