“What would be the Ideal Education System for Singapore, if we were starting from a clean slate?” is the question I asked MOE at yesterday’s 2021 Committee of Supply debate.

This is my Full Speech on RE-IMAGINING EDUCATION – by Denise Phua

“What would be the Ideal Education System for Singapore, if we were starting from a clean slate?” is the question I would ask MOE.

The world of teaching and learning has been disrupted, like never before.

The COVID-19 pandemic threw a curveball at our education system.

Thankfully, education technology such as the Student Learning Space and Personal Learning Devices (PDL) were already in the works for use by the students. COVID-19 had significantly compressed the timeline to digitise education, and ground challenges like educator, student and family readiness are not uncommon.

In higher education, further disruptions are expected.

Burning Glass Technology, a consulting firm that analysed close to a billion job postings and resumes in 2019, reported that good future jobs are ‘hybrid’ jobs, more complex and multi-disciplinary. A good mobile app developer, for instance, needs to understand not only programming but also user interface design, content and marketing. The demands of a hybrid job market, for instance, makes cross learnings across departments and disciplines, especially in higher education, not only important but urgent.

The call for change is widespread.

In the US, Khan Academy’s Sal Khan, who was the visionary ahead of his time in creating individualised online student learning, called out :

• the need to make available personalised and tailored education at a mass scale, citing a list of good quality online resources developed in the US;

• empowering parents and teachers as better partners for students; and

• uplifting every student at every stage of life, including adults

Locally, education experts such as Dr Varaprasad and Dr S Gopinathan shared a similar vision of a future education – one that is tailored to the individual, learning any time, anywhere and at any age. They dreamt of an end to state exams (high-stake, I may add), physical classrooms and teacher-led mass learning.

Indeed, if that were the model of future education, then many concerns raised in and outside this House such as class sizes, excessive tuition, PSLE, mother tongue scoring - are issues surrounding the current education model.

Past education reviews such as the Primary Education Review, the Secondary School Review, ASPIRE, and even Special Education Reviews; were mostly fine-tuning of the current system whilst retaining the same structural pillars. Alas, my dream for a 10-year through train education without the PSLE remains a pipe dream.

Dr Prasad and Dr Gopinathan, both former MOE staff, concluded that it would be challenging to transform Singapore’s education system for the very reason that it is so well-established. They spoke of the difficulties of reforming a well-established education system due to legacy and structural rigidities, and how even making incremental changes will require changes across a vast and complex system and overcoming resistance from many stakeholder groups.

But Chairman, I call upon the wisdom of Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen’s renowned work on innovation.

Prof Christensen convinced many senior leaders, some of whom are in our Government, that even the most outstanding companies with established products can become irrelevant unless they know how and when to abandon traditional business practices. Hence, the need for what Christensen calls, ‘disruptive innovation’.

Chairman, I totally understand the wisdom of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

But in the face of changes that come so fast and furious, there is merit to consider some disruptive innovation, if need be, in order for our education system to be relevant and thriving, like no other.

I recommend that MOE conducts a national exercise to ask the question of “What would be the Ideal Education System for Singapore if we were starting from a clean slate?” and seriously ponder over the responses.

Denise Phua

3 March 2021