Leadership for Change

The Singapore Schools' Experience

Thiam Seng Koh, David Hung

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9789813227330
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Policy

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The book shares stories of the role of school leadership in Singapore, with case studies from selected schools, that provides some insights on how Singapore delivers a high-quality education that had led to it achieving high rankings in TIMMS and PISA. This book will provide both the historical and present contexts of changes in the education system, school leadership and teacher leadership in Singapore that made it what it is today. It will distil some universal principles of educational change that school leaders and policy makers can apply in bringing about educational changes that will enhance the learning experiences of students and prepare them for future challenges.

--> Contents:

• Educational Leadership for Change: An Introduction
• Educational Leadership in Singapore: A Historical Development
• The Significance of Educational Leadership: The Case for Singapore Schools Today
• Educational Change for the 21st Century: Why School Systems Have to Respond or be Made Redundant
• Teacher Leadership for Innovation Diffusion
• Leadership from the Middle: Distributing Leadership Upwards, Downwards, and Sidewards
• School, Teacher, and Student Leadership
• Sustainability: Building a Sustainable Eco-System for Innovations

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--> Readership: General public and professionals. -->
Keywords:Education;LeadershipReview: Key Features:

• Much of information covered in the proposed book has been reported generally in academic journals, which are less accessible to the public. The findings reported in the book will be written in the form of stories and perspectives that will engage a wider audience beyond academia and practitioners
• There is much interest in the Singapore education system because of its strong international standing in TIMMS and PISA. This book will provide stories and insights into how school leaders, in working with the Ministry of Education, bring about some of the important changes in education that have contributed to Singapore having a strong internationally-recognised education system
• The stories in the book will be told through the direct experiences of key leaders who are and were contributors to the success of the Singapore education system and researchers who are actively researching school leadership in Singapore schools which implement educational changes to improve learning experiences of their students

Chapter 1

Leadership for Change in Singapore Schools: An Introduction

Thiam-Seng Koh and David Wei-Loong Hung

As the first chapter of this book, we share some background information about Singapore and Singaporean education to provide the necessary context to understand the subsequent chapters in this book. We also share the kind of education that we think that Singapore should provide for its citizens to meet the challenges ahead and an overview of the role played by educational leadership in Singapore to bring about the required changes that led to the educational innovations described in the subsequent chapters. We hope that readers who are not familiar with Singapore will find a good overview of Singapore and Singaporean education in this chapter. However, for readers who are already familiar with Singapore, we recommend that they should skip these two sections and proceed to the section on “Preparing for the Future”. In this book, we share about how to prepare learners for the future and will focus on the role played by school leadership in preparing these learners for the desired future.

INTRODUCTION

As authors of this chapter, we belong to the generation of baby boomers in Singapore. We started our lives in Singapore in a much simpler time. We grew up at the time when the Singapore economy was at its nascent infancy. But, we are fortunate to be part of the economic growth journey where Singapore transformed itself from a third-world economy to a first-world economy in a relatively short span of less than 50 years since independence.

In our lives, we have experiences of sanitation in our homes that had gone from primitive to modern sanitation. We went from no television to black-and-white television and to the 4K colour smart television today. We went from no telephone in a home to almost everyone having a personal mobile phone with some carrying more than one mobile phone. When we were growing up, many of our peers were still living in attap (constructed from palm leaves) houses and in kampongs (or villages). Living standards have improved by leaps and bounds since then in tandem with our economic progress. Today, more than 80% of our Singapore population live in modern public housing that provide modern sanitation, electricity, fibre-based internet connectivity within pleasantly designed and thoughtfully planned communities with recreational facilities. About 90% of the people living in public housing proudly own their homes (HDB, 2017). Singaporeans on the whole enjoy a high standard of living. Singapore is ranked sixth on the 2013 where-to-be-born index by the Economist Intelligence Unit (2013). Despite complaints from citizens to the contrary, we are served by first class road networks and public transport. Our Changi airport is our quick gateway to the rest of the world.

