SPEECH BY MR THARMAN SHANMUGARATNAM, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, AT THE 8TH APPOINTMENT CEREMONY FOR PRINCIPALS ON THURSDAY, 29 DECEMBER 2005, AT SHANGRI-LA HOTEL, ISLAND BALLROOM, 3PM

SPEECH BY MR THARMAN SHANMUGARATNAM, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, AT THE 8TH APPOINTMENT CEREMONY FOR PRINCIPALS ON THURSDAY, 29 DECEMBER 2005, AT SHANGRI-LA HOTEL, ISLAND BALLROOM, 3PM

This is an important occasion each year for the Education Service and our schools. We gather to formally entrust principals with our schools, to steward, to lead, to steer them towards peaks of excellence, and for some, to chart a new exciting course. At this 8th Appointment Ceremony for Principals, let me offer my warmest congratulations to the 51 principals who receive their appointments today.

2. To the 22 newly-appointed principals, I commend you for taking this major step in your career, and along with it, major responsibilities as leaders in education. For our experienced principals assuming new appointments today, this ceremony affirms our trust in your ability to continue guiding our teachers and our young, and to infuse new ideas in our search for excellence.

3. And to our retiring Principals with us this afternoon, some of whom have served up to four decades in education, I thank and commend you for your contributions as teachers and leaders. You have blazed the trail and left imprints of your dedication and experience for younger school leaders to follow.

Moving from Standardisation to Choice, from Quantity to Quality
4. Schools are where quality is nurtured in each new generation. I think, immediately, of our children born in 1999 who will be starting out at primary schools across the island in a few days’ time when school re-opens. These seven-year-olds will spend the next 10 – 12 years of their lives in our schools. Who they become, the values they espouse and practice, the skills they bring to bear in their careers, and their sense of identity with community and country, will be shaped to a large degree by their many encounters in school.

5. As school leaders, your challenge is to provide every child the best opportunities to grow - provide them the opportunities to discover their own talents, and the varied experiences that will help them to shape the attributes they need to seize future opportunities, hold together when storms blow, and take Singapore forward in a new world.

6. We are providing many more opportunities for students to discover their strengths and follow their passions. New pathways in secondary school education; more talents being recognised for progression in the system, new subjects being introduced for those with special interests and elective modules that allow students to engage in applied, hands-on learning; more schools offering niches of excellence in the performing arts or sports or specific fields of intellectual endeavour; more fluidity between our different streams of education; and even more flexibility within a subject, like how you study the mother tongue language.

7. It amounts to more flexibility and choice for learners. It also brings a certain fuzziness in the system. It is the fuzziness that comes with choice, with moving as we have done over several years from a system focused on efficiency and standardisation to a system focused on choice, from a focus on quantity to quality, from a focus on academic talent to many talents.

8. Underlying these changes, is a call for school leaders and teachers to take ownership of change. The best ideas in the marketplace spring from the ground, because they relate to what motivates the people who count in education - our teachers and school leaders, and our students themselves. And the most important action in education is on the ground - in the richness of interactions between teachers and students, in the opportunities and experiences that each school provides to help its students develop the attributes and mindsets they need for life. In the way each school measures success for itself. And in how each of you as school leaders personally push the envelope in education and press on with what you believe to be right.

Customising Space in Schools to Maximise Learning and Interaction
9. We are providing schools and teachers with more space and flexibility to come up with their own ideas and implement them. MOE’s approach will be to support initiatives from the ground - top down support for ground up initiative.

10. This afternoon, I would like to focus on an important area of flexibility that we will be giving our schools in their effort to build a vibrant and living learning environment. We will give schools more flexibility to design and manage the physical spaces in the school. Several schools are already exploiting and making their own adaptations of their physical environment and amenities.

