17 March 1999

Ministerial Statement BY MINISTER FOR EDUCATION RADM TEO CHEE HEAN at the Committee of Supply Debate, FY1999 IN PARLIAMENT ON 17 MAR 99

The Desired Outcomes of Education

Last year, if members will recall, MOE published The Desired Outcomes of Education, spelling out the end-objectives of formal education as well as the intermediate objectives of primary, secondary and JC education. There was widespread support for the Desired Outcomes, from MPs, the public, parents, principals, teachers and students. The concern then, as it is in the House today, was on how we are going to achieve these outcomes.
Motivating Students, Incentivising Schools
In the last two years, MOE has initiated several programmes that will bring us closer to achieving the Desired Outcomes – the IT Masterplan, National Education, the Community Involvement Programme, and the reduction in curriculum content by up to 30% that was announced last year which will help us shift the focus from acquiring ever more content knowledge to creativity and thinking skills.
These programmes are all desirable in themselves, but more importantly they all form part of a whole. The end objective is re-aligning our education system to achieve the Desired Outcomes.
Today, I would like to draw members’ attention to another aspect of the changes that we are making to the education system – the re-alignment of the way we assess students and appraise schools. We can introduce new programmes, and exhort parents teachers and students to work towards achieving the Desired Outcomes. But unless we change what counts, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to change the orientation and focus of our education system. Our assessment systems for schools and for students must be closely aligned to the Desired Outcomes.
The way we assess students affects their motivations and what they and their parents will emphasise and devote their time and effort to. Similarly, schools have a tendency to focus their efforts primarily on what is being measured. MOE has never assessed schools purely by their results at national examinations, but there is overwhelming interest from schools, parents, students, the press and the public in the academic performance of schools and students because in their eyes that is practically the only thing that counts.
To change behaviour, we have to change what counts - both for students, and for schools. Hence over the last year, we reviewed the university admission system, and we re-looked at the school appraisal framework.
The University Admissions System
Let me begin with university admissions. We want our potential graduates not just to excel academically, but also to demonstrate character, creativity and commitment to the nation. It is both timely and necessary to move the university admission system away from a sole reliance on A-levels towards a more holistic evaluation of a person’s potential to benefit from university education. This change is not merely about selecting students to go the university. Such a move will send a clear signal through the entire education system regarding the qualities we desire in our students.
The Committee on University Admission System chaired by Prof Shih Choon Fong released its draft report in January this year. We have an opportunity to debate the recommendations later on, and I will reserve my comments for then. At this point, I would like to stress that university admission criteria are a crucial element in the system that will significantly influence the attitudes and behaviour of students, teachers and parents.
A Quality Assurance Approach to School Appraisal
In parallel, we are broadening the scope of the way schools are appraised. We will move beyond academic grades to school achievements in other areas that contribute to the Desired Outcomes. When the Desired Outcomes were published, many wondered how we were going to measure the outcomes, most of which are intangible and unquantifiable. How can schools ascertain if they have achieved the Desired Outcomes? How would schools know what they are capable of, and whether they have done their best? Without a system of measurement, principals and teachers will be left wondering just how much they have achieved, and will have no means of deciding the most efficient deployment of resources and concentration of efforts.
MOE and the educational professionals have been thinking this issue through in the past year. After several rounds of discussion and consultations, we have decided to adopt a quality assurance approach to school appraisal based on self appraisal. This new approach looks at both results and processes in education. The ultimate goal is not merely good results, but sustainability of good results. Sound processes are what will assure sustainability of results. And the notion of results has also been broadened to include not just academic results, but results in other activities that contribute to the Desired Outcomes.
Self-appraisal is itself a powerful process that will drive improvement. The appraisal emphasises self-evaluation and self-knowledge. When using this model, the Principal and his staff will ask themselves some fundamental questions about what is going on in the school and what the outcomes are. This self questioning will prompt them to reflect on the schools’ efforts in addressing its concerns and work towards improvement. The appraisal process requires schools to continually question current practices and moves them to be the best they can be.
This framework of self-assessment is known as the School Excellence Model. Nine criteria are examined in the Model, and they fall broadly into two categories: Enablers and Results, each weighing 50%. Enablers are concerned with processes - how the school is led and managed, how resources are deployed; while Results look at outcomes – key performance results, staff competence and morale, impact of programmes on students and others.
It is worthwhile to note that under key performance results, we are looking for academic achievement, ECA achievement and physical fitness levels. Academic achievement is only one of the many criteria in the appraisal model, just as cognitive outcomes are only one aspect of the holistic outcomes desired of education. In fact, most of the Desired Outcomes will have to be achieved through non-academic school programmes, and this is reflected in the appraisal model.
Masterplan of School Awards
Linked to the School Excellence Model is an award system for schools. There are three levels in this pyramid system of awards. The base of the awards system is a broad one, and comprises different Achievement Awards given to schools for achievements in various fields in the current year. The next higher level consists of the Sustained Achievement Awards and Best Practices Awards which reflect the school’s ability to sustain good processes and outcomes over a number of years. At the apex will be the School Excellence Award, which recognises schools for overall excellence in education processes and outcomes, sustained over many years.