Singapore’s Economic History (1965–2015)

To appreciate how Singapore became the economic miracle that it is today, we summarise below Singapore’s economic history as shared by Mr Ravi Menon (2015), Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. In 1965, when Singapore first became independent, our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita was about US$500. In 2015, our GDP per capita grew to US$56,000 which placed us at the same level as Germany and the United States of America. This is a remarkable jump in GDP per capita of more than 110 times over a period of about 50 years. In 1965, Singapore defied the conventional economic wisdom to pursue an export-led industrialisation instead of import-substitution strategy through attracting successful global multinationals into Singapore to fuel the country’s economic growth. From 1965 to 1984, through the use of the latter strategy, we enjoyed economic success with the Singapore economy growing at an annual average of about 10%. In 1985, Singapore faced a recession arising from structural issues in the economy. Singapore began to face resource constraints and diminishing returns on investments and the narrowing of cost advantage enjoyed previously as our economy “matured”. With the recession, Singapore did a fundamental review of its policies and strategies and embarked on a twin engine of growth based on manufacturing and modern services such as finance, business, info-communications and entertainment. By 2010, Singapore made the transition from a third-world economy to a first-world economy where Singapore became “an affluent society and a global city, at the cross-roads of international flows of trade, investment, finance and talent”.

Singapore’s Size and Population

As of 2016, Singapore is a small island nation situated at the tip of the Malay Peninsula that is about 720 square kilometres (Government Technology Agency of Singapore, 2017). To give a sense of size, Singapore’s longest expressway is the Pan-Island Expressway or PIE that runs from the east to west and is only about 43 kilometres long. If we were to drive at an average speed of 60 km per hour, we will be able to drive across the island in about 45 minutes. To give a sense of how small Singapore is, the then Indonesian President, Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie in 1998, referred to Singapore as just a “red dot” in the world map. As of 2016, we have a population of about 5.6 million people (Department of Statistics, 2016a). The Singapore residents comprising citizens and permanent residents constitute about 3.9 million. The remaining 1.7 million are non-residents from many countries who have found work in Singapore. As of June 2016, our ethnic composition of the resident population comprises about 74% Chinese, 13% Malay and 9% Indian (Department of Statistics, 2016b).

SINGAPORE EDUCATION

Our Singapore Government sees education as one of the key strategies for nation building and for economic growth (Gopinathan, 2015). In nation building, education is key to nurturing a harmonious multiracial and multi-religious society where our citizens are global citizens but rooted in Singapore. To achieve economic progress, education is a means of developing the full potential of its citizens where they are able to make meaningful and active contribution to the economy. Singapore is constantly pursuing educational innovations to achieve the latter goals. For the financial year of 2017, the Singapore Government has set aside an operating budget of about $56.3 billion (Ministry of Finance, 2017). Of this operating budget, the Education Ministry is allocated an operating budget of about $12.1 billion (or 21.5%) which is only second to the Defence Ministry’s operating budget of $13.6 billion (or 24.2%).

Singapore Education System

For the key statistics on the Singapore education system, we drew on the information from the Education Statistics Digest 2016 published by MOE (MOE, 2016). The education system comprises 366 schools. We have 182 primary (elementary) schools, 154 secondary (middle) schools and 14 junior colleges (high schools). The remaining 16 schools are mixed level schools i.e. either primary to secondary (Grades 1–10/11) or secondary to junior college (Grades 7–12). The total enrolment from Grades 1–12 is about 455,000. The number of school leaders and teachers is about 34,000. The number of para-educators providing support is about 7,800. The average students-to-teacher ratios at primary, secondary and junior colleges are 15.9, 12.4 and 9.5 respectively (these ratios exclude the Principals and Vice-Principals). The average class sizes in primary, secondary and junior colleges are 33, 34 and 22 respectively.

