Committee of Supply – Head K (Ministry of Education)

Opportunities and Stress for Students

Mr Lim Biow Chuan (Mountbatten): Madam, I beg to move, "That the total sum to be allocated for Head K of the Estimates be reduced by $100".

During the Edusave Awards ceremony held at my constituency this year, many parents spoke to me and expressed their support for MOE's focus on character development. They were appreciative of the fact that their children were being recognised for their good character and had the opportunity to receive the Edusave Character award.

I welcome MOE's continued focus on character development. We should maintain the focus on imparting values to the students and ensure that all students learn about other important values like humility, integrity, loyalty and gratefulness, so that they can become useful and contributing citizens. In this regard, I urge MOE to work closely with parents to ensure that parents and schools partner each other to reinforce the importance of values to their children. The saying is that "it takes a village to raise a child". Thus, imparting of values cannot be the sole responsibility of the schools or the parents. There must be joint efforts by schools, parents and the community.

MOE has consistently emphasised that our education system is student-centric and aims to help every student develop to his or her best potential.

As a parent of two school-going children, I appreciate that many teachers in schools are very dedicated and go the extra mile to help students understand their work better. Teachers play a key role in our children's future. We must continually look for such teachers who are passionate; teachers who can motivate well and care for their students. Whilst I appreciate that many of our teachers are currently well qualified, I urge MOE to also consider staff who have good attributes of being a good teacher even if they may not have good academic qualifications. So, look very hard for good teachers, because it will make a huge difference to our students, our children.

I also welcome MOE's learning support programme where weaker students are provided with stronger support – a student weak in Mathematics can be placed in a smaller class of maybe four to 10 students, where more individual attention can be given. Could I ask MOE what else can be done to strengthen the support for weaker students?

For students who may be slow developers, I appreciate the many pathways available for today's students. If a student does not do well in the PSLE examinations, he or she has the option of going to ITE or Polytechnic first. And these institutions do offer very high quality training programmes to provide our students with the right foundation as well as equip them for the workforce. If the student continues to do well, he can eventually make it to University at a later stage. Could the Minister share more about the plans to increase the number of University places for our students? Are we on track to increase the available University places for our students?

Next, let me talk about stress. One constant feedback which I received from many parents is about the huge amount of stress for students. Parents are concerned about excessive homework for their children. They are also concerned that the subjects taught in school are getting more and more difficult. The situation is worst if your child is in Primary 5 or 6 due to the impending PSLE. I know. I have a child in Primary 6 this year. All these will discourage our young couples from having more children if they feel that education for their children is so stressful.

In view of this stress, I call on MOE to consider the following:

First, review the curriculum of the students at all levels. Compare what Singapore schools are teaching vis-a-vis schools around the world. On 5 March, a journalist from TODAY newspaper, Ms Ng Jing Yng, wrote an article about the Finnish education system. She wrote about how the children were given time to rest and play after school and homework. And when asked about tuition, the parent says: "What tuition?" Tuition is unheard of in Finland and, yet, Finnish pupils perform well in international tests. Is there anything we can learn from the Finnish education system that will fix Singapore education system?

Next, I urge MOE to reduce the amount of homework and stress in schools. If schools continue having endless assessments and making tests more and more difficult, students will not see school days as a time to discover new things nor will they experience the joy of learning. MOE should ensure that every school does not try to test its students beyond what is expected of the students. In an article in The New Paper on 13 January 2013, Primary 5 pupils were given a spelling list which I myself struggle with. The words that were given − anemometer, buccaneer, podgy, suffuse – I do not even know whether I pronounce them correctly. It is one thing to try to stretch the ability of students. But if pushed to the extreme, stress will simply pile up and students will resent school work.

Reinforce to all schools that they must be reasonable in giving homework. Last month, over the radio, DJ Joe Augustin was complaining about the homework which was given to students to do over the Lunar New Year holidays. Parents had also complained to me about their children having to study for a test immediately after the Lunar New Year holidays. What is the message which the school is sending to the students? That it is not important to observe family gatherings during Lunar New Year? What is the message to parents? Forget about reunion dinners because there is homework or tests? I urge MOE to signal to schools that public holidays should remain holidays. Schools must manage their time and complete their syllabus strictly within the school term.

I feel that children must be given time and space to relax and to appreciate other aspects of life. We must move from the focus on academic grades in schools. MOE can do more to get parents to buy in the concept that education is a life long journey and that grades are and should not be the only measure of a child's achievement.

Education Policy and Social Mobility

Dr Lily Neo (Tanjong Pagar): Madam, pre-school education for our children has been less than ideal all these years. Pre-schools themselves vary vastly in quality from one to another. Pre-school fees also differ greatly among them, ranging from $100 to $1,000. The children from the well-off families are the ones that usually get to attend the higher quality pre-schools.

Pre-schools should not just equip our children with reading and numeracy skills in preparing for Primary schools. Good pre-school education emphasises the importance of early brain development in children. Some of these examples are social awareness, living environment awareness, group interaction skills, motor skills and overall confidence.

I hope MOE will be able to embrace these attributes in its effort on improving the overall standard of pre-school education and on providing more equivocal standards for all. I also hope MOE will place great importance on giving all our disadvantaged children the pre-school education they badly need. This will enable them an early start and a better chance for social mobility. We need a system in place to identify these children for good pre-school education. Perhaps the identification of these children should be made at time of birth where detailed social history is more easily obtainable.

Student care centres are very beneficial for children from disadvantaged families as these children usually lack supervision in their less than conducive home environments. In view of our limited student care centres, especially the school-based ones, could MOE reserve these places for such children in these schools? More often than not, the parents of these children will not come forward to request for such places. The parents that can provide adequately are the ones that usually apply for their children to be even better supervised. Could MOE systematically identify and help children from disadvantaged families to get such care? Could these children also be paired with social workers, who can then assess if they have parents that also need assistance in improving their home environment? In situations where student care is not available in the schools, could MOE collaborate with MSF to have these children placed at community student care centres near their homes?

Uplifting Quality of Pre-school Education

Ms Low Yen Ling (Chua Chu Kang): Madam, I applaud the move to set up a single Government agency to drive early childhood development. I look forward to the improvements that the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) can bring. For instance, it will have the mandate to level the playing field for all our young children. Efforts to raise the quality of pre-school education in the highly disparate pre-school sector can now be more coordinated and concerted across childcare centres as well as kindergartens.

In terms of policy and long-term plans, I hope we will also benefit from a strong and cohesive direction for early childhood development. This is certainly necessary in order to "future proof" our children in today's fast changing and globalised economy. Parents now have clearer indication as to what is expected at pre-school and before entering Primary 1. So, I believe we can look forward to better information flow and uniformity of direction with the formation of ECDA.

However, there are a few questions and issues that I hope the MOE as well as MSF can look into as the agency undertakes its important responsibilities. For instance, how will ECDA integrate the overlapping roles of MOE and MSF in the areas of teacher training, professional development as well as pay structure? Will there be synergy in training and curriculum for teachers in childcare centres as well as kindergartens? Currently, the different training routes, qualifications, working conditions as well as pay scales between childcare and kindergarten make career progression and development in this sector an onerous one.

One other key area that I hope ECDA can address is the merit of a central or national training school for early childhood educators. Today, we have a variety of training providers with various levels of competency and knowledge. To prevent fragmentation and uneven quality of training, I urge the MOE as well as MSF to examine the possibility of establishing a national academy of early childhood teachers, just like how the National Institute of Education (NIE) trains the teaching profession now. Should this function come under the NIE, there could be flow-through advantages in training, teaching quality and research that span from pre-school to learning in lower Primary school.

Research has shown that children from poorer circumstances tend to have greater learning needs and difficulties. They not only lag behind their peers in academic milestones, their struggle with behavioural and also family problems often put them in disadvantaged positions. I hope that a substantial portion of the $3 billion injection of funds over five years will go to assisting these children to close the gap. To this end, the Development Support Programme, announced last year, is a key initiative that will help pre-schoolers with learning difficulties. Can we look forward to having this nationalised eventually? Early intervention and support is certainly crucial before these children enter Primary 1.

With regard to pre-schools for best practices that MOE aims to set up, I hope that MOE can ensure a certain percentage of places set aside for children from low-income families. We want to provide opportunities for all, especially those from disadvantaged positions.

Next, on improving the teacher-student ratio. Our teaching force has grown by more than 10,000 or about 43% since 15 years ago. I understand that the size of student cohort has also steadily decreased. For instance, in 2001, the size of Primary 1 cohort was over 49,000. Ten years later, in 2011, the size was over 39,000. In view of this, is the current teacher-student ratio in our schools reflective of this growth in the teacher numbers as well as the decreasing number of student cohort?

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While classes in lower Primary levels have been reduced to about 30 students a class, the overall class size for older cohorts in most Primary and Secondary schools hover around 40 per class. I hope the MOE will take steps to see how class size can be further reduced, especially for Primary 3 to Primary 6, where younger children can benefit from closer contact and guidance from teachers.

I am confident that we can take our children to the future as we seek to help them develop their potential wherever they are.

Closing the Opportunity Gap

Ms Irene Ng Phek Hoong (Tampines): Madam, my constituency runs a reading programme for children aged four to eight from lower income families and I read to them sometimes. It troubles me that they lack the literacy skills and the socio-emotional abilities expected of their age.

Studies have shown that ability gaps between the advantaged and disadvantaged open up early in the lives of children. Given the trend of a widening income gap, there is an increasing opportunity gap which needs urgent attention.

To ensure that no one is left behind, it is crucial to strengthen our outreach to disadvantaged families and to strengthen their support system. We should direct our greatest effort at their formative years. In this regard, I welcome the initiatives to build more student care centres and for MOE to pilot several Government-run kindergartens in schools. I urge the Minister to site these student care centres and kindergartens in neighbourhood schools with a higher proportion of disadvantaged children.

There should also be a more systematic effort to rotate the best teachers in the system to neighbourhood schools in poorer estates so that students of all backgrounds would have access to them.

Looking at how the education system has evolved in Singapore, I sometimes cannot help but wonder if we should hit the reset button.

The tuition syndrome, for one, needs to be fixed. Many parents blame this syndrome on schools – their children complain that they cannot understand what is being taught in school. Should we not be concerned with this?

Are our teachers conducting their classes with the assumption that children should and would go to tuition to learn what they were taught in school and, if so, is this healthy?

We should go back to basics. Just like the Finns, who reformed their education system to ensure access and opportunity for every student. In Finland, its students do the least number of class hours per week in the developed world, yet get the best results in the long term. They sit no mandatory exams until the age of 17 to19. They do not go for tuition after school. This egalitarian approach that they take means that all classes contain a mixture of ability level pupils, with most classes containing two or more teachers who focus on those needing additional support.

I would like to ask the Minister for his assessment whether such a system could work in Singapore.

Class Size in Schools

Mr Yee Jenn Jong (Non-Constituency Member): Madam, most schools in Singapore have class sizes of around 40, while Primary 1 and Primary 2 classes have 30 students. This is large compared to the OECD's average of 21 per class.

There are drawbacks of a large class. Each has to deal with more disciplinary and administrative issues. While weaker students risked being marginalised because teachers' time is divided amongst many students, MOE has previously said that "Empirical evidence on the benefits of a smaller class size remains inconclusive".

The Brookings Institution notes that large class-size reductions can have significant long-term effects on students' achievement. These effects seem to be largest when introduced earlier, and for students from less advantaged backgrounds.

The Tennessee STAR and the follow-up Wisconsin SAGE projects demonstrated the positive effects of smaller class sizes on students' cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. These effects persisted throughout the school life of the students. Other studies also show smaller classes have benefited disadvantaged students.

Class size reduction is not the magic bullet to better students' development. It has to be implemented together with other holistic policies.

MOE saw it beneficial to have class size of 25 for gifted students. I hope such benefits can apply to all Primary levels. I urge MOE to extend class size of 30 to Primary 3 and Primary 4 and, eventually, across all Primary levels.