11. For instance, classrooms in Eunos Primary School are specially designed such that they can be divided into different sizes, with full height partitions. When the school was being designed, the teachers gave the architect feedback on the likely configurations they might use in their lessons. The result is classrooms that can be partitioned to form smaller spaces for students to do small group work with some privacy. The partitions can also be pushed aside to create a larger space where two classes of students can come together to listen to the collective presentations. The classroom has also been designed with the lights and fans scattered across the classroom, to ensure adequate lighting and ventilation in any configuration of the classroom.

12. Some other schools have exploited and turned “dead spaces” into living spaces that can be used for a number of different purposes. When I visited Nan Hua Secondary in August, I had the chance to interact with students at a very pleasant, open space on the top floor, right up on the 5th floor, next to an auditorium. The school built a trellis on the open deck, and provided tables and chairs so that students can use it as an alfresco space to study and interact. Foo Suan Fong tells me he is getting the students in Nan Hua to propose designs for the open deck so it could be even used for formal lessons.

13. Another example: Anglican High made use of one of its open common spaces and designed a cosy café-style eating area. This informal eating area, which is just outside the library, has become well-used as a space where students gather to socialise, mingle and carry out self study.

14. Ping Yi Secondary opened up opportunities for outdoor learning, exhibitions and talks, when it turned the area next to its canteen and classroom block into a semi-circular outdoor amphitheatre. Punggol Primary has an eco-garden surrounded by science labs, art studios and SEED rooms. Students can attend their lessons in the science labs and then come out to the eco-garden to carry out hands-on experiments on the micro-habitats there.

Greater Flexibility in School Infrastructure
15. There are other examples. We will now take this to a new plane, by introducing a framework for schools to exercise greater autonomy in the design of learning spaces. The Flexible School Infrastructure – “FlexSI” for short – will give greater autonomy to the school to decide how its spaces and facilities can support a variety of teaching approaches and new ways of engaging students in learning. It will allow schools to use their collective imagination to give teachers more leeway, and give our students more opportunities for interaction or for independent and hands-on learning.

16. With FlexSI, schools will be able to customise their environment to a greater extent that they currently can. School specifications will be more flexible and a new process of identifying school’s educational and operational needs will be introduced. Schools can rethink what the classroom of tomorrow should look like, to better engage their students. They can ask questions like – must learning take place within four walls with specified boundaries, and with a fixed number of students in a class? What if the walls were not fixed structures? How can learning be done differently if furniture and fittings could move from place to place?

17. MOE is setting aside $40 million over the next 5 years for about 60 new and to be upgraded schools (under the Programme for Rebuilding and IMproving Existing Schools or PRIME) to adopt designs that enable their school spaces to be used in a more flexible and adaptable manner for learning.

18. In addition, we will select 10 existing or post-PRIME schools to participate in a pilot scheme to see how we can bring flexible designs into existing set-ups to maximise spaces for learning. Later, this framework can be rolled out to the rest of the primary and secondary schools.

19. The post-PRIME pilot schools will explore how existing facilities could be adapted to support learning in new ways. For instance, a school may decide to renovate some of its classrooms to have foldable walls, and mobile partition screens within the classroom space. Another idea that has surfaced from schools is to build labs where both art and science projects can be conducted, to use movable furniture to facilitate group-work, and movable electrical and communications points so that floor space can be freed up and furniture can be shifted at ease.

20. Another idea that has been suggested: if the Music and AV Rooms are located next to each other, a flexible partition can be installed between them, so as to be able to combine the areas into a larger area for activities such as dance or drama practices.

21. With the FlexSI framework in place, I encourage you to explore how you can customise the learning environment in your schools, and get your students excited about learning. This is just one way we want to empower our school leaders and their staff to influence and shape their workplace – their playground of mind and body, as it were. We will continue to see how we can support more of such ground-up initiatives as we go forward.

Qualities of a School Leader
22. Certainly, leading a school is a challenging and complex task, perhaps more so now than before. But these are exciting times to be a school leader. Your vision, convictions and commitment to our goals in education are critical. You will need to hold to your convictions, and have the courage to do what you know is right for your teachers and students, not just meet targets that are most visible or most easily measured. The signals you send will shape whether our teachers feel supported in venturing beyond the tried and familiar. Develop your teachers, encourage them to innovate in teaching and assessment, and give them ownership in everything we are doing.

