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

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.