Institutionalise Tuition

Ms Mary Liew (Nominated Member): Madam, what Singaporeans hope for is "A home with a strong Singaporean identity and sense of belonging". However, many Singaporeans do not feel this way where our education system is concerned. One such example is Mr T K Lim.

Mr Lim and his wife Jo are working class parents with four children. Their eldest daughter passed her "A" Level last year and was accepted by the University of Western Australia to pursue BioMedical Science (Double Major) degree but she was rejected by NTU and NUS.

With three other younger siblings, she did not want to impose on her parents financially and decided to retake her "A" Level in the hope of getting into our local University this year.

What is upsetting for this family and many Singaporeans is that they do not understand why there are so many foreign students with low command of English who are able to apply and enter our local Universities, as such, depriving Singaporean children a chance to pursue their dreams.

Madam, many young Singaporeans who want to fulfill their dreams of holding a degree but have no places in our local Universities and do not want to burden their families, end up in private institutions, taking on hefty loans to pay for their degree and start their lives in debt. The system requires review so as not to deprive our children of a place in our local Universities.

Next, while well-off children can have better access to pre-school education as well as tuition and enrichment classes, others do not have equal opportunities for a head-start in life. Can our Government provide opportunities for all children to start on an equal footing by:

(a) institutionalising pre-schools to ensure standardised quality, and to make it affordable for all Singaporeans, similar to our Primary and Secondary schools system; and

(b) institutionalising tuition and enrichment programmes in schools by incorporating these into a full-day curriculum. This so-called "Student-Care" can be Edusave-funded.

Tuition and Learning Support

Mr Low Thia Khiang (Aljunied): Madam, at the Budget debate last year, the Minister for Education seemed to suggest that tuition is quite normal as it happens everywhere all over the world and that this is a sign of parents having high aspirations for their children's success in education. While this may be true, is the Minister not concerned when private tuition appears to have gradually become a parallel system to our publicly-funded education system? The Household Expenditure Survey 2007 suggested that families spent more on private education than on University tuition fees. Private tuition fees have become a financial burden to many families, especially those from the middle income group.

A stressful education system and the cost of educating children today contribute to the challenges in encouraging Singaporeans to start families. I have come across parents who send their children to private tuition not because they want their children to top the class or to get into branded schools but because their children's test or examination results were not good and they are worried that their children may fail the subject or be unable to cope with the school curriculum.

If our schools could provide the additional support for weaker students to boost their academic results to assure parents that their children are able to cope with school work, it would ease the anxiety of parents from sending their children for tuition and thus, incurring additional household expenditure. Schools should also be mindful not to feed the anxiety of parents and put unnecessary pressure on students by purposely setting difficult questions in routine assessment tests to fail students in order to spur them to work harder, a point also brought up by Mr Lim Biow Chuan.

Madam, MOE must reclaim the confidence of parents that the school can and will be able to educate their children and bring out their best and full potential without the need for parents to seek private tuition outside school education.

Specialised Training for All Normal (Technical) Stream Teachers

Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar (Ang Mo Kio): Madam, I declare my interest as an academic in NIE. Among the recent Budget announcements is the move for more help to be extended to students from less privileged backgrounds in terms of more learning support, after school care, and online resources. Along these lines, I would like to once again ask the Ministry to have teachers who teach slow progress, or currently Normal (Technical) students in Secondary schools, to be specially trained in motivational and counselling skills.

Having taught Normal (Technical) students in a Secondary school for a couple of years, I must say that when I first stepped into the classroom, I felt somewhat inadequate in teaching them. Although my pre-service teacher training focused on the relevant pedagogy, educational psychology and classroom management skills, I was still unsure how I could motivate them and help them to learn. In the end, I put the subject syllabus aside and just spent a good couple of months getting to know them first. To this day, I believe that if I had been specially trained to teach Normal (Technical) students, I could have been more effective as a teacher to them then.

So, once again, just as the Gifted Education Program (GEP) teachers are specially trained to teach fast progress students, I would like to urge the Ministry to make the provision for teachers who teach Normal (Technical) and other slow progress students to be specially trained as well, on top of the usual pre-service teacher training. This could be in the form of in-service teacher training before teachers are deployed to teach Normal (Technical) classes.

Every School A Good School

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng (Moulmein-Kallang): Madam, I fully support MOE's vision of making every school a good school. I wish to seek Minister's positive consideration of two proposals to further this vision.

One, on online learning platform, I urge MOE to form a Task Force to focus on and develop 21st century online learning resources that will avail the best of content, pedagogy and assessments across all local schools. Online learning has moved from the sidebar of education to becoming central to many progressive institutions of learning. It comes in the form of self-paced, competency-based programmes that can be taken anytime, anywhere. It can also come as a component of what is known as blended or hybrid learning which offers teaching and learning through a mix of online and face-to-face teaching.

If done well, online learning not only avails excellent education resources across all schools, it boosts productivity of teachers and may also open up opportunities for Singapore to be a serious 21st century education provider on the global stage.

Two, on through-train pre-school, Primary to Secondary schools, I would ask the Minister to pilot full schools that offer through-train pre-school, Primary to Secondary schools without the need for PSLE. This model can be used as an experiment of what good Singapore schools might look like, had we started on a cleaner slate without the sacred cows that have grown so big and intimidating that many hesitate to slay. The sacred cows that I am referring to are the current pre-school governance model and the PSLE.

Madam, on pre-schools, I find merit in hon Member Christopher de Souza's call for the nationalisation of pre-school education. However, if that is too fast a bullet to bite, I propose that MOE consider incorporating some of the pre-schools it intends to pilot, into a bigger pilot – that of a full school which offers through-train pre-school, Primary and Secondary school education.

One of the biggest bugbears in pre-school education is the missing link between what pre-schools teach and entry requirements of mainstream primary schools. A seamless transition between kindergarten and Primary 1 will help address this gap.

The PSLE has now become one of the top stress triggers in education. The PSLE T-score syndrome actually drives parents, educators and even students to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy for a place at the desired end of the normal distribution.

Because PSLE is such a high-stakes examination, parents, rich or poor, invest as much as they can to ensure a good PSLE score. Tuition agencies and tutors, with track records in turning out PSLE high-performers, thrive and profit from the insatiable demand for their expertise. Some mainstream schools use the majority of their Primary 5 and 6 years to focus on this high-stake examination. Focus on such high-stake examinations dilutes the efforts to give more attention to the values-based and character education that the Minister is known to advocate. Many of us also know – in the course of our lives – persons who do not perform well academically when they were young because they were late developers.

Foregoing the PSLE does not mean the scrapping of all forms of assessments. In fact, assessments can now be used to identify gaps in learning for developmental purposes, and not for the purposes of getting high scores. Students can have flexibility now to take a mix of subjects according to their ability and interest. Learning can become a joy and habit that can be applied for life.

Madam, there are countries in the world with highly regarded education systems, such as Finland, that do not feature high-stress and high-stake examinations such as the PSLE. When the stress of high PSLE scores is taken off, there is a bigger space for schools to experiment with 21st century learning methods, such as hybrid learning, flipped classrooms and character education applications. If the proposed pilot through-train school is explained well and led by strong school leaders and boards, I am sure there will be parents who are willing to give this a shot.

A Less Stressful Education Environment

Mr Gan Thiam Poh (Pasir Ris-Punggol): Madam, I agree with the Ministry's decision not to list top scoring pupils. The purpose is to drive home the message to parents that their children's successes are not determined by that one test at Primary 6. In line with the recent moves and the fact that every school in Singapore is a good school, I would like to ask whether the Minister will also look at stopping the publishing of the raising of the school's minimum entry score. I also understand that the system of banding Secondary schools based on their academic results has been abolished. The system had led to keen and sometimes unhealthy competition among schools. I hope the Ministry can reduce the schools' KPIs to ensure a less stressful, unhealthy learning environment for students and staff.

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Secondary School Admission

Mr Yee Jenn Jong: Madam, many see PSLE as a high-pressure sorting examination that determines the future of their children. Some will settle for nothing less than the very top Secondary schools whilst others fear their children being placed into undesirable academic streams.

The PSLE T-score is used for admission into Secondary schools and academic streams notwithstanding the DSA (Direct School Admission) exceptions. I call this a sorting method using a single score to sort students into schools.

MOE is currently reviewing the PSLE. There are two ways to view this. The first is to explore how to modify the examinations and results reporting and how Secondary schools will use this for admission. Currently, PSLE is held over a few days. There is no consideration for how the child had performed throughout Primary school. One can argue, for continuous assessment and add school scores to the T-score. But some will feel that schools would not be objective or results can be reported as grades only, so Secondary schools will admit based on PSLE grades, school leaving testimonials, CCA achievements and other results. Instead of being a sorting test, PSLE then becomes a signalling tool. It signals the ability of the child in each subject and the Secondary school has the discretion for other consideration.

The second way is to do away with the need for PSLE. Last year, I propose for pilot schools with a 10-year integrated programme from Primary 1. This is to cater for parents like myself who do not think it is critical to send my children to top schools and that students of different abilities can mix together. I am happy to note that Mr Laurence Lien and Ms Denise Phua had made similar calls. I appreciate that this is an emotive issue. Over the years, we have sorted students finally at various junctures of schooling and branded and banded schools to an extreme.

I am for a system like Finland where students of all abilities progress through the same schools and all schools are about the same. However, this may take a while for our parents to accept. We can start with eight such schools, two for each zone. Meanwhile, we can destress PSLE by changing it into a signalling tool and spread students of different abilities across schools.

Lastly, I hope MOE can review the DSA system, especially DSA of GEP students into top independent schools.

Streaming in Secondary Schools

Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar: Madam, I applaud the recent changes by the Ministry such as abolishing the ranking bands of schools and revising the Master Plan of Awards, among other initiatives. These are clear signals that our education system places less emphasis on awards and more on the process of learning in schools, in the spirit of celebrating the diversity of talents of our students and in ensuring multiple pathways of excellence.

While these measures are very much welcomed, I would like to advocate that streaming at the secondary school level be abolished altogether. I have raised this before and I would like to urge the Ministry to institute a similar system as what we have at the primary school level – where students take subjects either at the Standard or Foundation level. Hence, for Secondary schools, let all students take subjects either at the academic level, for example, which leads to the GCE "O" Level, or at the vocational level, which leads to the GCE "N" Level.

Without being confined to only the subjects offered within a specific academic stream. A student may then have a Secondary school leaving certificate of both "O" Level and "N" Level subjects taken. This allows greater flexibility for Secondary school students to take subjects at the level they are comfortable at and can flourish in. Our students can continue to be taught in different bands for different subjects, based on their ability but we will be able to institute a more effective form of differentiated learning in our classrooms. This may alleviate some of the stress that students and parents face at the PSLE because of the misplaced fear of not wanting to be in certain academic streams at the Secondary school level.

While streaming has been useful in the past in helping teachers carry out differentiated teaching with a more targeted and efficient use of resources, we must also recognise as students develop at different rates – and if we continue to pigeon-hole them in specific academic streams – we risk fulfilling the Pygmalion effect negatively, in particular, for slower progress students. I would urge the Ministry to consider this, as I see it as a first step to greater inclusivity in our schools.

Primary 1 Admission

Mr Yee Jenn Jong: Madam, while MOE wants every school to be a good school, there is great disparity in results between schools. The highest and lowest medium PSLE T-scores amongst schools last year are 247 and 160 respectively, a difference of 87.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew had observed that admission to Primary schools is based on the social class of parents. Six out of 10 pupils in six of the top Primary schools live in private houses. But it is useful to review the Primary 1 admission system. It is a stressful process for some; shifting house and doing volunteer work to get their children into top schools. I agree that priority should be given to those with siblings already in the school for the sake of convenience. Beyond that, we can consider a system with higher balloting chances for alumni, school volunteers and those living near the school. But it need not guarantee their position over others like in the phase system today.

I feel community leaders need not be given priority. Being a community leader for the purpose of getting into top Primary schools does not gel with the spirit of community service. With the change, we can have a better mix of students of different social backgrounds in our schools, allowing better integration among pupils.

