“Testing children until they cry is a bad idea. It is an educational malpractice.”— Diane Ravitch

Singapore has long been recognised as having one of the best education systems globally. The island State has long been an educational high achiever, endorsing rote learning and long study hours to propel schoolchildren toward examination success. However, this successful nation has rebranded its approach to education, and students are no longer ranked by examination results.

Throughout their history of high performance, Singaporean students were absorbed in a competitively charged educational environment, which is rather characteristic of other Asia-Pacific societies, such as China, South Korea, and Japan. But, in 2004, the Government developed the Teach Less, Learn More initiative, which moved instruction further away from its early focus on repetitive tasks and toward deeper conceptual understanding and problem-based learning.

Singapore’s current priorities for its education system are reflected in the title of its initiative Every School a Good School. This set of reforms aims to ensure that all schools have adequate resources to develop customised programmes for their students, raise professional standards for teachers, encourage innovation, and foster partnerships between schools and communities. In 2018 Singapore launched the Learn for Life initiative to promote greater flexibility in teaching, learning, and assessment. Singapore has been reaping the benefits of this change in educational model.

PROGRAMME FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENT ASSESSMENT

Singapore stands out among the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries for its low percentage of low-performing students and high percentage of high-performing students on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Singapore’s change of approach to education is in stark contrast to neighbouring countries which also participate in the programme.

The OECD is an international organisation that works to build better policies for better lives. On most international educational indicators, such as the PISA, Singapore has been ranked at the top or close to the top. PISA is not only the world’s most comprehensive and reliable indicator of students’ capabilities, it is also a powerful tool that countries and economies can use to fine-tune their education policies.

Every PISA test since 2000 has assessed students knowledge and skills in reading, mathematics, and science. Each assessment focuses on one of these subjects and provides a summary assessment of the other two. In 2018 the focus was on reading in a digital environment, but the design of the assessment also made it possible to measure trends in reading literacy over the past two decades.

In Singapore, teachers perform continuous assessments of their students at all levels of education on a daily basis. This assessment is informal and based on student work, in and out of the classroom. Previously, all Singaporeans students in primary school sat school-based examinations throughout the year and at the end of each year. But, in 2019, the Government dropped the examinations for selected grades. The Government hopes that by removing these examinations there will be a shift away from grades and competition and more toward learning for its own sake.

It should be noted that in Singapore there is only one institution, the National Institute of Education (NIE), authorised to prepare teachers, and it offers both a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree route into teaching. (Contrastingly, in Jamaica there are multiple teacher training institutions.) In this way, Singapore limits its teacher recruitment only to those students qualified for the country’s rigorous research universities. By taking this route, Singapore has been able to add prestige and status to the teaching profession.

They have also been able to ensure that those who have been accepted and trained in the profession go on to teach. Each year Singapore calculates the number of teachers it will need and opens only that many spots in the training programmes. The selection process is competitive as teaching is a highly regarded profession in Singapore.

EDUCATIONAL REFORM

Since the 1950s Jamaica has embarked on a number of educational reform programmes. At one point there was the Primary Education Improvement Programme (PEIP), and Jamaica also bloomed the Reform of Secondary Education (ROSE) programme during the 1990s.

We continue to operate in a paradigm of an overly competitive education system, which oftentimes does not cater to the learning styles of individual students. This is problematic and continues to have a negative long-term impact on our students.

Interestingly, many of us have only been able to identify how best we learn since becoming adults. Jamaica’s education system in one in which the ranking of students is a critical component. At the end of primary education students in Jamaica normally sit the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) for which students begin their assessments in grade 4. The system is such that the top-ranked students are placed at those high schools which are deemed as being among the best in the country. Thankfully, with the arrival of PEP, emphasis is placed on critical thinking skills as opposed to rote learning, which was characteristic of the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) for which the last sitting ended in the 2017-2018 academic year.

According to Angel Gurría, former OECD secretary general, “The OECD produces a triennial report on the state of education around the globe to share evidence of the best policies and practices and offer our timely and targeted support to help countries provide the best education possible for all of their students.” PISA supports this by testing the knowledge and skills of students directly, through a metric that was internationally agreed upon, linking that with data from students, teachers, schools, and systems to understand performance differences, and then harnessing the power of collaboration to act on the data, both by creating shared points of reference and by leveraging peer pressure.

EMBRACING SOFT SKILLS

Education is not merely about passing examinations. In the pursuit of an educational model we must take into account how best to holistically appeal to students. Singapore, which has an enviable gross domestic product (GDP), has made a shift away from examination toward creating more rounded individuals. Perhaps this is a lesson for Jamaica.

The term soft skills hardly does justice to the complex combination of capabilities it describes: empathy, emotional intelligence, creativity, and being able to collaborate and communicate. Choosing a career is one of the greatest challenges for any young person and, as such, the education system pursued must foster this innate desire. Undoubtedly, the skills we need to perform at work are changing, and quickly.

DIGITAL TOOLS

Our education system must prepare our students for the digital era and take into consideration how technology will impact our students. Whereas people have different views on the role that digital technology can and should play in schools, we cannot ignore how digital tools have so essentially transformed the world outside of school. According to the World Economic Forum, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is interacting with other socio-economic and demographic factors to create a perfect storm of business model change in all industries, resulting in major disruptions to labour markets. New categories of jobs will emerge, partly or wholly displacing others. The skill sets required in both old and new occupations will change in most industries and transform how and where people work. It may also affect female and male workers differently and transform the dynamics of the industry gender gap. Is the Singaporean model of education worthy of consideration?

In the words of Ong Ye Kung, Singaporean politician, “Learning is not a competition.”

Wayne Campbell is an educator and social commentator with an interest in development policies as they affect culture and/or gender issues. Send comments to Jamaica Observer or waykam@yahoo.com.