23. I am confident that our principals are more than up to the task. They inherit a rich tradition of school leadership in Singapore, and an accumulation of best practices that are shared across our schools. They also have many role models to follow. Allow me to share, and at the same time, pay tribute to, three of these principals.

24. Mrs Ho Woon Ho, one of our retiring principals this year, is an example of a leader whose decisions have been guided by passion and a genuine concern for both staff and students. Her warmth and compassion is well-known, as are the many “second chances” she has given to her students - second chances that led to positive changes in their lives. As both teacher and VP of the then Hwa Chong Junior College, she found time to personally coach students who did badly in their examinations, and mentor them.

25. When she then went on to head Nanyang JC, Mrs Ho also exercised patience and compassion for her students, whether it was in sourcing for additional financial assistance for needy students, or supporting academically weaker students in catching up with their peers. She provided some students the opportunity to join the Art Elective Programme and CL Elective Programme and even though they had not offered Art and HCL in Secondary School. Mrs Ho was ahead of the curve in understanding the importance of flexibility and choice within our system so that all our young learners can take flight and develop their potential to be the best that they can be, the best that they want themselves to be.

26. Mr Tan Tiek Kwee and Miss Elizabeth Chan are two leaders who have shown the value of engaging their staff, students, and stakeholders in open dialogue. Many know this, but few have struck the balance as they have done between a strong, visionary leadership, and an open and frank consultative style that inspires commitment from team players. Mr Tan, who retires this year after 32 years of service, enjoys high regard amongst his peers, as is evident from his position as Chairman of the committee of Junior College Principals. His able leadership has allowed for meaningful dialogue among the JC principals, and between the JCs and MOE. I have known Mr Tan for a while, and have personally found value in consulting him. He has been a source of sound and honest ideas.

27. Similarly, Miss Chan, who leaves us after giving 41 years to education. She not only pioneered Punggol Primary School, but has given Rosyth School even greater renown for its holistic education and emphasis on character development of the child. Like Mr Tan, Miss Chan believes that people are the key ingredient in the organisation. She involves her staff, pupils and their parents through open consultation. Guided by her passion for the arts, she has seen Rosyth grow in vibrancy as it develops its niche in the arts and the aesthetics.

28. Mrs Ho, Mr Tan and Miss Chan are not alone in embodying the passion, vision, and staff-centredness of a leader that make our school system what it is today. They have also shown us the importance of strengthening the ties between your school and its stakeholders - your students, their parents, and community partners. Building bridges with external organisations and stakeholders will allow the impact of your work in your school to reverberate through to the wider community.

29. Mrs Ho served on various committees such as the Films Appeal Committee and the Tanjong Pagar CDC Community Service Advisory Panel. She is also the Vice-President of the Singapore Chinese Literary Society and has written several Chinese literary books. In fact, as a CL teacher many years ago, it was under Mrs Ho’s wings, that CL writers like Chua Chim Kang, the Associate Local News Editor at Lianhe Zaobao, were groomed to bear the same passion for the language. On Miss Chan’s part, she volunteers together with her staff and students with Food From The Heart, MINDS and Ren Ci hospital. Under Mr Tan’s charge, Anderson Junior College has been at the forefront of adopting the Service-Learning approach to community service. These are all principals who are well-respected not just in the school but in the local community as well.

30. To Mrs Ho, Miss Chan, and Mr Tan, and equally to the other six retiring principals who are here today, your leaving will leave behind gaps that the rest of us can only aspire to fill. May I wish you only the best in your golden years.

31. Finally, to the 51 principals appointed today, let me urge you to hold the candle high. Keep up your ideals, keep up the ideas, keep enthusing those around you as we march on in our journey of excellence, keep the courage to carry out the vision you have for our schools.