I hope MOE can better spread resources across schools, reduce class size and review the need to centralise gifted students into top schools, then it may not be as much stress over which Primary schools to enter.

Edusave for All Singaporeans

Mr Zainal Sapari (Pasir Ris-Punggol): ( In Malay ) : [Please refer to Vernacular Speech on Pg xx.] Some Members of Parliament and I have spoken about the issue of Edusave. I have suggested that personal Edusave be given to all Singaporean students in private schools, at least for students that come under the Compulsory Education Act. This suggestion was rejected by MOE on the basis that these students are considered to be private school students and are not eligible for personal Edusave grants.

However, this reasoning is contrary to the Government's move to provide subsidies to private school students at the tertiary level. The Government provided the subsidy on the basis that they are Singapore citizens who will serve the nation. Can we not use the same reasoning to provide Edusave to all Singaporean students, regardless of whether they are in public or private schools?

Madam, I think that it is difficult for Singaporeans in general to understand why Singaporean students in private schools cannot receive Edusave, while public funds are also being used to provide scholarships to non-Singaporean students from ASEAN countries to study here.

In fact, my appeal for the Government to help students in private schools is reasonable, because assistance is also given to private firms through the Wage Credit Scheme, Inclusive Growth Scheme, Best Sourcing and other schemes.

I am of the view that Singaporeans who are studying in private schools should be helped so that they have a good opportunity for education. As someone who is experienced in the education field, I have seen for myself how Edusave can help a student to broaden his mind and his educational opportunity.

Madam, the amount that the Government has set aside to provide Edusave to private school students is not much. For example, the madrasahs can only take in 400 students each year. In fact, the madrasahs have already made changes and adjustments to their curriculum in order to fulfil their requirements of compulsory education and ensure that it contains elements that are relevant in terms of national education.

Madam, this Budget aims to make Singapore an inclusive society. Education is a gift and trust that can guide our young children in school as they prepare for adulthood. Therefore, I hope that the Government can provide Edusave to all Singaporean students, especially those students that come under the Compulsory Education Act, so that they can pursue a brighter future for Singapore.

The Chairman: Mr Inderjit Singh is not here. Ms Irene Ng.

Teaching Values for Life

Ms Irene Ng Phek Hoong: I welcome the bold changes made by the Minister to provide a holistic values-driven education. Indeed, the importance of teaching values to students emerged as the top issues in my dialogues with residents on Our Singapore Conversation platforms.

One resident related this anecdote. A top student was asked what she wanted to be after she grew up. She answered, "I want to be a doctor." She was then asked, "Why a doctor?" She replied, "To make a lot of money." My resident lamented that if this top student had the right values, she would have replied, "To heal the sick, to help the poor."

I am not sure if we can teach our students such selfless values of service in school, given the materialistic and consumerist culture which surrounds them, but we must try. In fact, we should redouble our efforts to inculcate the right values from a young age to counter the culture of entitlement and class consciousness. Indeed, a key mission of our education system must be to educate individuals to take responsibility for shaping a better community, a better country, even a better world.

While academic results are important, we must also place emphasis upon service and resolving community problems and thinking about global problems. If taught in an impactful way, such attitudes will last a lifetime. To be effective, we need educators who teach out of conviction. Their skills and knowledge matters, but the most important is conviction. We need parents to support this, to reinforce these values at home. Better still, to set the example.

Closely related to service is respect. It entails a sense of fair treatment, decency, and beyond the realm of individual civility, also a respect for the history, language, and culture of the people represented in the classroom. It is important to teach our children to respect and value diversity, as well as the contributions of all workers, be it doctors, social workers or cleaners, regardless of how much they may be paid.

The values of service, inclusion and respect build a foundation for children to grow into caring, open and responsible citizens. These values are increasingly important as our society becomes more complex and globalised.

Can the Minister give an update of MOE's plans and programmes for values-learning and character-building, and how it will better equip our teachers, and engage parents for active support?

The Minister for Education (Mr Heng Swee Keat): Mdm Chairperson, I would like to thank Members for sharing their views and constructive suggestions on education and speaking with such passion, starting with Mr Lim Biow Chuan. I share your passion for doing better. In fact, I am very happy to see many of our students here in the gallery watching this debate intensely. You are our future.

Over the past seven months, we have engaged many Singaporeans, including students and over 5,000 educators, to discuss our nation's future and how education can help us get there. Your voices echo the passion that many have heard in Our Singapore Conversation.

I have heard many rich and varied discussions firsthand. Through the Conversation, many Singaporeans have re-affirmed the strengths of our education system, and advocated that we build on them. But many participants also noted that there are areas where we must continue to recalibrate, and even to take a fresh approach.

Allow me to touch on three areas today: first, reaffirming our commitment to provide the best opportunities for every child. These efforts include pre-school education, levelling-up all our students, expanding post-Secondary options, and supporting students with special needs. Second, recalibrating towards a holistic education centred on values. And third, refreshing our approaches to achieve our basic goals of education.

Let me first reaffirm the Government's commitment to provide opportunities for all our children to excel. This is important to building a more inclusive society; and it is important to enabling our students and our young people to seize opportunities and access high quality jobs, as we restructure our economy.

The Minister for Finance outlined a number of key MOE initiatives in the Budget Speech, including expanding school-based student care centres, developing online resources, and expanding the Opportunity Fund. MOE will provide details on these at a later date.

I fully agree with my parliamentary colleagues that our education system must provide opportunities and Mr Lim Biow Chuan spoke on this right at the onset. Indeed, over the decade, the Government has almost doubled the investment in education – from $6.5 billion in 2003, to $11.6 billion this year. These investments have supported three broad changes in our education system.

First, we have invested more in developing well-rounded students who can think creatively and independently. Recent results in Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) showed our students doing well but, more importantly, doing better in reasoning and analysis. And as Members can see from the chart, Singapore is at the top in Primary 4 reading, Primary 4 Mathematics, Primary 4 Science, Secondary 2 Mathematics and Secondary 2 Science – right there among the best performing systems in the world.

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Second, students now have more choices at all levels through the many more pathways to develop their abilities and interests. At the secondary level, we have a diversity of schools with niches and programmes, catering to a wide range of talents and interests. At the post-Secondary level, we have more options at the Polytechnics and ITE, with better facilities and programmes. And at the University level, we are also expanding options.

Third, we have raised the number and quality of our teaching professionals. We now employ 30% more teachers than a decade ago and are investing more in their professional development. Experienced principals and skilful teachers are distributed across our schools, so that all our schools will be good schools.

I thank Mr Lim Biow Chuan for speaking on the importance of good teachers and, earlier, Ms Low Yen Ling and Mr Yee Jenn Jong also spoke about class size and teachers. Indeed, the additional teachers that we have and the additional resources that we have, have translated into better pupil-teacher ratio. In 2012, our Primary schools have a pupil-teacher ratio of 14:2 compared to 25:9 in 2000, just 12 years ago. In Secondary school, our pupil-teacher ratio is 17:6 compared to 19:2 in 2000. Our pupil-teacher ratio is comparable across, or comparable with OECD average, and better than the UK and Korea.

Now, I will touch on how schools are using these additional teaching resources to help students level up. Now, this higher quality of education throughout our system from Primary to Secondary to post-Secondary, allows us to provide better opportunities for all our students today.

Less than 1% of each cohort do not complete Secondary education compared to 5% just 10 years ago. More than 94% of each cohort progress to post-Secondary education compared to 86% a decade ago. This is a significant achievement but is this enough for the future? Today, around 30% of our economically active adults over the age of 50 do not have anything more than a Primary school education. Many find it very hard to upgrade or retrain for better jobs. As Members of Parliament, we see many of our residents in this group seeking help.

In the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years, we do not know how the world will turn out but the best guess is that the pace of change is going to be even faster. So, we must take a long-term view of education.

To enable Singaporeans to continually learn, unlearn and relearn, every child needs a strong foundation for lifelong learning. MOE will aim for every student in our schools to complete Secondary education and we want our students to then go on to pursue a post-Secondary qualification. The only way to reach every one of our students in this effort is to ensure that every school is a good school, delivering good programmes for the majority of our students. On top of this, we must also enhance our efforts to level up all our students who may need additional help because we want every Singaporean to succeed.

Now, thankfully, we are doing this from a position of strength. In the most recent TIMSS and PIRLS study – and international benchmarking study – only about 1% to 4% of students in Singapore fell below the "low" benchmark of competence across all grades – Primary 4 and Secondary 2 subjects. This is significantly better than what we achieved a decade ago and far better than the international average of 12% to 27%. This is no mean achievement. But 1% to 4% is still too many for us. We must aim to do better.

To do this, we must start young. The Prime Minister said at the National Day Rally in August last year that we will invest substantial resources in pre-school education. The Deputy Prime Minister Tharman also spoke about this in this year's Budget speech.

Dr Lily Neo made a strong pitch for good pre-school education earlier. Indeed, a good pre-school education helps a child to develop self-confidence and social skills; to nurture value such as sharing, taking turn and being responsible; to build a good foundation for the learning of languages; and, to develop the disposition for learning, such as curiosity and the courage to try new things.

Let me emphasise that the value of a good kindergarten education is not in learning academic content. Our children should have a holistic development through a quality kindergarten education. This is especially important for those from the lower income groups who may need more support.

To provide opportunities and to enhance social mobility, we must help all our children start well in life, and the Government will invest significantly more in pre-school. I recognise many parents have urged the Government to nationalise the pre-school sector; many Members, too. Mr Zainudin Nordin had said this as early as a decade ago. And in the earlier Budget debate, we heard Mr Christopher de Souza making the same point, and earlier, Ms Denise Phua as well.

Today, we have a diversified kindergarten and childcare sector – commercial operators, anchor operators and VWOs. Each brings a certain value. I know of several educators who have set up kindergartens to pursue their deep conviction in the value of early childhood education, and have built up innovative programmes. I respect their dedication and the diversity and choices they offer to parents. The diversified landscape serves parents well today. Our most important priority now is to work together to raise the quality.

Arising from the work of the Implementation Committee for Enhancing Pre-School Education (ICEPE) which Mr Chan Chun Sing and I co-chair, there are five areas of focus for uplifting the quality of pre-school education. Of these five areas, MOE will take the lead in three. First, we will continue to develop the kindergarten curriculum and educators' guides, and share teaching and learning resources with operators. This complements the revised curriculum framework for kindergartens. Second, we will leverage on the existing programmes in our institutes of higher learning to provide high quality training and professional development for kindergarten-level teachers. Third, MOE will run some kindergartens.

For a start, MOE will set up 15 pilot kindergartens in the next three years. Five of these will enrol K1 children in January 2014. Some of these will be located in Primary schools, some in community sites. All will be within HDB heartlands. These kindergartens will, first and foremost, provide a quality education that will be affordable to Singaporeans. Our specialists will develop teaching and learning resources and best practices to enhance the children's learning. We will also work with other pre-school centres that offer good programmes to study different approaches. Best practices that are scalable, sustainable and suitable for the Singapore context will be distilled and shared with other pre-school operators to catalyse improvements across the sector.

I must emphasise at the outset that this is a pilot programme. MOE believes that we can leverage on our resources to provide quality kindergartens and act as a catalyst for the entire sector. Given the growing demand for quality kindergartens, MOE is prepared to go beyond our 15 pilot centres. But how far and how fast MOE proceeds will depend on our experience and assessment of it, and the feedback from parents. As it is, MOE has heavy responsibilities and an expansion into providing affordable, quality kindergartens in the heartlands is a significant undertaking. MOE will not undertake this lightly unless there is strong public support for it, and unless our assessment is that we are creating significant value for parents and children. There are also important logistical and staffing issues that we will need to look into.