In the publicly funded education system, students start primary school at the age of 7 years old. All students go through 6 years of primary education (from Grades 1–6). At the end of their 6^th year in primary education, they will sit for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). Based on their PSLE results, they can then be admitted into a secondary school course.

The top 10% of the PSLE cohort will be eligible to apply to do the Integrated Programme (IP) which is a 6-year programme leading to either the Singapore General Certificate of Education (GCE) (Advanced) or the International Baccalaureate Diploma examination. As the IP students are in the top 10% of the cohort and are university bound, they will skip sitting for the Singapore GCE (Ordinary) examination after 4-years of secondary education and will through-train into the 2-year junior college course. Students who performed in the bottom 15% or so of the cohort for the PSLE will do a 4-years Normal (Technical) course that leads to the Singapore GCE (Normal-Technical) examination; after which they can articulate into the Institute of Technical Education. The next 25% or so of the students will do the Normal (Academic) course. After 4 years of secondary education, these latter students will sit for the Singapore GCE (Normal) examination. The academically stronger students will do an additional year of secondary education and will sit for the Singapore GCE (Ordinary) examination. The academically weaker students will either go on to the Institute of Technical Education or to a Polytechnic. The remaining students will do an Express course and will sit for the Singapore GCE (Ordinary) examination.

Based on their results, some will go on to do a 2/3-years junior college course leading to the Singapore GCE (Advanced) examination or a 3-year polytechnic course. Students who do well for their Singapore GCE (Advanced) examinations or the International Baccalaureate Diploma examinations will generally go on to do their university programmes in one of the local or overseas universities.

The Singapore education system from Grades 7–12 is a system of “bridges” and “ladders”. It is possible for students who start in an academically weaker course such as the Normal (Academic) course and performs well academically to move on to the Express course or from the Institute of Technical Education to a polytechnic and eventually to a university. The strength of the Singapore education system is the multiple and diverse pathways from academic to technical (or vocational) that the students can take according to his academic abilities to get a good education to prepare them for the workplace and for life.

Mission and Vision of Singapore Education

As an island nation where people are its main natural resource, the Singapore Government naturally invests significantly in education. Based on the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) website, the mission of MOE is “to mould the future of the nation by moulding the people who will determine the future of the nation”. MOE aims to “provide our children with a balanced and well-rounded education, develop them to their full potential, and nurture them into good citizens, conscious of their responsibilities to family, community and country” (MOE, 2017a).

The vision that drives the work of MOE is “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” (MOE, 2017a). In 1997, the then Prime Minister, Chok-Tong Goh, shared this vision as part of his speech at the opening of the 7^th International Conference on Thinking hosted by Singapore. This vision is a rally call to provide an education for a thinking and committed citizenry that will be capable of meeting the challenges in the 21^st century. In terms of the implementation, this vision encourages the nurturing and sustaining of a culture in schools that promotes critical thinking, creativity, innovation, lifelong learning and embracing change.

Desired Outcomes of Education and 21^st Century Competencies

MOE has unpacked the mission and vision by articulating the desired outcomes of education and the 21^st century competencies expected of the students who “graduate” from the Singapore system.

MOE (2017b) summarises the desired outcomes of education as follows:

“He has a good sense of self-aw...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• About the Contributors
• Chapter 1 Leadership for Change in Singapore Schools: An Introduction
• Chapter 2 Historical Development of Educational Leadership in Singapore.
• Chapter 3 Significance of Educational Leadership: Case for Singapore Schools Today
• Chapter 4 Overcoming Impediments to Reform: Building a Sustainable Ecosystem for Educational Innovations
• Chapter 5 Empowering Partnerships for School-based Innovation Scale and Sustainability
• Chapter 6 Educational Change for the 21st Century: “Leadership from the Middle”
• Chapter 7 Developing Teacher Leadership in Pedagogical Practice
• Chapter 8 Inductive Leadership: Activating Community-Oriented Student Agency towards School Improvement
• Chapter 9 Teachers at the Heart of System Change: Principles of Educational Change for School Leaders
• Index