Speech by RAdm (NS) Lui Tuck Yew, Minister of State for Education at the IBAP Teachers Conference on Saturday, 31 March 2007 at 11am at Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel "Gearing Up for the Future: Innovation in Singapore's Education System"

SPEECH BY RADM (NS) LUI TUCK YEW, MINISTER OF STATE FOR EDUCATION AT THE IBAP TEACHERS CONFERENCE ON SATURDAY, 31 MARCH 2007 AT 11AM AT GRAND COPTHORNE WATERFRONT HOTEL “GEARING UP FOR THE FUTURE: INNOVATION IN SINGAPORE’S EDUCATION SYSTEM”

1. It gives me great pleasure to join you today at the 2007 International Baccalaureate Asia Pacific Teacher Conference. With the IB being introduced in a number of schools in Singapore, it is indeed an opportune time to hold the IBAP Teacher Conference in Singapore.

2. Over the years, Singapore’s education system has evolved from being an efficiency-driven system to one that is largely ability-driven, focusing on quality and choices in learning. This shift reflects a need to prepare students for a fast-evolving and challenging future, a world not just of change but of unpredictable change.

3. The qualities that our young will need to have in order to succeed in this new environment are quite different from what was needed in the past. In the past, we focused on the basics in education, equipping them with the technical skills and academic knowledge. This is no less important today; we have to give them a strong foundation of knowledge in school that will put them in good stead as they enter the workforce. This is fundamental outcome in education. But a future of frequent and often unsettling change will demand more than just academic abilities. It requires a certain tenacity among our young, and calls for an entrepreneurial spirit that embraces risk-taking, creativity and imagination. We want our students to have an inquiring and questioning mind, and the courage to take initiative. They must have a desire to do new things, and to do things in new ways.

4. This is why we have injected more fluidity into our system, by introducing new educational pathways to encourage a diversity of student talents. We now have schools that offer the Integrated Programme, where university-bound students skip the GCE ‘O’ Levels, and can benefit from a less structured learning environment in their upper secondary and pre-university years. For students with specialised talents, we have the National University High School of Science and Maths, and the Singapore Sports School. Next year, the Singapore Arts School will start its classes for students gifted in the arts.

5. Today we also have a more flexible admission system into secondary schools, junior colleges, polytechnics and universities. By giving greater recognition to achievements in other fields, I believe we are gradually moving people away from a narrow definition of success, one that is defined mainly in academic terms.

Encouraging Innovation in Schools

6. Going forward, a key strategy is to gear our schools towards innovation and to find ways to develop mindsets in our students that will help them recognise new opportunities quickly in a changing world. We need people who are not only good at finding solutions to known problems, but who are also adept at recognising issues which may become problems at some point in future. We need those who are not only well-versed with the knowledge that is currently available, but have the intuition and instincts to help develop new knowledge and new approaches and to find new solutions. MOE’s approach towards facilitating Innovation & Enterprise is to provide top-down support for ground-up initiatives from our schools. We believe each school in unique in its character, and the most effective programmes will always be those that are sparked off and championed by principals and teachers.

7. We recognise that our educational institutions need support to create the time and space for innovation, and to develop new teaching approaches to engage our students. For example, schools are given more autonomy in the deployment of manpower and the design of their programmes. Schools can also decide on the organisation of classes depending on their student profile. We also support the professional development of our teachers, with more officers pursuing postgraduate studies, engaging in action research programmes, or on training attachments to other organisations. Teachers with leadership potential and school leaders are put on specialised programmes to equip them with leadership skills. All these learning experiences will help to broaden and diversify perspectives within the education service; this will in turn benefit our students.

8. We have also introduced ‘Teach Less Learn More” as a call to educators to engage our students and prepare them for life, rather than teach for the purposes of examinations alone. In this light, we are trimming the content in our curriculum so that teachers have more flexibility and more time think of new ways to make learning engaging by using new and exciting pedagogies.

9. ICT is both a tool and a skill that will feature prominently in our programmes as we look at new ways to teach and learn. A significant number of our students own a computer at home with Internet connection, and all of them have access to a computer in school. Schools are pushing the development of innovative teaching and learning approaches that fully harness the power of ICT to bring about engaged learning for our students.

10. Several of our schools have set up wireless hotspots within their premises, while about 5 schools have equipped students from an entire cohort with Tablet PCs for everyday learning. As such infrastructure becomes more widepread, schools have used ICT to create more innovative teaching and learning experiences. This includes conducting inquiry-based learning with handhelds such as pocket PCs and dataloggers, engaging students in a 3D virtual learning environment, and encouraging reflective learning through ICT tools such as blogging, podcasting and audioblogging.

11. Jurong Primary School for instance, uses Personal E-Motion (PEM) to enhance the teaching and learning processes. PEM is a multimedia e-book which has digital media and sound features. It also has the capability to animate words as they are being typed. The English department has effectively utilised video clips and digital images as scaffoldings for pupils to engage in creative and descriptive writing. Pupils present their writing, projects and experiments in an e-book form.

12. In Rosyth Primary School, 12 year-old students are taught how to draw, develop and animate Manga Art characters during their formal Art curriculum. Manga Art is based on Japanese comics and animation. Teachers have tapped on students’ interests in this area to develop “Manga Alive”, a programme that develops students’ interactive digital media proficiency, by encouraging each student to use the graphic tablet to draw, conceptualise and depict their Manga character. Students can also use the range of animation tools to bring their characters to life. These Manga characters are then showcased on a variety of platforms, from mobile phone screen savers, to wallpapers for computers, to vector-based posters.