We will, therefore, gather the views of the public and the various stakeholders as we formulate plans for the medium term. Meanwhile, MOE and MSF will continue to work together with other operators through the newly formed Early Childhood Development Agency to expand capacity and raise standards, while keeping fees affordable for the majority of Singaporeans. We will announce details of the first five locations and admission procedures in about two weeks, and Senior Minister of State Indranee will provide further details on some of our other efforts while MSF will elaborate on the other two areas of focus. So, I thank Ms Low Yen Ling for pointing out the many tasks ahead for the early childhood development agency.

Building a good foundation at the kindergarten level is an important initiative in developing engaged learners. Let me now speak about how at the next stage our schools will equip our students to succeed. I want to thank Dr Lily Neo for her suggestions on how we can level up

Students enter Primary school with different dispositions and readiness for learning. Sometimes, this is due to learning difficulties. But often, it is a lack of home and parental support for learning. Some parents are keen to help but do not know how; others are preoccupied with making ends meet or with family problems. Some students come to school with low expectations of what they can achieve and are not putting in enough effort.

To address this, MOE will embark on a comprehensive programme to level-up our students. This will help every Singaporean child regardless of family background, start from a quality kindergarten and then build a strong foundation in the 10 years of Primary and Secondary education. This is especially important for students from disadvantaged backgrounds or who need more dedicated support.

These levelling-up efforts will be integrated with our overall approach in our schools to develop engaged learners. In other words, it is not a stand-alone programme. Students who need additional help in specific areas will be given more attention and resources. When they have achieved the baseline mastery, they will be taught using other learning approaches. This is a student-centric approach, in the spirit of what educators call "differentiated teaching", or in Chinese, 因材施教.

Our levelling-up efforts will nurture engaged learners through four prongs, let me speak on each of these in turn. The first prong is building confidence and the motivation to achieve. This is the core of learning. A child must feel that "Yes, I want to do it"; and "Yes, I CAN do it". A teacher must set suitable challenges, and help each child experience success. We must create a virtuous cycle of effort-success-confidence-effort. Effort leading to success; success leading to confidence; and, confidence leading to more effort. This is especially important for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. So, we need effort from all parties.

First, building confidence at pre-school levels, and extending this in our schools. And we will infuse this in our school curriculum, CCAs and Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) curriculum

Second, working with school-based Student Care Centres (SCCs) to reinforce the efforts of our schools for students who need extra support, not just ensuring that they do homework but nurturing a resilience to succeed.

Third, we will intensify partnerships with parents, self-help groups and community organisations. Parents play a critical role. Senior Parliamentary Secretary Hawazi will elaborate on this later.

The second prong is building literacy and numeracy foundations. In our pre-schools, MOE already provides literacy assistance to 250 pre-school centres. This helps children from lower income backgrounds who are from a non-English speaking environment. This is done through one-on-one sessions or in small groups. Over the next two years, we will provide this assistance to another 100 pre-school centres. The Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism will catalyse pre-school bilingualism efforts. Such efforts will help our children build a strong foundation in English and their Mother Tongue languages from young.

In our schools, we are helping all our students learn through better research-based methods – STELLAR for English language and literacy and the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract for numeracy. For the Mother Tongue languages, students learn through appropriate modules and methods that take into account their linguistic abilities and their home language environment. For students who start primary school with weaker foundations in literacy and numeracy, we have the Learning Support Programmes for English and Mathematics.

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We will now take a further major step – to provide specialised help to more students so that they can achieve a higher level of baseline competency in literacy and numeracy, from Primary school all the way to Secondary school. As these students learn in different ways and at a different pace, we will implement several learning programmes and novel teaching approaches to engage them. This will level up our students at zero cost to them. Students from lower income families, which many of you have spoken about, will get the extra support they need from our schools.

Schools can choose from a menu of approaches and programmes. For example, different teaching methods. Learning algebra can be too abstract for many students. Understanding the meaning and manipulating expressions with numbers, x's and y's, can be challenging. So, some teachers are using learning aids like the AlgeDisc in Bedok View Secondary School. With your permission, Madam, may I display a video on the LED screen on this?

A second approach is to use different teaching arrangements. For children who lack confidence and need more structure, schools may provide small group teaching, and break the learning task into smaller parts. This is used, for example, to support English literacy at Da Qiao Primary School. It is always so much more interesting to watch what our kids do than to hear me speak. So, I hope that that gives you a good break. But if you notice, in the first class, using the AlgeDisc, there were two teachers and, in the second video, there were eight students to one teacher. This is how we are using resources to make impact.

A third area is online resources, and Ms Denise Phua spoke passionately about this earlier on and I agree with her. In fact, online interactive resources can be used to help strengthen language skills which can be integrated into lessons and accessed by our students at their own time and pace that are suited to their learning needs. And we will explore how we can use online resources more extensively.

Having piloted these approaches in several schools, we will progressively implement these and other similar initiatives in schools in the next two years.

The third prong is skilful teachers. We will resource our schools with skilful teachers to do this well. Schools with a greater need will have more teachers deployed to them. Our teachers will also work with our specialists to constantly improve these programmes and approaches through action research, and determine the relative effectiveness of each of these for different students.

MOE will launch a comprehensive training programme for the Primary and Secondary school teachers who will lead this effort. This will enable them to better identify the learning gaps of their students, and to customise how they teach.

So, I fully agree with Dr Intan's call for MOE to provide specialised training for teachers of Normal (Technical) students. She gave a very passionate account of her teaching experience and, like her, we recognise that students often improve because they are motivated by their teachers who also provide them with socio-emotional support.

Teachers who are deployed to teach Normal (Technical) students will be provided with a range of pre-service and in-service training, both at The Academy of Singapore Teachers and through peer learning via Professional Learning Communities in and across schools. And we will continue to study how we can further improve this and I welcome Dr Intan's suggestions.

The fourth prong is a whole-school approach. This comprehensive levelling-up effort will build on initiatives announced at last year's COS, such as the expansion of Student Care Centres in schools and significant moves to increase support to students from less advantaged backgrounds in our schools. These include the enhancements to the MOE Financial Assistance Scheme and school-based financial assistance scheme, the Edusave Merit Bursary, and the School Breakfast Programme. I am happy to report that I have met many of these students who have benefited from these schemes, as well as their parents, and these are well-used and well-appreciated.

But as our comprehensive programme to level up our students is being rolled out, there are students who are about to complete Secondary schools, and they will not have the opportunity to benefit from this effort. Instead, we will pilot a programme in ITE – the Extended Nitec Foundation Programme (e-NFP) to help these students build up their literacy and numeracy skills during their Nitec years and to enable them to complete their Nitec course. The aim is not to extend their stay in ITE – rather, it is to give them an opportunity to go further.

Let me summarise what this levelling-up programme is about. When fully rolled out, this comprehensive programme for levelling up students will ensure that any student who needs additional help to achieve a strong foundation in numeracy and literacy will get it. We will have added a range of differentiated learning programmes and teaching approaches that are better than simply reducing their class size. We will provide training to all teachers who need it. On top of this, we will deploy 600 more teachers. MOE's priority is to allocate our teaching resources to where they can make a major difference.

I want to thank many members of the public, as well as educators, who, in Our Singapore Conversation, wanted a Singapore that provides opportunities for all, and a society that takes care of those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Their inputs provided important inspiration.

The purpose of this levelling-up effort is simple. It is about providing the best opportunities for every child to succeed, regardless of their background and pace of development. Every child has the potential and power to succeed in school and in life if he or she puts in the effort. The new initiatives are to ensure that every child fulfils his or her potential. Special attention is given to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is about hope. It is about inclusion.

Having equipped our students with a strong foundation, we will continue to do more to ensure a range of attractive options at the post-Secondary level. We have established world-class Polytechnics and the Institute of Technical Education (ITE). With the opening of ITE College Central in Ang Mo Kio this year, we have completed the transformation of ITE to "One ITE System, Three Colleges".

We are further diversifying options for university. The Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) will become an autonomous university, and SIM University (UniSIM) will start to offer Government-funded full-time degree programmes. They will have many new programmes to suit different interests, passions and learning styles. Ms Mary Liew spoke about access to university places earlier, and Senior Minister of State Indranee will elaborate on our efforts in the Higher Education sector later.

MOE will also continue to support children with special needs. We have progressively increased Government funding to special education (SPED) schools. Indeed, MOE funding per student to the special school is much more than in the mainstream school. MOE also provides professional support to SPED schools to refine, customise and implement their curriculum. Guidance support for parents has also been enhanced.

We will continue to support children with mild special needs in our mainstream schools. All Primary schools are staffed with at least one allied educator in learning and behavioural support, and all schools have a core group of teachers trained in supporting students with special needs.

In Primary schools, we are piloting remediation support for students with dyslexia because it is a condition that has good prognosis and affects many students. Results of the pilot are encouraging, and we will expand this programme to twice as many schools this year.

As we work on different approaches to teaching and learning in our schools, we will share these with SPED schools, and see how these can be usefully adapted. Senior Parliamentary Secretary Sim Ann will elaborate on our efforts for students with special needs.

Mr Zainal Sapari asked the Government to extend Edusave to students who are studying in full-time madrasahs. Having Singaporean children enrolled in national schools allows them to share a common educational experience and forge a national identity. However, the Government also recognises that madrasahs play an important role in training religious teachers for the Muslim community. MOE currently provides support on teaching resources and training for madrasahs through MUIS, but we note the concerns raised by Mr Zainal and will study this issue further.

Let me now move on to talk about how we need to recalibrate towards holistic education centred on values. Ms Irene Ng spoke passionately on the importance of values education and that the right attitudes last a lifetime. I fully agree with her.

At Our Singapore Conversation, many Singaporeans have also surfaced the desire for broader definitions of success in our society, and that our students must acquire the skills and competencies to benefit from the quality economic growth that we are pursuing. Many participants also want to see a society with diverse definitions of success.

We will continue to emphasise holistic development of our students. Let me share briefly how this is happening in our schools.

I recently visited Gan Eng Seng Primary School, and saw how changes introduced in recent years have significantly changed the way our students learn. Guided by the belief that the environment is the third teacher, the school has created a rich learner-centred environment. The Arts Jam stage allows pupils to come forward to perform and, in the process, they develop their confidence and talents. During my visit, students sang with gusto. A big group of pupils was dancing to the Gangnam Style tune in the school canteen during recess. They invited me to join them but, thankfully, they spared me. Outdoor education learning areas, such as the bouldering wall and the Outdoor Education Space, are also designed as learning spaces. Pupils in Gan Eng Seng Primary School come from the neighbourhood, and they exude confidence. It was joyful for me and the teachers to see them enjoying their school experience.

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This is not just happening in Gan Eng Seng Primary School, but in many other schools, too – many of which parents may not know about. And MOE will do more to publicise what are being done in our various schools. In addition, our schools will continue to emphasise character and values education. I am very heartened that this is something that resonates strongly with Singaporeans, as well as with our educators.

During Our Singapore Conversation, many have talked about a more caring and cohesive Singapore with a strong "kampung spirit" − a Singaporean society anchored on values, where we have a greater sense of togetherness and community, and also share a stronger national identity.

Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) in schools is progressing well, and will remain a key emphasis going forward. This does not just take place in specific "CCE periods" but across a range of subjects and activities, through a whole-school approach. For instance, through "Values in Action", students learn values through sustained community involvement. I have many examples of how this "Values in Action" is being done in schools, but I shall not get into the details here. What I say is that we will enhance our support to schools for CCE.

First, we will develop a core group of CCE teacher mentors in each school who are equipped with the knowledge and skills to lead in the whole-school CCE efforts. Second – and I think many Members will welcome this – we will bring back a refreshed "好公民" series of textbooks, now called "好品德, 好公民". We will have similar versions in the Malay and Tamil languages, as you can see on the screen. It has been updated with Singapore stories and lessons that will resonate with students' experiences in life, and suggested activities for parents to get involved.

Indeed, parents play the key and decisive role in developing values and character in our children. We will strengthen partnership with parents and the community. Senior Parliamentary Secretary Hawazi will provide an update.

