Press Releases
Strengthening Social-Emotional Support for Secondary School Students - Release of Secondary Education Review and Implementation (SERI) Committee's Report
Secondary school students will be given greater social-emotional support and career guidance, as they discover their strengths, build character and develop citizenship during the crucial period of adolescence. To this end, more measures will be taken to strengthen teacher-student relationships and enhance character and citizenship education. The aim is to nurture students through their adolescence, and better prepare them for learning, for post-secondary education and also for life.
These are key recommendations of the Secondary Education Review and Implementation Committee, chaired by Director of Schools, Mr Wong Siew Hoong, which put out its full report today. It recognises that adolescence is a time of identity formation, of asserting independence and of changing relationships for secondary students. It is also a phase of growth and experimentation, and a preparatory stage for adulthood.
Adolescents need strong social-emotional support as they negotiate the challenges and manage their own growth. While schools cannot and should not replace the role of parents in the social-emotional development of their children, secondary schools play a key role and the teacher-student relationship is critical to students’ development, given the time they spend in school.
Preparing students for life and learning
The teacher-student relationship will be strengthened through initiatives such as Form Teacher Periods, orientation programmes, deployment of the same Form/Co-Form teacher for initial secondary school years as well as Year Heads to provide leadership in the pastoral work of teachers. Greater social-emotional support and career guidance will also be provided to students through Student Centres in secondary schools, a Career Guidance Portal, profiling tools and overseas learning journeys. There will also be more dialogue between secondary school principals with post-secondary institutions to strengthen educational delivery.
Nurturing Character, Citizenship and Values
Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) and Co-Curricular Activities (CCA) are two parallel platforms that will further complement the teacher-student relationship to develop students.
A dedicated Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) Unit will be formed within the MOE to co-ordinate and synergise efforts across various domains such as National Education, Social-Emotional Learning and Civics and Moral Education. A CCE Action Committee, chaired by the Director-General of Education, will work towards developing standard guidelines for the implementation of CCE by drawing on current best practices in schools and existing resource materials. Collaborating closely with schools over the next year, the CCE Action Committee will also develop a toolkit with a broad scope of content on CCE such as principles of curriculum development, suggested implementation systems and structures, and best practices from schools. The toolkit will be launched at the Character and Citizenship Conference to be held in November 2011.
CCA experiences will also be broadened through the Sports Education Programme in the secondary school, beyond the regular CCA. The Ministry of Education (MOE) will look into introducing second-tier competitions to increase the opportunities for our students to take part and practise their skills in the chosen sports, as well as to strengthen the acquisition of soft skills and character development through these activities.
Articulation to Post-Secondary Education
To further strengthen the articulation of students to post-secondary education, the SERI Committee is of the view that schools should strengthen core skills in English and Mathematics. It therefore recommends that MOE facilitate the production of better instructional materials for the learning of EL and Mathematics as well as strategically deploy Allied Educators in N(A) and N(T) EL and Mathematics classes to support the teaching and learning of these two subjects.
The SERI Committee also believes that there is room to further adjust the Secondary 4N(A) promotion criteria to align with polytechnic and ITE requirements1. The Committee recommends that we evaluate this further after reviewing the ‘O’ level results of the Secondary 5 students for the next few years.
Currently, the lateral transfer from one course to another, for example, from Secondary 1N(A) to Secondary 2E, takes into account the average score of all subjects by a student. The SERI Committee recommends a review of the lateral transfer criteria to give due emphasis to English and Mathematics as they are foundational subjects which prepare students for their next stage of education. The Committee recommends studying the feasibility of expanding subject options at “O” and “N” levels to better equip students to articulate to post-secondary education.
These recommendations are in addition to the recommendations to create multiple pathways in the secondary school landscape to strengthen ability-based education, which were announced by the Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during this year’s National Day Rally2.
To support the implementation of the Committee’s recommendations, as well as other initiatives, MOE will enhance the manpower resources for secondary schools.3 Over the medium term, MOE will also continue to make enhancements to the infrastructure of secondary schools to better support teaching and learning, as well as to enhance the working environment of the teachers and staff of the schools. Recognising the potential of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), the Committee supports studying the need for one-to-one access or ownership of computing devices to support pervasive ICT use in teaching and learning.
The SERI report, released by the Ministry of Education today, details the key recommendations of the SERI Committee.
Download the Report of the Secondary Education Review and Implementation (SERI) Committee (1.9mb .pdf).
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Footnotes:
- The Secondary 4N(A) promotion criteria were revised in 2007 to improve the success rates of Secondary 5 students in gaining admission to pre-university and polytechnics Please refer to MOE’s press release. The refined promotion criteria apply to the 2009 Sec 4N(A) cohort onwards. ↩
- These include expansion of the Integrated Programme, new through-train programmes for N(A) students and new specialised schools for N(T) students. For details, please refer to the press release on the new secondary school pathways. ↩
- As announced on 23 Sep 2010, MOE will provide additional manpower to schools, as well as increase the number of Key Personnel posts. The Pupil-Teacher Ratio in secondary schools is expected to improve from 16:1 in 2009 to 13:1 by end 2015, while the Pupil-Educator Ratio is projected to improve from 15:1 in 2009 to 12:1 by end 2015. ↩