Upcoming Educational Reforms: What do they mean for your child?

As many of you have already heard, or even experienced for yourself, Singapore’s education system is set to go through reforms in the coming years. Many debate the pros and cons of these reforms, and the speed of which they are impacting our children. With this upcoming change, are you and your child prepared to step into this new, uncertain future? Read our newest blog to understand how these reforms have, and will continue to impact your child for the years to come.

If a soci­ety were to be poised for change in this fast-mov­ing world, its exist­ing poli­cies and sys­tems must bend and break, espe­cial­ly when it comes to edu­ca­tion. After all, the next gen­er­a­tion is shaped not only in homes but also in class­rooms. How­ev­er, reforms to a nation’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem can have pro­found impli­ca­tions, send­ing rip­ples beyond the class­room into the econ­o­my and social struc­ture at large. For instance, China’s ban on after-school tuition has laid waste to a US$70 bil­lion indus­try and has led to a mas­sive loss of jobs and wors­en­ing income inequal­i­ty, along with the rise of an under­ground tuition indus­try which only the rich­est of the rich can afford.

In recent years, in a bid to move away from an over-empha­sis on aca­d­e­m­ic results, the SIngapore’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion (MOE) has intro­duced a series of reforms in dos­es, the most strik­ing of which was the change from a T‑score scor­ing sys­tem to one using Achieve­ment Lev­els for the Pri­ma­ry School Leav­ing Exam­i­na­tion. The full extent of the reforms is set to be imple­ment­ed in the next two years. Mid-year exam­i­na­tions will be com­plete­ly removed for all pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school lev­els from 2023. Full Sub­ject-Based Band­ing will be intro­duced in all sec­ondary schools by 2024. MOE will also con­tin­ue to expand the Direct School Admis­sions (DSA) pro­gramme to allow more DSA vacan­cies in junior col­leges (JCs) from this year onwards (2022).

Giv­en the far-reach­ing impact of edu­ca­tion reforms, it is impor­tant to under­stand what exact­ly these upcom­ing reforms will mean for your child. With a stronger grasp of what is to come, we can bet­ter nav­i­gate life’s unchart­ed waters with our chil­dren and pre­pare the next gen­er­a­tion for the waves ahead.

No Mid-Year Examinations from 2023

From next year onwards, mid-year exam­i­na­tions will be scrapped for all pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school lev­els, free­ing up 3 weeks of cur­ricu­lum time for stu­dents to “explore inter­ests and devel­op 21st cen­tu­ry com­pe­ten­cies”, as stat­ed by Edu­ca­tion Min­is­ter Chan Chun Sing. You might have noticed that your child’s school has already been mak­ing these changes pro­gres­sive­ly. This move aims to frame learn­ing less as a com­pe­ti­tion but instead, as some­thing that is self-direct­ed. It enables schools to use the extra cur­ricu­lum time to design and facil­i­tate alter­na­tive assess­ments that would engage stu­dents and instil in them life skills beyond being book smart, prepar­ing them for the dig­i­tal era.

How­ev­er, some par­ents have expressed wor­ry that this change might invari­ably impede their child’s aca­d­e­m­ic progress. With few­er exam­i­na­tion check­points to mon­i­tor and quan­ti­fy their per­for­mance, stu­dents may fail to iden­ti­fy their weak­ness­es in time, poten­tial­ly cre­at­ing major blind spots while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hav­ing to deal with the raised stakes of their final exam­i­na­tions.

These wor­ries are valid. There­fore, the suc­cess of this reform hinges upon whether schools imple­ment the pol­i­cy in the right spir­it, and if the alter­na­tive assess­ments are robust and mean­ing­ful enough to assess stu­dents’ progress and equip them with 21st cen­tu­ry skills like crit­i­cal think­ing and glob­al aware­ness. If car­ried out in a way that ful­fils the policy’s orig­i­nal inten­tion, par­ents will be heart­ened to wit­ness their chil­dren mature into indi­vid­u­als armed with the nec­es­sary tools to tack­le the real world. There­fore, it is essen­tial that par­ents keep tabs on how schools run these new assess­ments and lessons, while also being inten­tion­al about ignit­ing in their chil­dren a true pas­sion for learn­ing and not only for acing the exams.