A continued focus on CCE will stand Singapore in good stead as we face new challenges together. It can help nurture the Singaporean that participants at the OSC have said they wish to see in the future. In the words of one participant: "A Singaporean, confident yet humble and generous in heart. Always seeking to learn and improve. Dignified and respectful but also assertive in voicing his or her concerns in a sensible way."

Let me now speak on the theme of refreshing our approaches to achieve our basic goals of education, and how we need to get back to basics and look at the fundamentals.

Over the years, we have evolved our education system to enable Singaporeans to have a better future. Our mission has not changed; however, how MOE goes about achieving it has. Since 2011, we have shifted towards a student-centric, values-driven education and are striving to make every school a good school.

Character and Citizenship Education is receiving greater attention. And as many of you have noted, this shift has received good feedback from Singaporeans, and good support from many educators and parents.

In this COS, I have provided an outline of some very important measures that we have launched to level up our students. Our education system must always provide hope – and what is more − provide hope for ALL.

Looking ahead, there is much more that we need to do. But, first, we must recognise and consider a few key trends.

(a) The fast-changing global situation – there are many more millions joining the global marketplace, each wanting a better life; and technology is driving changes faster than ever. In education, we need to equip our next generation to be highly skilled but also flexible and adaptable. Excellence remains a relevant goal but we need to be broader in how we define and measure merit. And excellence and merit in any individual student need to be twinned with an ethical dimension of integrity and social responsibility.

(b) Our society is now more developed than before, and high social mobility will become harder to achieve. Naturally, successful parents will strive to give their children a leg up. Our education system must continue to provide opportunities for all, regardless of their parents' position. We must remain inclusive and provide opportunities for our children from different backgrounds to grow up together.

(c) Our expectations and aspirations are much higher today than ever. We are a very competitive people. Indeed, in many of the meetings and discussions I go to, we are not just content to be just happy – we want to be the happiest people on earth. In some ways, this trait is very endearing. Yet it also means that we sometimes set very difficult and contradictory goals for ourselves. We need to be easier on ourselves and focus on what really matters and strive for balance.

(d) Our ageing population, and tightening labour market as a result of that, will make it harder to attract and retain the right people – people with a heart for teaching and who will go the extra mile for our children. So, much as we have a long-term goal of investing in our teaching force, to make each teacher highly skilled, our young people have many career options – and, indeed, we educate them so that they can have these options.

These trends are very relevant to the next phase of Our Singapore Conversation on education. We face the complex challenges that many Members have spoken about passionately, from stress, tuition and examinations to streaming.

Let me deal with some of these challenges. These challenges are complex because there are no easy answers. There are significant trade-offs among the multiple objectives. Some changes may benefit one group while another may feel they would lose out. What may seem good in the short term may bring adverse consequences later. And given how the different parts of our system are linked to each other, we cannot simply change one part without affecting another.

We also have to remember that education is always a complex issue because it is tied deeply to our values as a people. We can, indeed, learn from other systems. We should be humble enough to learn and to pick the best practices; and, in effect, we have done so, including from Finland that many of you spoke about. But we cannot borrow wholesale as our context is different. We have to challenge our mindsets, and decide on what matters most to each of us.

We have to go back to the basics, and ask what we want to see in our children as they grow up, beyond just academic grades. For a start, much as our system is not perfect, it is studied by many nations all over the world – not only for what we do for our high achievers but also for how we uplift all our students.

Indeed, MOE's mission has been and continues to be to deliver a quality education, not just in a handful of good schools and universities, but to more than half a million students in schools and over 100,000 students in our institutes of higher learning.

Our success so far in equipping Singaporeans to meet the challenges of the future is a deep strength; and the strength which many nations would love to have. The challenges we are grappling with, therefore, need to be always viewed in perspective, so that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. But we shall not cease exploring how we can build even better schools, institutions and Universities.

I am very encouraged by the many voices we have heard in Our Singapore Conversation, including from over 5,000 educators in the first phase. From what we have heard so far, including views which have been articulated in this House, I discern two key areas where we need more in-depth conversations. First, many parents and students feel that our education system is too focused on examinations and grades. This excessive focus has several consequences. Some of you have highlighted these. Let me add to the list for completeness.

First, it may come at the expense of the development of well-rounded individuals, including the character and values of the student, which ultimately matters most. It may come at the expense of learning, as students "study to the test" and teachers respond by "teaching to the test", rather than to stimulate curiosity and a love for learning. Students may choose subjects and, indeed, schools may offer subjects, based on how easy it is to score good grades, rather than on their intrinsic value. And the recent debate over literature which Ms Janice Koh brought up is a case in point.

Other forms of talent – in the arts, sports, music, leadership ability, applied skills using both hands and head, and so on – are not sufficiently recognised. We should not just have an examination-based meritocracy. Rather, we should have a talent-centric meritocracy that recognises talent in a wide range of areas.

A major consequence of a single-minded focus on examinations is stress, in particular, stress related to competition and high-stake examinations, such as the PSLE, which Ms Denise Phua and several others have spoken about. Mr Lim Biow Chuan, indeed, started this debate by speaking vividly of stress. Now you know why the Minister for Education is also very stressed just listening to you.

Indeed, some mothers, I believe including some in this House, take leave for an entire year or more to help their children prepare for the PSLE. Many see entry into top schools as critical to their children's future, and prepare their children very early – some as early as kindergartens, and even sending them to two kindergartens. Many compete to get a place in popular Primary schools, or spend significantly on tuition, as Mr Low had also mentioned. Others worry about their children being streamed into Normal streams, and suffer from the labelling and stigma associated with it. Some teachers, who are committed to helping their students succeed, may give a lot of homework or set tests that are difficult, to stretch their students, but all with good intent. I appreciate the stress that parents, students and educators feel. This is an important issue.

Some are also concerned about the effects of competition. Successful students may develop a narrow, competitive mindset. They may come to believe that: "I have succeeded because I have worked hard, so I deserve nothing but the best for myself." While there are concerns about high-stake examinations, I have also heard other views, and there are others who see merit in the current system. Many feel that the current system sets clear standards. Many students have told me that examiantions challenge them to learn better. Teachers use examinations to determine students' mastery of the different subjects, and tailor their teaching strategies accordingly. In a public education system, examinations provide us with a standardised measure of progression and achievement, and ensure accountability across the system to uphold rigorous standards. In fact, this is one of the reasons why public examinations started. It also provides an objective way of determining entry into the next level of education. And in Singapore, examinations have helped assure a very high average among our students. That is why our students, even those who have got average, perform so well when they go overseas.

Some countries, such as the UK, Japan and Korea, and some states in the US that abolished examinations or made these easier, are now reversing course. Their experience has been that while removing examinations was popular and brought short-term relief, over time, insidiously, standards fall. They are now concerned that their youths are not equipped to compete in the global market place. And I should note that the people who suffer the most when educational standards drop in these countries are not the best students but the average students. That is why in some places, they say that while they may have high peaks, they also have deep valleys.

As for the stress that comes with high-stake examinations, many have also observed that some amount of stress is almost unavoidable. While excessive and prolonged stress is bad, a right amount of stress can bring out the best in each of us. But what is the optimal depends on each individual.

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Some parents have also said that some amount of competition is necessary – it is a reality of working life, and equipping our students to learn this early in life strengthens them for the future.

Indeed, this issue of stress and competition is not unique to Singapore. Some Members may have read that in New York, parents queue up to admit their children into high-end kindergartens, while in a recent report in the UK, rich parents pay up to £80,000 a year or S$150,000 to hire "well-qualified private tutors".

The common position is that we all want our children to get ahead in life, whether in Singapore or anywhere else in the world. The higher the aspiration, the greater the drive. The question we have to ask is: what exactly will ensure that our children can get ahead and be successful in the face of global competition, and not just relative to other Singaporeans?

The second area that some Members mentioned, but not as much, is that of opportunities, social mobility and inclusion. Some parents are concerned that without tuition, their children cannot cope, or cannot do well enough to excel.

Others like Ms Mary Liew spoke about this earlier – those whose children are doing well want them to do even better and procure all sorts of tuition and enrichment classes to help them advance. Some are concerned that in some schools, students tend to come from similar socio-economic backgrounds and have similar academic abilities. Without the opportunity to interact with students from different backgrounds and academic abilities, our students may not develop empathy, and our society may lose its cohesiveness.

Some have also cautioned that if we mix up our students too much, it will be harder to cater to the learning needs of different groups. We will lose our peaks of excellence and also fail to support those who may fall behind without different approaches.

I have given a long list of issues and viewpoints. Let me summarise that there are real tensions and differences in views among parents and educators. Some want rigorous examinations so as to maintain standards and accountability, while others want a well-rounded, holistic education that calibrates stress so as to bring out the best in each student, and create multiple opportunities for individuals to excel within a more inclusive system.

I have been thinking long and hard about these issues and we have had many sessions with our educators on these. Before we change our major policies, we must get back to fundamentals.

First, re-affirm the basic goals of education; and, second, in the light of the changing circumstances I outlined earlier and the differences in views, the fundamental strategy of how we will achieve these goals.

In the spirit of the Singapore Conversation, let me highlight some ideas for discussion. On the basic goals of education, allow me to highlight a few for discussion. We must, first and foremost, provide opportunities for every child to actualise his or her full potential, to be the best that he or she can be. And to achieve this, we must:

(a) develop a love for learning, stimulate a lively curiosity about the world around us and the urge to explore and discover;

(b) develop well-rounded individuals of integrity and sound character with strong social emotional maturity;

(c) build a strong foundation, especially in self confidence, literacy and numeracy, analytical and inventive thinking, communication skills and other 21st century competencies, so as to prepare Singaporeans to be life-long learners and succeed in a more globally competitive environment; and

(d) develop the abilities and interests in each child, so that he or she may go on in life to pursue these interests with passion, realise his or her aspirations, and have a fulfilling career.

Second, to nurture in each child a sense of responsibility to his fellow human beings, and a sense of commitment and loyalty to Singapore and fellow Singaporeans, so that he or she can contribute to taking Singapore forward.

To realise these goals, we have to re-think the fundamental approaches in tandem with changes in policy. First, we have to see education as a life-long journey, not a destination. It is an exciting journey of continual learning, discovery and mastery, not a competitive sprint.

This means learning the right things at the right time. For instance, the early years are about building the disposition for learning and discovery. We have to do what is developmentally appropriate at different stages of a child's education. Seeking to hothouse our children when they are in kindergarten and preparing them in advance for Primary school generates stress, and then, boredom when they enter Primary school.

Second, each child is different – in interests, aptitude and rate of development. Ideally, our system must allow each to learn at his or her own pace, customised to his or her different learning styles. But everyone must be encouraged to put in effort.

Third, we must develop students with a Singapore Heartbeat, with empathy for others, a regard for the common good, and a shared sense of responsibility for Singapore's well-being and future.

In the next phase of Our Singapore Conversation, we can discuss the various policy options. For example, the PSLE serves as an objective benchmark for Secondary school posting today. Important questions that we need to discuss include:

(a) How do we maintain our rigorous standards and accountability and whether we can allocate all Secondary school places without an objective benchmark like the PSLE?

(b) Are there alternative posting systems that are still objective, but can minimise the current over-emphasis on academic results, and enhance social inclusion?

(c) To what extent should choice or proximity to school be a consideration in Secondary school posting, as some have suggested?

Mr Gan Thiam Poh suggested that we stop publishing PSLE cut-off points of schools, and, indeed, that can be something that we can look into. Ms Denise Phua spoke about the model of a through train from pre-school all the way to Secondary school. Mr Yee spoke of some other method.

Let me say that, as another example, streaming at the Secondary level allows us to tailor instruction to the abilities and learning styles of our students. But some have questioned if we should re-think whether streaming is absolutely necessary, as Dr Intan had said earlier.

Important questions to discuss in the next phase of Our Singapore Conversation include:

(a) Can we ensure that every child can learn at his or her own pace, if there is no streaming?

(b) Will our schools be even less diverse if we did not have students from the various academic streams?

