Applied Study in Polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education Review

The ASPIRE project has been a long-time coming. I am inspired by ASPIRE’s goals to strengthen the applied education pathway in our country's Polytechnics and ITEs. And I want it to succeed.

Although the ASPIRE report has not expressed it blatantly, one primary concern I believe it hopes to address is the potential problem of an over-supply of graduates. Graduate unemployment is already seen in East Asian countries such as Taiwan and South Korea. In a society that places a high premium on academic pursuit, Singapore runs the risk of facing the same fate.

Sir, my support for what ASPIRE aspires to do is not based on whether it can outrun the potential graduate glut in Singapore. It is more than that.

There is a strong case for the school of thought that is most famously put forth by Prof Howard Gardner from Harvard. Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory argues that people possess different types of intelligences and learning style. Some of these intelligences include musical, visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, logicalmathematical, kinesthetic and interpersonal skills. Howard Gardner believes that education should be about helping individuals “develop intelligences and to help them reach vocational and avocational goals that are appropriate to their particular spectrum of intelligences”. 

Many of us are already aware of heroes from the Hall of Fame, such as businessman Richard Branson, IT honchos Bill Gates and Steve Jobs; award-winning actor Ben Affleck and tennis star, Andre Agassi, winner of eight Grand Slam titles. Despite their not attending college or dropping out of college, these heroes are known for excellence in their work.

In my years of service in the private, people and public sectors, I have met many such everyday heroes.

I think of Mr Victor Ong; a year 2000 graduate from Temasek Polytechnic’s Diploma in Interactive Media Design. Victor started his career as a designer and was promoted very quickly to an Art Director in two of the largest global advertising firms in the industry. He then decided to contribute in the not-for-profit sector as a Creative Director.

Then, there is Mdm Wendy Sim, the owner-operator of Nam Foong Furniture who neither attended a Polytechnic or a University. Wendy successfully leads a team of carpenters in her family business and is a very popular, reliable and respected supplier.

Another hero in the service industry is a Mr Dennis Tan who holds a GCE “O” Level certificate and today, is an Enrichment Unit Manager who serves thousands of children in an autism charity that I run.

Singaporeans, such as Victor Ong, Wendy Sim and Dennis Tan, need not feel that they are now outliers who did not trod the usual graduate academic pathway. If ASPIRE were to succeed, they would have been guided, facilitated, recognised and rewarded for what they bring to the table. There will then be no need for future ASPIRE projects.

Getting it right. Sir, I believe that there are three critical factors for ASPIRE to succeed:

(1) The ability to transform the mindset of key stakeholders;

(2) The ability to imbue excellence or mastery in schools and workplaces; and

(3) The ability to work effectively with industry players.

Critical success factor 1 – ASPIRE’s ability to transform the mindset of key stakeholders. Sir, I worry about what is unsaid in the ASPIRE Report than what is written. There appears to be an underlying assumption that all things will fall in place if we only strengthen the vocational track. And we will miraculously achieve what we would like to see in systems in, say, Germany, Switzerland, Norway or Finland where there is a greater balance between the vocational and academic tracks.

I believe that the biggest battle lies in the deeply entrenched paradigm that the degree route is the ticket to a better career and life. Even with the likes of whom I call Wendy Sim and Dennis Tan who had made good from their decisions to pursue their own dreams and not follow the paths more travelled. Even they decided that, for their own children, the ticket to a good career should still be a university degree, no less. This is a mindset that is further fuelled by an employment market that uses a degree as a proxy for one’s ability or potential to perform. It does not help that many leaders in our country hail from top universities in the world.

Unless this mindset that the degree route is the only ticket to a better career and life is addressed, ASPIRE’s strong applied education pathways will remain just one piece of the post-secondary education eco-system. Not many more will buy into it and the potential of many of our students will not be maximised. It will not be a game-changer, and many people would still aspire for a singular education track of degrees and postgraduate degrees, where possible.

When old mindsets do not change, then new behaviours do not follow. It is like keeping old wine in new wine skin. How long will it take to change a culture? The less optimistic say at least 20 years or one generation. The more optimistic give five to 10 years.

On the importance of the public sector to set the tone and take the lead, I feel very strongly that it is very important that the public service must lead the way and signal strongly the spirit behind ASPIRE, which is very important for our country. Not only is the public sector the largest employer in Singapore, in recent years, it has also become the pacesetter for HR practices identifying and compensating employees. Instead of asking which jobs need degrees, I believe the public sector and the other employers should honestly ask which jobs do not need degrees and immediately open up these jobs for recruitment of those who meet the competency requirement, graduate or not.

Next, on the importance of reviewing holistically the post-secondary education landscape, I believe that one of the flaws in the ASPIRE project design is its narrow scope. In separating the university track from the non-university track of Polytechnics and ITEs, it appears as if the ITE and the Polytechnic tracks are the ones that need fixing and improvement. But the Polytechnics and the ITEs are the ones that have improved so much in recent years. It is also a known fact that employers lament that there are university graduates who are not quite work-ready.

