28 November 1997

SPEECH BY RADM (NS)TEO CHEE HEAN, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND SECOND MINISTER FOR DEFENCE, AT THE GROUND-BREAKING AND FOUNDATION STONE LAYING CEREMONY OF NANYANG GIRLS' HIGH BOARDING SCHOOL ON FRI 28 NOV 97 @ 9 AM

Distinguished guests, teachers, parents and pupils.

It is my pleasure to be here today at the ground-breaking ceremony of the Nanyang Girls' High Boarding School.

Since its founding 80 years ago, Nanyang Girls' has been one of our top girls' schools in Singapore. This reputation has been secured through the vision, commitment and hard work of the school's leadership, staff, alumni and students.

This new boarding facility at Nanyang Girls' will be the first all-girls' boarding facility in Singapore. When completed in 1999, this boarding school which will house 500 girls, will also be the largest boarding school in Singapore.

This boarding school will continue Nanyang Girls' tradition of providing a well rounded education to their students which goes beyond academics. The boarding facility will allow the school to provide an all-round education to both Singaporean and foreign boarders that will develop them to their fullest potential - morally, physically, socially, aesthetically and intellectually.

The Nanyang Girls' boarding school will also cater to the educational needs of the children of the growing number of Singaporeans working abroad. Many Singaporean parents who work abroad face a dilemma over their children's education. They have to choose whether to leave their children in Singapore so that they can continue school here, or to bring their children along but have them educated in a different school system. Many parents believe in the strengths of our education system, and want their children to continue their education here. The provision of boarding facilities such as this will help assure parents that their children will be cared for and supervised by competent professionals should they choose to let their children continue their secondary education here while they themselves are overseas. Having gone through our education system, these children will also identify more closely with Singapore.

The boarding facilities at Nanyang Girls' will complement the new facilities that are being built here for the school. As Nanyang Girls' is an independent school, 80% of the cost of the school has been borne by the Ministry of Education. The Ministry is also giving a grant of $25 million towards building this boarding facility.

While the Independent Schools have the greatest freedom to design their programme to achieve the objectives of our national system of education, we want all our schools to be Thinking Schools - able to innovate and design educational programmes that are best suited to the needs of the students in each particular school. To achieve this, the Ministry of Education will give all our schools more resources and devolve more authority to them.

As part of the effort to give schools more resources, the Ministry will allocate another 1,000 posts to our schools. About 250 schools, or 70% of our 360 schools will receive between 1 to 7 additional posts each. The actual number of added posts for each school will depend on the number of students in the school, current staff complement, and the type of classes in the schools. This represents an increase of 4% overall in the staffing of our schools. For individual schools, the staffing increase can be up to 9%. These increases will take effect from January 1998.

Principals will have the authority to decide on the actual deployment of the additional posts. They can choose to fill the additional posts with more teachers. They can also use the additional posts to recruit administrative staff such as school administrators or teacher aides to relieve the administrative workload of teachers. Teachers will have more time to update themselves professionally, share best practices and learn from each other.

From January 1998, the Ministry will also introduce a new post of Operations Manager in schools. The Operations Manager will be assigned a variety of operational and administrative functions, such as estate management, logistical support and maintaining student discipline. The Ministry is currently working with the Ministry of Defence to make available some experienced ex-SAF personnel who can be the first Operations Managers in schools.

The Ministry is committed to ensuring that all our schools provide excellent education in terms of teachers, resources and facilities.

Finally I wish Nanyang Girls' High School every success in the future.