(ci) Can we replicate what we have done at the Primary level, such as subject-based banding, at the Secondary level? And that was the specific suggestion of Dr Intan.

All these can be discussed and debated thoroughly. I want to say that whatever we do, we must be deliberate and thoughtful about what we need to change, how fast we can change, and how far we can sustain these changes. We must have the resources to sustain any change.

I have been watching the debate on resources in various countries. Countries that have started with a big bang have now had to make very painful changes in order to cut back. Education is a long-term endeavour and always a work-in-progress. The results of our action today, good or bad, are evident only many years down the road. Even as we address current issues, we must be as thoughtful as we possibly can.

It is also critical for us not to see our education system in isolation. Education alone cannot enable Singaporeans to realise our aspirations. If our society fails, the able will emigrate, and the rest of us will be stuck here in failure. But if we stay and move together, we can succeed together.

Education alone cannot give us a good life, and we need to be clear what a good life is. If a good life is simply about getting ahead of others, and achieving the 5Cs – cash, condominium, car, credit card and country club – the competitive pressure in the workplace will define how we as parents and teachers view education.

Then no amount of changes in the education system can alter the reality of each of us chasing after material and positional goods. We cannot have broader definitions of success in education without our society accepting broader definitions of success in life. In many respects, the education system reflects societal norms and expectations.

So, I thank all Members, as well as Singaporeans and educators who have participated in the Our Singapore Conversation sessions, for raising these complex issues. MOE will continue these discussions by organising focused sessions and I look forward to hearing further views.

Madam, allow me to sum up. I have spoken today about providing the best opportunities for every child, starting from quality kindergarten to the levelling-up efforts that we will roll out in our Primary and Secondary schools, and reiterated the importance of a holistic education centred on values. We have built up a strong education system to develop all our students – and not just a select few – because every child, every Singaporean, is precious.

We constantly seek to improve, to better nurture our next generation, so that they can grow up to become the Singaporeans who will bring about the Singapore we aspire towards. And our children are the change we hope for.

Madam, I look forward to many more constructive conversations with my fellow Singaporeans.

The Chairman: I propose to take the break now and resume the Chair of the House.

Thereupon Mdm Speaker left the Chair of the Committee and took the Chair of the House.

Mdm Speaker: Order. I suspend the Sitting and will take the Chair again at 4.20 pm.

Sitting accordingly suspended

at 4.00 pm until 4.20 pm.

Sitting resumed at 4.20 pm

[ Mdm Speaker:

* *in the Chair]: Debate in Committee of Supply resumed.

[Mdm Speaker in the Chair]: ###### Head K (cont) –

Pre-school Education

Mr Zainudin Nordin (Bishan-Toa Payoh): Madam, I believe that in many aspects, Singapore can be held up as a great example of how education can support social mobility. Thanks to the efforts of the Government, and the strong work ethic of Singaporeans, many have worked hard, attained a good education, and thus better jobs. This helps them rise through the social ladder, and achieve a better life for themselves and their families.

But, Madam, the most basic rung of this educational ladder is pre-school education. More and more studies have concluded that the quality of pre-school education is a strong factor in determining how a child performs in later school life. It is, therefore, imperative that our pre-school system is both robust and armed with resources to give our children a good start in their school life.

I am not talking about hot-housing our kids so that they can obtain good grades. This is not the answer. What I am talking about is to allow our children time for quality interactions with peers, and with highly motivated teachers who have the skills and passion to make learning fun and develop a child holistically.

Madam, more than 10 years ago, during my maiden speech as a Member in this House, I had questioned the wisdom of Singapore leaving the pre-school sector in the hands of the community and the private sector. I had called on MOE to "take charge" of the pre-school sector. My belief then and even until today is simple and, that is: "The Ministry of Education can ensure the quality and standards of early childhood education and kindergartens. This is to ensure that a strong foundation is in place when they continue to Primary education. The Ministry of Education has an impeccable record, locally and internationally, and I see no reason why we cannot do the same for early childhood education." Today, I am, therefore, elated that our Government has taken steps to provide clear guidance and is willing to take the lead towards an improved pre-school sector.

But, Madam, they say that the devil is in the details. So, I would like to know what are MOE's concrete plans to improve the quality of pre-school education. How would MOE work with the pre-school operators to improve and upgrade their operations? What will be done to improve, upgrade and upskill our pre-school professionals? We know that it has always been difficult to find motivated and skilled pre-school teachers – this is a situation that has persisted for more than 10 years. When there is competition for talent, monetary rewards alone are not sufficient to attract the best talent. We need a holistic package, which includes opportunities for upgrading, advancement and, most importantly, to implement innovative and cutting-edge teaching practices. What does MOE intend to do to attract and retain talent in this field? What more can be done to improve the working conditions and remuneration package of the pre-school teachers?

Early Childhood Training and Education

Ms Faizah Jamal (Nominated Member): Madam, I declare my interest as an environment educator and have, on a few occasions, been invited as guest facilitator in early childhood training. I am interested to know what emphasis MOE will place on enhancing outdoor and environment education in the present module of environment awareness or "Discover Your World" in the pre-school education. From my observations as guest facilitator, I feel there is much more that can be done.

Madam, our young people are more connected to the cyber world than the natural world, even as young as age four. We are already at risk of what Richard Louv, in his groundbreaking book called "Last Child in the Woods", termed "nature-deficit disorder". It is not a medical term. He defines it as "the human costs of alienation from nature", among which are diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties and the higher rates of physical and emotional illness. Reports in our local press bear this out, as we read about in the rise in obesity cases and of our kids being stressed out and needing psychiatric help at a very early age.

Louv advocates for outdoor play. He is clear, however, that he does not mean sports or other structured programmes but, rather, unstructured play in natural spaces with proper adult guidance. This nurtures children's innate ability for curiosity, creativity and wonder. Kids learn the inter-connectedness of life and how they have an impact on something bigger than themselves, both positively and negatively. When kids learn to name, touch, taste, smell and feel things in nature, they are more likely to protect them. They learn empathy and compassion, values that will take them to adulthood.

Madam, from my work with young adults, I have seen the power of nature as a values-based educator where even at age 19 or 20, students are able to shape their attitudes towards a more life-enhancing form. If this can happen at this age, then it can be even more powerful at an even younger age.

For this to happen, we need self-aware sensitive adults, who themselves would have first experienced the natural world and who are trained in good facilitation in outdoor and environment education. So, I am advocating that such exposure and skills should include, to name just two, not only properly guided trips but also properly facilitated – and I emphasise "properly facilitated" trips – to different habitats like the Bukit Timah forest and Sungei Buloh mangroves for an intimate understanding of the inter-connectedness of systems and how this, in turn, connects to us, human beings, as well as trips to waste management plants to highlight the impact of our consumer lifestyle that we have on our island. In such ways will these pre-school teachers be better equipped to create exciting environment programmes for their young charges.

Junior College Education

Mr Yee Jenn Jong: Madam, I declare that I am an Advisory Board member of a Junior College (JC). Observations in this cut are not from that JC. I am concerned with a trend I noted in JC Year 1 promotion examinations, or the promo. There is no universal standard. Some JCs fail more than 50% of students at the promo. There will be a re-test, of which I found that, in some JCs, the number of students retained or left JC after Year 1 is very high. The highest I found is around 200 students in a cohort of 800 Year 1's.

Ironically, it is not the JCs that take in the weakest students that have the highest failing rate. Some are mid-tier JCs taking around the 10-pointers. The high failure rate seems not to be about the students' abilities but the standard imposed by each JC. MOE has left schools to decide their promos. Are standards too high in some? Is high examination failure rate consistent with MOE's vision of holistic development? Is there a need for MOE to moderate?

I also find that there are many who favour the JC route because it seems more prestigious. I commend MOE for making the Polytechnics into a viable and respectable path for the skills-inclined students to be able to enter University. Perhaps, this can be communicated more strongly to clear some biasness that Polytechnic graduates will find it hard to enter University, and for Secondary schools to engage in guidance and counselling to better explain the JC and Polytechnic options to students.

Edusave for University Education

Mr Gan Thiam Poh: Madam, MOE's investment in education helps ensure that every child, regardless of family circumstances and background, has access to opportunities. I would like the Minister to consider either setting up a lifelong learning savings account or topping up each child's Edusave account by $2,000 per year up to the age of 20 strictly for the use of his or her University education in future, regardless of whether the university is in Singapore or overseas. This will help alleviate their parents' concern about the child's education cost.

4.30 pm

Enhancing Edusave

Mr Png Eng Huat (Hougang): Madam, the Edusave scheme was started in 1993 to provide equal educational opportunities for school children, including access to enrichment programmes run by the schools. Over the years, its scope has been expanded to benefit more students through Edusave awards and scholarships. Correspondingly, enrichment programmes under the Edusave Pupils Fund have also been expanded to include more activities. Some enrichment programmes engage external professional instructors and may come with accredited certification at the end of the course. With this development, many activities do not come cheap anymore. Even taking non-competitive CCA can deplete the Edusave Pupils Fund account rather rapidly. If we factor in the paraphernalia parents sometimes have to buy for their children to support the selected activities, the out-of-pocket expenses for these activities can be a financial burden for low- and middle income families.

I would like to ask MOE what the guidelines are for schools to ensure Edusave money is well utilised, that is, low- and middle income families will not need to fork out additional cash payment for their children to enjoy some of these enrichment programmes. Is there any additional help for children whose Edusave account may not have enough to sign up for such programmes?

Level Playing Field at the Autonomous Universities

Asst Prof Tan Kheng Boon Eugene (Nominated Member): Madam, I declare my interest as an academic at the Singapore Management University. The tertiary education sector is one where there will always be a need for non-Singaporean faculty members. Not all available positions can be filled by Singaporeans. Demand for academics is greater than the supply of qualified Singaporeans here.

There is also the imperative to hire faculty members to enable our universities to add both breadth and depth to their teaching and research. We must remain open to international talent in the recruitment of students, faculty and staff. However, can the Education Ministry state its position on, and also explain the rationale for, our taxpayer-funded autonomous Universities paying foreign faculty members more than equally qualified Singaporeans for doing the same job?

Foreign academics are given housing allowances and education allowances for their children below 18 years of age. The total cost for such a package would vary among our Universities. However, a ballpark figure in one such institution could be a difference of about $100,000 annually for a foreign academic with three school-going children between the ages of five and 18.

I appreciate that this was perhaps necessary two or three decades ago when our Universities were seeking to build their international reputations, the Singapore dollar was not as strong as it is today, and Singapore was probably a hardship assignment. But things are vastly different today. Our Universities have good and growing international reputations. The Government's unstinting support, especially through capitation grants and research funding, means that the future of tertiary education here is bright. We are in an enviable position when compared with North America, Europe and Australasia where deep funding cuts to the university sector have made higher education there challenging. And our Universities pay competitively as well. We now have several academics in our Universities who are paid in excess of $1 million annually.

Why do we perpetuate the differential treatment between Singapore and foreign academics? What signals are we sending to Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans alike with this blatant discrimination on the basis of one's citizenship? This is not a call – I must emphasise – for preferential treatment for Singaporeans. Instead, this is an appeal to the Government and our Universities for a level playing field and equal treatment.

A Singapore core is not nurtured through Singaporeans being discriminated against. This is also an appeal to remain staunchly faithful to our ethos of being a meritocracy.

If the allowances for housing and children's education are deemed necessary for foreign faculty members, then Singaporean academics should not be disadvantaged. My greatest concern with this differential and discriminatory treatment is the signal it sends to the tertiary education sector and the Singaporean public. It results in a "foreigner-is-better" mentality. Worse, it harks back to a neo-colonial mindset, but one that we impose on ourselves, that Singaporeans are not good enough and that the local talent pool is impoverished. More worryingly, it undermines the Government's declared commitment to develop home-grown expertise that is needed for the long-term development of our tertiary education institutions.

As I said in the debate on the Population White Paper, is it any surprise that a foreign Caucasian dean once declared, "It makes us a world-class school", when explaining why a Caucasian was used in an admission prospectus cover photo of a publicly-funded autonomous University. What does it mean to be Singaporean in this case?

