Speeches
Speech by Mr Masagos Zulkifli, Senior Parliamentary Secretary,Ministry of Education and Ministry of Home Affairs, at Day 2 of 2nd Educating For Health Conference 2009 at Republic Polytechnic on Thursday, 19 November 2009, 9am
Her Excellency, Ms Janne Julsrud, Norwegian Ambassador to Singapore,
Ms Ho Peng, Director General of Education,
Our Overseas Colleagues
Distinguished Guests
Principals, Vice Principals
Ladies and Gentlemen
Good Morning.
Introduction
It gives me great pleasure to welcome all of you back to the 2nd Day of the conference. Your presence today shows your immense commitment to be the connectors that link our students to the HYway, the Healthy Youth Way.
Continuing efforts towards healthier students and a healthier nation
In 1992, the Trim and Fit (TAF) Scheme was introduced to schools to support the National Healthy Lifestyle Programme. TAF helped educate our students on nutrition and weight management by getting them to participate in physical exercise and activities in school and beyond. The TAF initiative arose from the formation of the Ministerial Committee for Healthy Lifestyle in 1991 to combat the steady increase in the obesity level and rise in related diseases like diabetes. The foresight of our Government to anticipate and arrest the worrying trends had resulted in improving the physical fitness levels of our students from 58% in 1992 to 81.4% in 2007 and the overweight percentage had been reduced from 14.0% to 9.5% in the same period of time. Since 2007, the Holistic Health Framework (HHF) has been introduced to schools to expand health promotion efforts beyond physical health and include the social and mental health of students too.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) report in 2008 stated that people are healthier, wealthier and live longer today than 30 years ago. The report also noted that with a higher health literacy in a better-educated and modernising global society, the global health economy is growing faster than gross domestic product (GDP), having increased its share from 8% to 8.6% of the world ’ s GDP between 2000 and 2005. In absolute terms and taking inflation into account, this represents a 35% growth in the world ’ s expenditure on health over a five-year period.
Despite the rising trend in the world ’ s health expenditure, Singapore ’ s total expenditure on health as a percentage of the GDP in 2006 compared quite favourably to the other developed nations. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United States of America spent 15.3% on health as a percentage of the GDP. For Australia it was 8.7%, Japan 7.9% and Singapore 3.4%. It is the best evidence that investing in an effective school health programme can be one of the most cost effective measures a nation can take to simultaneously improve education and health.
Our efforts do not just stop with schools. To further build and sustain the total health and well-being of our students, our government ministries and community partners also collaborate closely to support the schools ’ health promotion efforts. In 2006, MOE spearheaded the formation of an inter-agency Committee for Health and Active Children (CHAC) to align the health promoting efforts of ministries and agencies which have a stake in the health of our students. The committee has since been re-named as the Healthy Youth Committee (HY-Com) in 2007, and has culminated in the completion of a few inter-agency collaborated projects, notably; the inaugural Educating for Health (EFH) Conference in 2007. While the initial focus of the committee was primarily on improving the physical health of our students, the HY-Com intends to broaden its scope to focus on students ’ social and mental health.
Youth Take Ownership of their Health
With the multi-level support from the schools and the community, our youth need to seize these opportunities to take ownership of their health for the long term. For example, Singapore Sports Council (SSC) has collaborated with other member agencies to capitalise on the use of new media for health promotion through physical activities. Our youths can log on to the SSC SportOn online portal which allows them to know what sports are being organised and where and when, make friends online, organise themselves to participate in learn-to-play programmes or simply arrange to meet to play games together. The SportOn portal is one more avenue for schools to tap on and motivate their students to be engaged in sports activities.
I am pleased that we have student leaders at the conference to showcase their projects and encourage their peers to take ownership of their health. The Audible Hearts initiative, an online peer support network, was developed and managed by a team of youth leaders from the National Youth Forum 2006. This online approach illustrates an innovative use of technology to nurture the social and mental well-being of youths. To further encourage our youth leaders to plan projects on health promotion activities or programmes for their peers in schools, the Health Promotion Board ’ s Youth Advolution for Health group funds these projects up to $1000 per project proposal accepted.
Schools Partnering Parents and Community
While globalisation and advancements in technology have sped up the progress in our societies, they have also led to lifestyle changes in our youths. They have become more sedentary with a higher tendency to indulge in more non-physical activities like online gaming and shopping or chatting which lacks the face-to-face interaction with others. The Student Health Survey 2006 of a random selection of 3844 students from Sec 1 - 4 across 51 secondary schools showed that only 19% engage in vigorous1 or moderate2 activity for 30 minutes per day for 5 or more days per week.
In another study conducted by Fei Yue Community Services on 1,218 Sec1-3 students in 2006, it was found that teenagers here spent an average of 17.2 hours per week online. The study also revealed that 49 % of parents never checked the websites visited by their children. For those who did, only 10% of parents use internet filters to prevent their children from accessing undesirable websites. A concern that surfaced in the study is that 10% of students sometimes feel depressed, moody or nervous when they are offline.
Given this information, where do we then go from here to help our children and youths to build their health? Some of us may have heard the saying, “A threefold cord is not easily broken.” It takes minimal effort to break one strand of string on its own but when three strands are woven together, the cord shows unity of strength. Likewise, the partnership and joint effort of school, community and parents will have a powerful and synergistic impact on health promotion for our youth.
This school-parent-community partnership is particularly relevant during the school holidays. We know for example many of our students put on weight upon return to school from their June and December holidays. When schools engage their parents during the school holidays to participate in community events like family sports activities and to help their children practise eating in moderation, it would reinforce schools ’ efforts to help our students return from their holidays with good health and acceptable weight. One such way is for parents to sign their children up with the Singapore Sports Council ’ s (SSC) SportOn Kids portal — specially designed for parents with young children. Leveraging on the innovative use of the new media, this approach enables SSC to attract children from 3 to 12 years old to participate in community sports events.
Schools play an active role in establishing a culture of collaboration with relevant agencies and engaging the community to promote health to their students too. West View Primary School, for example, jointly organised a talk for parents on cyber wellness and internet safety with North West CDC and TOUCH Cyber Wellness and Sports. Through this event, parents are brought up to speed on the latest cyber trends and what their children are excited about. Getting parents more involved would raise their awareness of the symptoms and signs of addiction as well as other potential dangers that threaten their child ’ s health and safety. Clearly, the strength in a threefold cord — school, parents and community — helps to bind our children to the Healthy Youth Way of life.
Conclusion
When our children have inculcated positive lifestyle habits from young, they will reap the health benefits as they carry these habits into adulthood. I want to commend the diligent efforts of our schools in health promotion and making a turn-around in health for our students. I strongly urge all Principals and their staff to sustain the good work in educating and promoting health to our children and reinforce it with the cooperation of their parents when at home.
In today ’ s conference, our colleagues from Hong Kong and some foreign schools in Singapore will also be presenting ideas on health promotion and development for youths. I am confident we will have a fruitful time of professional exchange and networking.
I wish all an enriching and insightful day of learning.