13. In schools like Maris Stella High School, science experiments take on a new dimension. Certain physics experiments are time-consuming and not easily replicable in the classroom or laboratory. Quicktime Virtual Reality is used to overcome this limitation by enabling teachers to take digital images of the various stages of an experiment. Through image processing software, these images are converted into movie clips (iMovies). These clips are then used to further develop students in the understanding of a particular concept.

14 Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) offers the IB in Singapore.
ICT is used meaningfully to engage teachers and students in the school. Its own Learning Management System (LMS) connects teachers, pupils and parents through a common platform. For teachers, the LMS enables them to create lesson plans and post them online. For students who are equipped with Tablet PCs, they can access their digitised textbooks in various subjects.

15 ACS(I) has been working with the Southwest Community Development Council to initiate various community projects. An example is to develop a computer programme that will offer assistance to visually-impaired learners in understanding scientific concepts via auditory channels. Another example is to create a podcast channel to enhance community cohesiveness.

16. ACS(I) has also partnered with Singapore Polytechnic to provide an Advanced Elective Module in Game Design. In this module, students learn the complete game design cycle, ranging from conceptualisation, drafting, and story boarding to game prototyping and play testing. The module also provides an overview of past and current successful game genres and discusses future trends and directions in game design.

17 In short, ICT is transforming the way we teach and learn in schools. We are taking this a step further with the FutureSchools@Singapore Project, which I understand is an area of interest. The concept of FutureSchools is not new. Such schools have been developed in other countries, like the School of the Future in Philadelphia, USA, and the Taiwan School of the Future in Taipei. In Singapore, we have embarked on this project to throw up possibilities on how we can enhance the diversity of educational offerings to engage a learner’s interest and cater to his needs. These schools will provide possible models for seamless and pervasive integration of ICT into the curriculum for engaged learning in schools.

18 A Future School with a seamless ICT infrastructure increases administrative efficiency. For example students’ attendance in school and classes and CCA activities is automatically registered on the teacher’s personal handheld device. Or perhaps a school with technology that brings pupils to engaging learning contexts not ordinarily accessible; for example a biology teacher can use a Virtual Reality laboratory to transport students to virtual learning environments within the human body. Or imagine a school where instructional practices and formative assessment is enhanced by ICT, for example teachers develop role-playing games with programmes that can automatically generate a proficiency analysis report of each student, highlighting areas for improvement peculiar to each child’s learning needs. These are but a few examples and we expect that our Futureschools will be able to realise all of these and much more in time to come. MOE has received a number of very good proposals which we are in the midst of evaluating. We plan to identify up to 6 FutureSchools@Singapore by June 2007.

19 These schools will become trailblazers in the way they leverage on cutting-edge technologies and school designs to enable creative educational programmes for engaged learning. While these schools have the necessary resources to develop their curriculum, innovation in these schools is possible only with visionary leadership, and a committed team of innovative and tech-savvy teachers. Only then will such schools be able to provide a digital learning lifestyle that prepares our students well for the future.

20 While an innovative mindset is crucial in preparing our students for an uncertain future, a future of frequent and often unsettling change will require a certain tenacity among our young. They will need a robust attitude to life and the surprises that it brings. They must have more of spirit of ‘can-do’, the willingness to try their hand at something new, even something untried. Such an attitude to life can only come about with strength of character.

21 Co-curricular activities (CCAs) play an important part in building character. Uniformed Groups, clubs and societies provide varied opportunities to develop skills and qualities of leadership and enterprise. Rugged activities like adventure camps, expeditions and sports are especially relevant. Team spirit, a sense of adventure and self confidence are some of the qualities we hope to see in our children through their involvement in these pursuits.

22 During the December holidays last year for instance, a team of 8 boys and 4 teachers from Loyang Secondary braved sub-zero temperatures, tough terrain, and rugged living conditions, and made it to an Everest Base Camp, 5,400m above sea level. It was a tough and toughening experience. One of the students, Thiagu Somashoordaram said: 'The trek gave us inspiration and confidence because we achieved something we thought was impossible.' – It was no doubt a watershed experience for Thiagu and the 7 others. I am sure they left the experience with stronger bonds of friendship, and newfound confidence in themselves.

23 Innovation is not just about technology, but nurturing creative individuals that are willing to accept challenges as the norm and are prepared to challenge the norms. CCAs have become an increasingly important part of the holistic education we seek to provide for our students. We encourage our students to take it seriously, so that they develop the qualities that will see them through a future that will be different from and more challenging in many ways than the past. If we do this well, our young will stride confidently with sturdy hearts, and will not falter when faced with the unexpected. They will ride the changes that come, look for opportunities around every corner and venture out to seize every advantage.

24 To conclude, people often ask what it is that makes the Singapore education system work. I would say that we have a dedicated team of educators, a driven team of school leaders, and a dynamic system which constantly reviews its processes. MOE is constantly looking for new ways to provide our students with a more holistic education, through a forward-looking curriculum, innovative use of ICT in teaching and learning, and character education, so that our students have the right values to carry them through life.

25 Conferences, such as today’s session, are good ways of keeping our educators prepared for a changing environment. They allow for a sharing of perspectives, an exchange of ideas and best practices, so that we keep abreast of changes in the world today.

26 I wish you all meaningful conversations and a professionally enriching conference.