Promoting Literature in Schools

Ms Janice Koh (Nominated Member): Mdm Chair, in a speech addressing the Humanities Educators Conference last year, the Minister for Education spoke about the importance of the Humanities in developing "21st Century Competencies" in our students. He listed many good reasons why the Humanities should be part of every student's educational diet, but I was surprised that Literature was left out entirely in his speech.

Literature, of all the subjects we teach in schools, is most directly concerned with good critical thinking, written and verbal communication, cultural understanding, human empathy and imaginative possibilities. The study of Literature requires students to make sense of ambiguous data, multiple or conflicting sources of information and different points of view.

Of all the disciplines on the curriculum, Literature gives us a means to think about not only what is or what was in the world around us, but what could be. Stories, be they in the form of novels, poems or plays, allow us to step outside ourselves and connect with the world much bigger than our own. It, therefore, opens up many avenues to teach ethics and values and helps us understand aspects of sociology, philosophy and history. In a simpler past, you could argue that these cognitive skills might have been less valued. In today's more complex and volatile world, these capabilities have become much more essential. It is no longer enough for us to count on a basic functional understanding of language. Madam, we need Literature.

So, why has Literature enrolment rates at "O" and "N(A)" Levels been declining in our schools over the years? Madam, with your permission, may I ask the Clerk to distribute some handouts?

The Chairman: Yes, please. [ Handouts were distributed to hon Members .]

Ms Janice Koh: Madam, Literature at "O" Level saw a significant drop of 81% in enrolment rates between 1992 and 2012. At Normal (Academic) Level, the drop was even more severe – by about 91% over the same period. How did this striking decline come about? When these figures were published, I received a torrent of emails and messages from teachers, students, lecturers and writers offering many explanations.

The most cited reason was the introduction of school rankings in the 1990s, which motivated many schools to concentrate on offering subjects which were a better "guarantee" of high scores at the critical "O" Level examinations. As a result, Literature, which is said to be harder to score in, was shed by many schools and students. This perceived difficulty seems to be a misperception, since pass rates for "O" Level Literature are on par with Geography and History, and as many as 40% of those taking Literature earn distinctions.

Literature took a further beating when Combined Humanities was introduced as a compulsory subject in 2001. Social studies had to be paired with either Literature, Geography or History as an Elective. As you can see, the 2012 "O" Level enrolment rates show a disproportionate number of students taking Geography and History rather than Literature as an Elective. Some have argued that the nature of the social studies syllabus is better paired with Geography and History, and that these subjects are perceived to be more factual and, therefore, easier to score.

Madam, I have no intention of starting "subject wars" between the Humanities. In fact, I am equally disturbed by the tremendous drop in enrolment rates for Full Geography and Full History between 2001 and 2012. My concern is this: has this emphasis on academic performance perpetuated an unhealthy pre-occupation within our educational system to favour subjects with "model answers" and 10-year series solutions? If so, what does this say about our priorities in education and is it something the Ministry intends to redress?

I think what we have here is a distortion in the market. Despite the benefits that subjects like Literature bring to the educational diet, schools and students will still shy away from it, if a subject is regarded as optional or secondary to other objectives, such as achieving top grades or top rankings. A vicious cycle then develops. As fewer schools offer Literature and fewer teachers are deployed to teach it, fewer students are able to take the subject, and so on.

Among Literature teachers that I have spoken to, morale has been understandably low. The marginalisation of Literature is felt keenly on the ground. Many who are passionate about it have been deployed to teach other subjects because their schools do not offer Literature at Upper Secondary, or there are not enough students to fill a class. There are also stories of students who want to take "O" Level Literature, but are not able to do so at their school, including Normal (Academic) students, whom I hear are sometimes told that they are not bright enough to do such a "difficult" subject.

In response, let me share a story from a Literature teacher who told me about her stint in a neighbourhood school. She says, and I quote, "Lit lessons required three teachers in my school: one to stop students from throwing chairs, one to keep students awake and the last one to deliver the lesson. In such a school, where students come either with no book or a book without a cover, and can barely read two pages because they can't sit still, Lit has given them the opportunity to discuss the issues they face in their own lives, which no other lesson in school gives legitimate time to discuss. That's why school seems irrelevant to them. But when we talk about the educational opportunities and family backgrounds in Mingfong Ho's "Sing to the Dawn", these kids suddenly pipe up to champion against sexism, and they respond to issues like the different chances rich and poor people get. How else, apart from Literature, do we engage the students who aren't motivated to learn?"

Madam, we need Literature. It is high time we give Literature a boost in our schools and I hope MOE will consider some of these suggestions on how we may do so.

First, we need to enhance the teaching of the English Language itself to include literary texts, techniques and skills. Our language use needs to grow up. In most well-developed educational systems around the world, language is not taught without Literature. For example, the New York Regents English examination and the International Baccalaureate are two recognised approaches that incorporate Literature into their language curriculum.

Singapore's new 2010 English Language syllabus encourages the use of rich text. This could serve as a springboard to provide our classrooms with a broad range of literary works. These should be age-appropriate and resonate with our youth. Some schools are already trying to do this by introducing Singapore writing in their classrooms, and they report that students often relate better to home-grown texts.

Second, our teachers need to be further prepared in order for standards of English to advance. Right now, trainee teachers are sometimes asked to teach English even though Language or Literature may not have been their subject of expertise at University. More can be done to prepare our English Language teachers to infuse Literature and "literary thinking" into their lessons.

Third, we should consider infusing Literature into Social Studies. There are many literary texts that speak eloquently to the issues at the core of the Singapore story: poems, short stories and plays can capture the Singapore experience and what it means to be Singaporean in ways that a dry textbook cannot. The 2002 Total Defence Campaign for schools, for instance, featured a series of Singapore short stories, each encapsulating one aspect of Total Defence, and, I am told, it went down well with the students.

In fact, why not consider folding in all the Humanities into the Combined Humanities subject, so that students benefit from synergies gained from studying Geography with History and with Literature? Indeed, this is how the Classical Humanities themselves were conceived and taught – as a pan-disciplinary study of human relations, endeavour, and expression.

And, finally, we should make sure that all our schools offer Literature as a subject at every level. We may need to create an external teaching academy for Literature, as was done for Third Language studies, to pool together students from different schools that may not individually have enough candidates to run classes.

Madam, please allow me to end with a little story by a Singapore writer Tan Mei Ching titled "In The Quiet", which is part of an anthology called "Telltale", taught as part of the "O" Level Literature syllabus. It is about a young girl who suddenly loses her best friend Audrey in a traffic accident. The school is in shock, but Standard Operating Procedures kick in. The narrator goes through the motions of the funeral, but she finds herself numb. She wants to grieve but her eyes are dry. And as she walks past her form teacher, Mrs C, she thinks – and I quote from the story: "…it's not that I don't feel sad. Because Mrs C, you only taught us equations and solutions, and I was supposed to know the solution to every problem. I was supposed to learn the ways to solve them, these theoretical numbers and signs and symbols put together." You see, her education was incomplete: she lacked the language to come to terms with the enormity of her best friend's death.

The author says this story is based on her true personal experiences. So, she did after all find the words, later in life. Literature is not about just quoting fine words from old books. It is about exploring ways to think the unthinkable, and to express ideas about what is difficult or intractable in life, that cannot always be quantified or solved like an equation. Madam, the world is not about to get any simpler. We need Literature.

Scholarships for Regional Studies

Mr Chen Show Mao (Aljunied): Madam, as a Southeast Asian nation, Singapore shares much of our history and heritage with our neighbours. There is much to be gained by closer exchanges between the students of our countries and we should offer more opportunities for Singaporean students to do so.

At present, MOE offers an ASEAN scholarship programme to citizens of some ASEAN countries to undertake studies in our local schools at the pre-tertiary and undergraduate levels.

The Minister said that ASEAN scholarships are offered to promising ASEAN students, to "promote mutual understanding and goodwill in the region" and that "ASEAN students add diversity and vibrancy to our educational institutions. Singaporean students, interacting with international students, enjoy the opportunity to learn from other cultures and experiences and become more prepared for the global marketplace."

4.45 pm

Madam, Singaporean students, too, will benefit from the diversity of educational institutions in our neighbouring countries, and the Minister's aims of closer understanding and goodwill can also be achieved by offering similar opportunities to Singaporean students to study in our neighbouring countries – much like under the ASEAN scholarships – and also by having more Singaporean students study the region around us – much like under the current Regional Studies Programme Scholarship at the pre-University level, which is restricted to three schools and offered to a select group of students for two years.

Could this programme be expanded to allow more students − both at the Secondary and University levels − the opportunity to learn more about our surrounding region, and to also offer more chances for our students to go on visits and to take part in exchange programmes with our neighbouring countries?

By encouraging more of such exchanges to take place at the individual level through scholarship studies, we will also be facilitating Singapore's foreign relations through our students' engagement with their peers in other countries in meaningful dialogue.

Polytechnic Education

Mr Zainudin Nordin: Madam, let me declare that I am currently working in one of the local Polytechnics. Mdm Chair, our Polytechnics offer education and training that are industry-relevant in a large variety of areas. Students can develop their passion and interests, and become skilled contributors in many industries.

Madam, as we plan for the future of Singapore, it is relevant to ask how the various institutes of higher learning form the overall landscape of training and development for our school-leaving students.

Is there a better way to make the education that our students receive more relevant for the industries in the future? Are there any longer term plans by which our Polytechnic students can upgrade themselves? In other words, where does Polytechnic education fit in our overall manpower development? What are the pathways by which Polytechnic students can continuously upgrade, and what support can be given to them in their life-long learning journey towards a better future?

The Senior Minister of State for Education (Ms Indranee Rajah): Mdm Chairperson, I thank the Members for their questions and comments. The comments can be grouped into roughly four categories: first, on pre-school; secondly, education and the balance between Sciences and the Humanities; thirdly, many pathways to success; and the rest were miscellaneous questions. I will take these in turn.

Mr Zainudin Nordin asked about the improvements to the quality of pre-school education, working conditions, welfare, remuneration and strategies to attract and retain pre-school professionals.

The keys to quality pre-school education are a good curriculum and good pre-school teachers. In February this year, I launched the refreshed Kindergarten Curriculum Framework called the KCF, as part of MOE's Comprehensive Kindergarten Curriculum. The KCF lays out holistic learning goals that we want children to achieve at the end of K2. These goals include not just literacy and numeracy skills, but also how children relate to themselves and their peers, and how they express themselves confidently. MOE firmly believes that pre-school education is about teaching children how to learn and helping them discover the joy of learning. The aim of pre-school is to teach children good foundational concepts, and not to have them learn the entire Primary 1 syllabus before they start Primary 1.

I would like, if I may, to show some examples of how these concepts work. Mdm Chairperson, with your permission, may I display some slides on the LED screens?

The Chairman: Yes, please. [ Some slides were shown to hon Members .]

Ms Indranee Rajah: In this first slide, you see the first week of kindergarten at PLAY@Temasek Polytechnic. Here, the children realised that not everyone could see the board from where they were seated. It led to discussions on how to overcome the problem. They then planned the seating arrangement such that taller children sat behind. This led to the need to decide who was taller and who was shorter. The children then used different methods to compare their heights, such as standing in front of a mirror together, measuring themselves while lying on the ground, and using strips of paper to compare their body lengths. They then arranged themselves from tallest to shortest and proposed a new seating plan.

Now, this was structured as play, but it allowed the children to learn. They were learning numeracy concepts and skills, such as comparing and ordering, which are the bases of measurement. They were learning problem-solving; and they were learning social skills, such as working with their friends, and making decisions while considering the viewpoints of others.

In the next slide, also at PLAY@Temasek, the children had to learn how to relate to one another in a group setting. They were always eager to share their ideas and found it difficult to wait for their turn to speak. In this picture, the children watched a video of themselves in class and identified the inappropriate behaviours.