The Value-Added Awards that are presently given to schools that have been most effective in achieving improvement in their students will continue. It will be one of the Achievement Awards and Sustained Achievement Awards. School ranking, as it is done now, will also remain, as it is a useful indicator for schools. However, ranking by academic results will henceforth have to be seen in the context of a number of other indicators, and not as the be all and end all.
The School Excellence Model will be field tested in mid 1999. All schools will be using the model for self-appraisal in the year 2000. MOE will conduct external appraisal of schools based on this approach from 2001. Schools will on average be validated once every 5 years, but they can ask to be validated more often than this if they feel they are ready to progress on to the next level of the pyramid.
An Ability-Driven Paradigm
The Desired Outcomes define our goals in education. We aim to achieve these outcomes through various initiatives - the IT Masterplan, National Education, the Curriculum Review, a review of the university admission system and a quality assurance approach to school appraisal. All these aim to develop our young for life, not just for their schooling days; and to develop their potential to the full, not just in academic studies.
This requires our Education system to shift from an efficiency-driven to an ability-driven paradigm. Ability-driven education has two thrusts – maximal development of the talents and abilities of our young, and maximal harnessing of the talents and abilities of all Singaporeans.
Maximal Development of Talents and Abilities
In our present system, Education is driven by the needs of the economy. We project manpower demands in various sectors of the economy and train people to fit into jobs in those sectors. Our economic agencies attract the investments that create jobs; our educational institutions train Singaporeans to fill these jobs that have been created.
However, the paradigm for a knowledge economy will be different. There are no pre-determined sets of jobs, waiting, like holes to be filled by students coming out of our schools. Instead, it is the collective talents and abilities of all Singaporeans that will define the economy and what jobs and opportunities are available. Students leaving our school system will increasingly have to create their own opportunities. Life-long learning becomes a necessary part of opening up opportunities for the future. Hence education itself becomes a competitive advantage in the economy. And to maximise that advantage we must consciously draw out individual talents and develop them to the full.
To achieve this, MOE will be shifting towards an approach of mass customisation. I know this sounds like a contradiction in terms, but let me bring you an example from the car industry. Nowadays, when you buy a car, you choose the brand and the model. You can further decide the colour of the exterior, the veneer of the interior, whether you want power windows and sundry other functional and design features, all within that same model. The car is mass produced, but customised to what can best match the buyer’s needs.
In Education, the mass provision of educational resources and opportunities should not blind us to the possibility of customising to individual student’s aptitudes and abilities wherever possible. I am not here proposing that we give each child individual attention by providing him dedicated tutors for each subject who will coach him alone, designing syllabuses just for him and so on. This is individualised customisation, not mass customisation.
But within the limits of mass production of education services, we should move some way towards meeting individual needs. It is like a lunch menu. We used to have only one set-lunch menu which every one regardless of his appetite or taste was obliged to eat. Understandably, some found the food unappetising and unpalatable. With streaming, which is also a rudimentary form of mass customisation, we have a number of set menus to cater to different needs. That enables us to meet the needs of different groups of students better, and that is where we are today. The next challenge for MOE is to allow some variations in courses in the set menus, and to gradually expand the variations allowed within the resources that we have available. The CL Review is a case in point. It is a recognition that students are different and have different linguistic abilities, and the system should cater for them.
We are now studying how we can adapt the system to meet the needs of students, at a systems level, at the school level, and in the classroom.
Maximal Harnessing of Talents and Abilities
But an ability-driven system is also about maximal harnessing of the talents and abilities of our young. If we were to focus solely on developing our young without grounding moral and social values nor sinking their cultural roots, we may be producing a generation of Singaporeans with no obligation or commitment to the community, no concept of social identity and no sense of belonging to the nation. We must inculcate in our young a strong social conscience and a mindset that sees Singapore as a home to live in, to strive to improve, and to defend if necessary.
As a learning organisation, MOE as a whole will also chase after ways and means to maximally harness the talents and creativity of all our staff, so that we may achieve our mission with excellence on a sustained basis.
No Child Should be a Failure
No child should be a failure, every child should be a success. But each child’s success can be in different areas. Everyone has their strengths; and talents and abilities in different areas can be pooled together for the overall success of the nation. We in MOE will continue to apply our minds to see how we can maximally develop and harness the talents and abilities of our students. MOE will do its best with the resources allocated to us. We will maximise education outcomes given our resources.
Sir, bringing about change in the Education system is the work of many years. We will not see the fruits of our labour for another five, perhaps ten years. It requires a clear idea of where we are going – this is encapsulated in the Desired Outcomes of Education. And it requires purposeful change to align our programmes, processes, and assessment systems with the Desired Outcomes, so that all we do in education is focused on achieving these goals. I continue to look forward to support from Members of this House, parents and the public as we strive to do our best for our young.