Twenty-first century economies with very short product lives and rapid technology changes form the setting of the future workplace of all school graduates, whatever education institutions they are from. ASPIRE would have been for the stronger had its scope cover all of the post-secondary school education and strengths and gaps analysed holistically – at individual, family, employer and societal levels.

A greater emphasis could have been placed on the porosity amongst the various education tracks. We know, for example, in Germany, employers send their master craftsmen for further training to universities – the academic track – that emphasise the development of job-relevant skills, such as management and strategic leadership skills, too. Once key stakeholders, such as parents and students, can see that the two tracks are actually more porous, they will be less resistant to make a decision to take a nontraditional education pathway, when deemed appropriate.

Critical success factor 2 – ASPIRE’s ability to imbue excellence and mastery in schools and workplace culture. This is covered nicely by the Senior Minister of State Ms Indranee Rajah. I believe that although ASPIRE is about creating equality in opportunities, there is a strong case for putting even more focus on building excellence or mastery that will garner respect and recognition, whether one is in the university or non-university track.

In his popular book Excellence, John William Gardner, the ex-Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under US President Lyndon Johnson argued that his country must push for both excellence and equality at all levels of society. John William Gardner said that the "society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy just because philosophy is an exalted thinking activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: and neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

Most of us innately know the importance of execution excellence at all levels, even if many do not recognise or pay for excellence enough. As John Gardner would say, “A missile may blow up because the architect at the top was incompetent or it could also blow up because the mechanic who adjusted the last valve was incompetent.” We need both excellent scientists and excellent mechanics; we need excellent doctors and excellent plumbers; we need excellent Members of Parliament and excellent event managers and community leaders. And I really want to taste what Senior Minister of State (SMS) Indranee said about Mr Jiro’s excellent sushi which “tastes like this cloud that explodes in your mouth”. I must make a trip to Japan.

We must stop popularising the mindset that the purpose of learning and training is career success, progression and promotions. In this time and age, some would argue that unless we continue to learn and apply throughout our lives, we may not even get to keep our current jobs. ASPIRE must be about creating equality in opportunities and also excellence and pride at all levels of work.

Critical success factor 3 – ASPIRE’s ability to work effectively with industry players. One of the key positive features of the ASPIRE initiative is its very close alignment with industry players to advise on relevant skill sets for mastery. But industries have short and long planning windows. Some of them answer to financial analysts’ expectations. Hence I think a critical success factor for ASPIRE is whether it is discerning enough to work effectively with the Industry to meet not just current labour needs but also to build the workforce of the future, which is a higher national goal.

I believe it is time to get out of the box to keep building bigger and bigger centralised campuses. Let us direct some of the resources to building satellite campuses out into more authentic industry settings so that employers and students from the different education pathways can learn to work together for greater learning outcomes.

I would also advise the ASPIRE team not to push too far the assumption that if we align very closely with industry, then our future is secured. Different industry players serve different time windows. Even John Gardner advised many decades ago that we cannot tell with certainty what specific skills may be needed in the future; or what future jobs we cannot envision as at now. There is certainly a place for timeless skills and attributes in our education system for critical quality thinking, strong problem solving skills and good work habits and discipline to serve us in circumstances that we cannot predict.

Sir, in conclusion, the ASPIRE project, I repeat, is a long time coming. I thank the Prime Minister who spoke about it in the last National Day Rally or long before that, and our Ministry of Education leaders – Mr Heng Swee Keat, SMS Indranee and the entire ASPIRE Team – for starting this very significant journey, a journey that is very important for our country.

I have shared that there are three critical success factors for ASPIRE to realise its goals:

(1) The ability to transform the mindset of key stakeholders;

(2) The ability to imbue excellence or mastery in schools and workplace culture; and

(3) The ability to discern wisely and work effectively with industry players.

Sir, I look forward to the follow-on taskforce to be led by Deputy Prime Minister Tharman, and I look forward to seeing even more game-changing measures to maximise the potential of our precious human resource in Singapore.

We can perhaps consider positioning Singapore schools as lifelong learning institutes, and the Ministry of Education as a Ministry for lifelong learning, perhaps even taking over – the Workforce Development Authority. We should see a bolder vision of Singapore inventing our own Singapore brand of education. In fact, all over the world, educators question if their brand of education is meeting their society’s needs. In Taiwan, for example, some educators and parents are experimenting with 没有围墙的学 校 (schools with no walls) and 移动的学校 (schools on the move). In Europe, the Waldolf Education model sees a few thousand independent schools based on that philosophy, kindergartens and centres for special education. In the United States, we know that online schools are on the rise, rapid rise.

We have a lot going for ourselves in Singapore, too. Tuition aside, we have some of the best resourced and the most wired schools in the world. Our Singapore Mathematics Brand is so coveted all over the world. We labour diligently and purposefully over the best ways to promote bilingualism. The Government has a strong interest in our ITEs and Polytechnics, not just those who are in the universities only. Singapore can develop its own brand of education that meets not just economic needs but also develop citizens of both competence and character who can be captains of our own lifelong learning, with the support of the State.

We must be confident enough not to chase world rankings, such as OECD’s PISA assessment, and start inventing our own benchmarks based on what we want for our country and people. Sir, with that, I support the motion.