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Singapore’s Ministry of Education yesterday rejected a proposal to “cap achievement at the top” in a bid to level the education playing field for students.
To ensure that education remains accessible and inclusive for students, the “Education for our Future” proposal put forward suggestions such as the banning of tuition and enrichment classes or redistributing of resources from popular to less popular schools.
The proposal also urged the government to partner more with people – educators, parents and industry – in forming policies that regularly update the system as education should not have a “one size fits all” approach.
A heated discussion ensued in parliament after the five nominated MPs shared the proposal. Three ministers from MOE, including education minister Ong Ye Kung, shared their thoughts on the matter.
Ong responded that instead of “capping the top”, “we should…work harder to lift the bottom”.
“Excessive tuition to the point of causing undue stress and killing the joy of learning is not good for the child, but I don’t think capping achievements and limiting opportunities is the right approach either,” he said. “It runs against a very fundamental philosophy of our education system.”
Ong was referring to how the system is based on meritocracy, which he defended and said is recently “in danger of becoming a dirty word”.
He urged the public to adopt a broader definition of meritocracy – one that does not overly focus on academics but also recognises varying strengths, talents and skills of individuals.
“That is why pedagogy is changing in schools, which many members have acknowledged. It is more experiential, applied and exploratory,” the minister said.
He also touched on the highly contentious issue of scrapping the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). He said that the assessment is far from a perfect system and does add a lot of stress to some parents and students.
However, he stated that it is the “most meritocratic…and most fair of all imperfect systems”, and that scrapping it could lead to a replacement streaming system for secondary schools that will likely be worse.
In the ministry’s approach of "lifting the bottom", he shared MOE’s resourcing of schools, where the highest amounts of funding are given to specialised schools and the less academically-inclined streams in secondary schools.
“In addition, MOE regularly rotates and ensures that our good performing teachers and principals are well spread across different types of schools,” Ong said.
Beyond resourcing of schools, further assistance is granted to students from lower income households, he shared, including financial assistance schemes, bursaries and school meal programmes.
“We can’t change the fact that the starting points of each child is different, but our system can ensure that all of them can run a good race and finish this well.”
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