Full Subject-Based Banding in Secondary Schools from 2024

By 2024, the stream­ing labels of Express, Nor­mal Aca­d­e­m­ic and Nor­mal Tech­ni­cal will be dis­man­tled and replaced by Sub­ject-Based Band­ing, which will allow all sec­ondary school stu­dents to take sub­jects at dif­fer­ent lev­els (G1, G2, G3) suit­ed their inter­ests, apti­tude and learn­ing needs. Instead of being organ­ised into streams, stu­dents will be in mixed form class­es where they can learn at their own pace and build con­fi­dence in their strengths, while hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act with peers of diverse edu­ca­tion­al back­grounds and learn new per­spec­tives. A pilot pro­gramme run for the past two years has seen stu­dents mak­ing more friends across cours­es and learn­ing to relate to peers of vary­ing back­grounds. Some also wel­comed the move as it would remove the stig­ma­ti­sa­tion for those in the less aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly demand­ing streams.

Despite this encour­ag­ing feed­back, some have looked at this pol­i­cy with scep­ti­cism. There is con­cern that the sort­ing may be “over­ly pre­ma­ture or unre­fined”. Will an attempt to achieve greater inclu­siv­i­ty give rise to dif­fer­en­tial expec­ta­tions of achieve­ment and there­fore hin­der stu­dents’ will to push their lim­its and tar­get their own weak­ness­es? This high­lights the need for an effec­tive sys­tem to diag­nose each student’s learn­ing progress as they grow, which would facil­i­tate inter-band mobil­i­ty. How­ev­er, even with such a sys­tem, tran­si­tion­ing to a high­er or a low­er band may cause insta­bil­i­ty and have a neg­a­tive impact on the socio-emo­tion­al health of stu­dents.

That is why the mes­sage received by stu­dents must be clear. Edu­ca­tors and par­ents alike must stress that cul­ti­vat­ing the joy of learn­ing and fos­ter­ing con­fi­dence in stu­dents is at the heart of this reform. We must be the first to shift our mind­set around edu­ca­tion and let go of the notion that one edu­ca­tion­al path­way is more pres­ti­gious than the oth­er, and mod­el it for our chil­dren. The real­i­ty is that every child is unique and the path they take will nev­er be the same as the path of anoth­er. There­fore, in order for stu­dents to tru­ly enjoy the advan­tages of this reform, we must instil in them the abil­i­ty to view them­selves, their learn­ing envi­ron­ment, and the peers around them not as some­thing that is only black or white, but as a beau­ti­ful myr­i­ad of colours.

More DSA vacancies in JCs

The Min­istry has tak­en more steps to recog­nise oth­er forms of mer­it beyond aca­d­e­m­ic grades. From this year onwards, all gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment aid­ed JCs can admit up to 20% of their non-Inte­grat­ed Pro­gramme intake through DSA. This is dou­ble of the pre­vi­ous 10%. There will also be an expan­sion of apti­tude-based admis­sions at Post-Sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion Insti­tu­tions, and ear­ly admis­sion exer­cis­es at both the poly­tech­nic and ITE lev­el. This reform attempts to carve out more avenues of suc­cess for stu­dents, plac­ing more empha­sis on apti­tude and less on aca­d­e­m­ic excel­lence.

Your child’s explo­ration of and tal­ent in oth­er areas of inter­ests and skill will be recog­nised and will open doors to a wider range of oppor­tu­ni­ties. This is all the more rel­e­vant today, when there is no longer a sin­gle, nar­row road to suc­cess and ful­fil­ment. We, as nur­tur­ers of the next gen­er­a­tion, will have to pre­pare our chil­dren for such a tomor­row.

Conclusion: Positioning our Children for the Future

You may regard these upcom­ing edu­ca­tion­al reforms as either a boon or  bane for the future of your child. Either way, all par­ents recog­nise the need to pre­pare their chil­dren for the road ahead. Though reforms come and go, one thing will always remain con­stant.

The world is ever-chang­ing. We are amid a storm of nev­er-end­ing tech­no­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tions. In this Fourth Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, advances are pro­gress­ing in a mat­ter of years or even months. Jobs of today may not exist in their cur­rent form or exist at all in the near future. We can­not stick to the way we have always done things and must adjust accord­ing­ly.

The key lies in nur­tur­ing the right atti­tudes and dis­po­si­tions in our chil­dren. The need to mould the next gen­er­a­tion into indi­vid­u­als who can not only sur­vive, but also thrive in the new world to come is more urgent than ever. We must work with these edu­ca­tion­al reforms to posi­tion them for the future and incul­cate in them a spir­it of life­long learn­ing. Our chil­dren must become self-moti­vat­ed learn­ers who are con­fi­dent in their unique set of tal­ents and con­cerned about the soci­ety at large. This begins at home, what­ev­er the edu­ca­tion sys­tem may look like. So, let’s walk out of our com­fort zones and take a dar­ing step into the future.

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