22 September 2003

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SPEECH BY MR THARMAN SHANMUGARATNAM, ACTING MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE AUSTRALIAN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL SINGAPORE (AISS) LORONG CHUAN CAMPUS ON MONDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 2003, AT 11.30 AM AT THE AISS LORONG CHUAN CAMPUS

The Honourable John Anderson, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services, Australia

The Honourable Jeff Hunter, Member for Lake Macquarie, New South Wales

His Excellency, Mr Gary Quinlan, Australian High Commissioner to Singapore

His Excellency, Mr Nigel Moore, New Zealand High Commissioner to Singapore

Teachers

Students

Ladies and Gentlemen

Good morning. It is a great pleasure for me to join the Honourable Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and all of you here for the official opening of this new Australian International School Singapore Campus.

2. It is an impressive and vibrant facility, a fitting environment for delivering the quality education that young people anywhere in the world need to prepare themselves for the future. Its student and teacher-friendly learning spaces, its superb sports facilities and its state of the art ICT system will I am sure allow for an interesting range of learning experiences.

3. The Australian International School Singapore has been a valuable addition to the Singapore education landscape over the last 10 years. Together with the other foreign system or international schools operating here, it plays an important role in providing children of expatriates working in Singapore the opportunity to study their own country's curriculum while growing up in a multi-cultural social and cultural setting. They also attract a fair number of foreign students from across the region. The AISS has a special niche in this landscape, with its offering of an Australian curriculum with a strong international flavour. It has developed a reputation for quality.

4. It is an exciting time to be young. It will be a challenging future, wherever you go. A future not just of change, but of unpredictable change. But it will also be a future of tremendous opportunity, with the largest opportunities emerging in Asia itself. Our young will be well prepared for this future if they are willing to be flexible, and able to try out new ideas and paths. They will also be greatly advantaged by growing up with multi-cultural and international perspectives.

5. Internationalist perspectives are critical to education in a knowledge-based world. This is because the knowledge-based world is an open and collaborative one, much more so than the industrial age world. It is intrinsically about human interaction, not technology or IT. It involves more contacts and more networking with people in countries other than your own, a greater need to absorb ideas and practices from outside, and a deeper understanding of the flux of human development around the world.

6. That is why we will keep Singapore open to people from across the world, why we take a significant number of foreign students into our national schools, and why we are glad to see international schools like the AISS grow and flourish in Singapore.

7. Singapore and Australia share a desire to expand and deepen the networks of firms, people and ideas, across the Asia-Pacific. The signing of the Free Trade Agreement between our two countries earlier this year is strengthening our bilateral relationship, and also spurring the growth of broader regional networks.

8. In education itself, Singapore and Australia have a growing relationship. A large number of Singaporean students study in Australian tertiary institutions. We are expanding our scope of collaboration, in teaching staff and student exchanges at the tertiary level, and in joint research projects. We are also growing our exchanges at the school level, particularly in arts education and science research. Let's keep up the momentum of cooperation, and find new ways to expand the horizons of our students.

9. In closing, I congratulate the AISS for 10 successful years in Singapore and look forward to its continuing partnership with Singapore. I also commend the staff, students and parents, and partners of the AISS on the huge effort that has made this new campus a reality. I wish you all the very best as you settle down in your new home.