LAUNCH OF MOE'S EDUCATION SERVICE FOR THE PUBLIC (ESP) OVER INTERNET

1. The Ministry of Education is one of the first government organisations in Singapore to provide information services on the Internet. The MOE World Wide Web Home Page was set up in May 1994 offering general information on the Education System and links to other educational information resources worldwide.

2. As part of our efforts to improve and provide quality services to the public, and in line with the government's Public Service for the 21st Century (PS21) initiative, MOE will be offering a new information service called Education Service for the Public (ESP) on the Internet.

3. Initially, ESP will provide the following information:

a. Schools Admission Information Service; This service contains registration information pertaining to the various school admission exercises conducted by MOE, namely, Primary One Registration Exercise, Secondary One Posting, Provisional Pre-U 1 Admission and Joint Admissions Exercise.

b. Schools Information Service; This service allows the user to retrieve information pertaining to primary and secondary schools, centralised institutes and junior colleges. Information provided includes the type of school, address, mother tongue offered, ECA information etc.

c. Education Information Guidance Service; This service provides Singaporeans working or intending to work abroad, information on the re-integration of their children back to the Singapore education system when they return to Singapore.

d. Teaching Career Service; This service provides recruitment information on the teaching profession, incorporating a facility for applicants to request for an application package posted to them.

e. Career Opportunities in MOE. This service provides recruitment information on the non-teaching employment opportunities available in MOE.

f. Education News Archive; This archive stores a collection of past press releases issued by MOE.

g. Foreign Student Information Service; This service provides foreigners who intend to send their children for study in Singapore with the necessary information on the application procedure to admit their children in Singapore schools.

4. The ESP will provide an additional channel for the public to obtain information relating to MOE. As the service is accessible over the Internet, timely information will be accessible worldwide and available 24 hours a day. The Internet address for this service is http://www.moe.ac.sg/esp.

5. In addition, MOE is also providing a free dial-up service to ESP for those without access to Internet. Using a personal computer and a modem, members of the public may download a software package from MOE through the telephone line. This package will provide the necessary dial-up and viewing software to access the ESP. Instructions on how to obtain and use the software package is provided in Annex A. A detailed instruction guide is also available from the PS21 Secretariat, Ministry of Education.

6. MOE will continue to introduce more information services in ESP when appropriate.

Annex A

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO DOWNLOAD THE DIAL-UP SOFTWARE PACKAGE FROM MOE

1. You should have a data communication software (for example, TERMINAL.EXE in Windows 3.1) in order to perform the downloading.

2. Set the following parameters in your data communication software.

Telephone Number : 4727767
Data Bits : 8
Stop bit : 1
Parity : None
Flow control : Xon/Xoff
Baud rate : 9,600 or 19,200 (according to the speed of your modem)

Set to Binary transfer in Xmodem  3. After a successful connection, you will be prompted to login. Respond as follows:

When prompted with Username, type public
When prompted with login, type public  4. Receive the file. The dial-up software package runs under Windows version 3.1 and above.