They had a discussion in class on how turn-taking could be better managed and they came up with rules for turn-taking. By constructing class rules, they took ownership of the rules and learned negotiation, problem-solving, and how to interact in a group. Members may not be able to see it from here, but I will just tell you some of the rules they came up with. These include: we should listen, we should not play, we should not talk, we should not speak when someone is speaking; we should not interrupt; and we should listen to the person who is speaking.

Mdm Chairperson, if you think about it, that is very much like the Standing Orders of Parliament. So, we are actually preparing them with foundational concepts for a good future ahead.

We turn now to the next slide which is a picture of Ascension Kindergarten. Here you see music and movement activity where children move around the room with small quick steps or large slow actions depending on the visual cues in the form of cards with different shapes on them. The children take turns to lead and to control the activity by holding up these cards.

Again, although they are playing and having fun, they are indirectly learning the concepts of: (a) leading and influencing the behaviour of their friends; (b) how to follow instructions; (c) how to control their movements when they take big and small steps; and (d) exploring the elements of music, such as tempo.

Some parents worry that the learning goals articulated in the Kindergarten Framework may be too basic and may not adequately prepare children for Primary 1. They are also concerned that Primary schools may have higher expectations than the goals set in the KCF.

To these concerns, I would like to say that MOE developed the learning goals in the KCF with feedback from both the pre-school and Primary school educators. The KCF reflects alignment of learning goals at the end of K2, and what we expect the children to be able to do and know upon entry to Primary 1. It establishes a common understanding among educators on how to better support a child's learning in the pre-school years and at Primary 1.

MOE has engaged Primary school leaders on how to ensure a smooth transition from K2 to formal schooling, including the appropriate teaching approaches and pitching of lessons at Primary 1. MOE will continue to engage teachers and key personnel in Primary schools to ensure that Primary 1 learning is appropriately paced, and Primary 1 teachers continue to revisit and reinforce what has been taught and learnt in the pre-school years.

Primary schools would also provide additional support to those children who need more time to attain the K2 learning goals. And we ask for parents' support in this endeavour.

The next item, Teachers. MOE will continue to invest in raising the quality of teaching in pre-school centres. Committed and high-quality teachers are the heart of a good pre-school experience. We have raised the minimum qualifications for kindergarten-level teachers over the years. The minimum professional qualification is the Diploma in Early Childhood Care and Education – Teaching. This is a diploma-level qualification offered by Polytechnics and private training agencies. The percentage of kindergarten-level teachers who have undergone or are undergoing training for this diploma has increased from 58% in 2007 to 85.5% in 2012.

Going ahead, our Polytechnics will increase the number of places for both full-time and part-time kindergarten-level teacher training programmes, starting from 2014. We also need to attract and retain individuals with the right dispositions to nurture and inspire children. This involves recognising pre-school teachers as professionals, and providing them with respectable salaries and good career opportunities.

To achieve this, MOE has been improving access to professional development opportunities for pre-school teachers. Between 2011 and 2012, about 550 pre-school educators benefited from Government provision of scholarships, teaching awards and bursaries for training and professional development.

MOE also provides training opportunities in leadership, curriculum and pedagogy. We also recognise outstanding kindergarten teachers by working closely with professional bodies, such as the Association for Early Childhood Educators, Singapore, to identify and present awards to outstanding kindergarten teachers. Funding is provided for these teachers to attend mentoring courses, overseas conferences and study trips.

Ms Faizah Jamal spoke about environment in the pre-school curriculum, and I agree with her that education about the environment should be an important part of pre-school education.

The refreshed Kindergarten Curriculum Framework includes "Discovery of the World" as one of its key learning areas. This encourages pre-school centres to harness the children's natural curiosity towards the world around them and help them learn how to care for the environment.

We support teachers in bringing environmental education to the pre-school classroom. The Diploma in Early Childhood Care and Education-Teaching includes curriculum planning and pedagogies for nurturing children's awareness of their environment. And the Kindergarten Curriculum Framework includes suggestions on how teachers can provide opportunities for children to develop interest in the world around them by bringing them outdoors on field trips and neighbourhood walks.

The environment – including our housing estates – is a natural classroom for our children. But much depends on the imagination of the teachers on how to use these "natural classrooms" creatively. Many kindergartens have, in fact, designed programmes, with MOE support, to teach children about care and respect for the environment.

MOE's Innovation Grant has supported 35 kindergarten-initiated nature- and environment-related innovation projects since 2008. In 2013, MOE was collaborating with NTU on a project designed to help children in 23 kindergartens to learn about nature, coastal and recycling awareness.

This next slide shows the PCF Buona Vista making a trip to the beach – not for a picnic, but for a coastal clean-up. Through this outdoor activity, the children learnt the consequences of beach litter on the seashore and marine ecosystems.

Moving on now to Literature. Ms Janice Koh spoke passionately about this, and MOE agrees with Ms Koh that Literature is an important subject in an increasingly global and complex world.

The 21st Century competencies we need to develop in our students would include things like communication and cross-cultural awareness, and Literature has a role to play in this. Through Literature, one learns about life, people and values. Literature also hones writing and debating skills, as well as critical analysis, as noted by Ms Koh. But more than that, the most important reason why anyone should take Literature is just for the sheer joy of it – the beauty of the language, the evocativeness of imagery; the power of words; the characters who come to life, and the emotions that leap off the page.

As I mentioned in answer to a previous PQ, Literature is compulsory for lower Secondary students. So, the area for the Member's concern is really the upper Secondary years. And Ms Koh had mentioned the drop in Literature since ranking was introduced and, later on, the combined Humanities.

If I may just put things in perspective, in terms of each "O" Level cohort, there were about 3,000 students offering Full Literature as an examinable subject in 2012. So, that is for Full Literature. But in addition to this, where Literature is an elective to the combined Humanities, there were an additional 3,000. So, in total, this made up about 6,000 students offering Literature in 2012. Since the introduction of the Humanities electives in 2002, the overall number of students offering Literature – Full plus Elective – has remained largely stable, in the range of 6,000 to 7,000.

The fact remains, of course, that the number of students offering Literature has fallen, compared to 20 years ago. This is, in large part, attributable to the perception that it is difficult to score in Literature. However, the proportion of Distinctions in Literature among "O" level graduates is about 41%, which shows that it is very much within the realm of possibility to do well in Literature. Ranking, as you know, has been done away with. So, I think the stage is set really for schools and students to be able to take up Literature with a great deal more enthusiasm than before.

The key to having a strong Literature programme is – and this was noted in the newspapers a few days back – students with a strong interest in the subject; passionate teachers; supportive principals; and a good foundation in English.

MOE is fully in support of the schools offering Full Literature at the upper Secondary level. Ms Koh had made various suggestions, two of which are already in play – enhancing the teaching of English as a language, and Literature; and also supporting teachers to be better prepared.

5.00 pm

Currently, there are resource-sharing sessions and workshops in designing the Literature curriculum for teachers, as well as Biennial Literature Symposium, which features seminars on pedagogy and assessment. Ms Koh had made some other suggestions which we would be happy to study.

But this issue is not about Literature alone. The broader issue is about encouraging more students to take up Humanities subjects. We have been traditionally strong in Mathematics and Sciences, less so in the Humanities. This is not desirable in the long run. So, it is important that we have students who have interest to do well in both the Sciences and the Humanities. Singapore needs both in the 21st century, and MOE will encourage the schools and Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) to promote and support Humanities subjects along with the Sciences.

Mr Chen Show Mao spoke about ASEAN and a need to promote understanding and goodwill. That is correct, but this need not necessarily be done through scholarships alone. There are a variety of ways in which MOE facilitates the interaction, understanding and promotion of goodwill amongst students from ASEAN countries. Students in our schools learn about ASEAN and the region through the Humanities syllabi. They also have opportunities to participate in overseas learning journeys or student exchange programmes. So, MOE coordinates student exchange programmes, such as the ASEAN Student Exchange Programme (ASEP) and the Singapore-Thailand Enhanced Partnership Camp (STEP). These involve cultural exchanges and activities to enhance students' learning and to foster friendship and ties.

At the tertiary level, NUS, NTU and SMU are part of the ASEAN University Network (AUN), which provides both faculty and students with access to regional exchange programmes. Our university students can also access a wide variety of financial support options for overseas exchanges to ASEAN countries.

I move on now to our post-Secondary education landscape. Mr Yee Jenn Jong asked about the promotional examinations for Junior College 1 (JC1). Our JCs set their own examinations based on their respective student profiles and develop their own criteria for progression to the second year of their JC course. Hence, there is no standardised measurement of pass/fail across the JCs in the first year promotional examinations.

MOE's data show that approximately 6% of first year JC students in each cohort were retained. The two JCs with the highest retention rates at JC1 averaged about 15% over the past three years.

MOE recognises that school leaders have a good understanding of their students' needs and can best judge how to help them succeed. JCs thus develop their own examinations and criteria for progression to the second year of their JC course, so that it is tailored to suit the students in their JC. At the same time, students are counselled if the "A" level course is not the most suitable pathway for them. Some may proceed to further their education in post-Secondary institutes, for example, the Polytechnics.

MOE closely monitors progression rates of students as they progress from one stage of the education system to the next. And we continuously seek to improve the educational career guidance we provide Secondary students to help them make appropriate educational choices.

I move on now to the ITEs and the Polytechnics. The ITEs and Polytechnics are key institutions in our post-Secondary education landscape. They have had a long and successful history of providing hands-on and industry-oriented training to two-thirds of each Primary 1 cohort. And we are very proud of our Polytechnic and ITE students.

If we look at this next slide, Members may be forgiven for thinking that it is a scene from an Emergency Room. It is actually part of the training facilities at the Health Sciences Department of Nanyang Polytechnic. And, here, the students are undergoing training for an emergency situation in a real-life setting. I have met some of them; they are very enthusiastic and passionate about what they do.

Similarly, ITE has many people imbued with passion for their work and study. Here, you see on the left hand side, a student, Muhammad Salehan B Jaafar. He aspires to become a pastry chef after graduation. And although his GCE "N" level results allowed him to progress to the GCE "O" level, he chose instead to enrol in ITE College West to pursue his interest in baking. On the right is Joan Lee. When I asked why she enrolled in the course, she said it is because her passion had always been in baking, and she first learnt her baking from recipes on the Internet. Here are some shots of what they have done – that is a Strawberry Fantasy, Classic Roast Lamb Rack, Mango Cheese Tranche and Coffee Art – very well done but these are people, students who pursue it with passion and you can see that they have the right passion. When they go out in life, they will be able to do well.

To bring about a better student experience at ITE, we established the "One ITE, Three Colleges" model, distinguished by the opening of ITE College Central in Ang Mo Kio earlier this year. The three regional campuses in Simei, Choa Chu Kang and Ang Mo Kio will enable ITE to deliver greater inter-disciplinary training and provide modern facilities that enhance campus life and support a high quality of education.

In 2014, we will be piloting a two-year Extended NITEC Foundation Programme aimed at levelling up the literacy and numeracy skills of academically-weaker Normal (Technical) students ahead of their core NITEC year at ITE. Currently, about 22% of each Primary 1 cohort progresses to ITE. However, the rising expectations of the economy and the shifting emphasis towards more highly-skilled manpower have resulted in a more demanding technical curriculum at ITE. As a result, some ITE students find it difficult to complete their NITEC programmes within two years.

The Extended NFP is intended to better prepare these students for successful completion of their NITEC courses. Students in the Extended NFP will spend three years at ITE for their NITEC programmes, instead of the usual two – they will undergo two years of foundation training before progressing to their career core curriculum in the third year.

The Extended NFP will be available to Normal (Technical)-level school leavers with less than two Normal (Technical)-level passes. The programme will cover, firstly, technical training, which is designed to prepare students for the NITEC career core modules that they will take in their third year; secondly, an integrated academic foundation programme to build up literacy and numeracy skills; and, thirdly, socio-emotional support elements to improve self-confidence and motivation.

Upon completion of the second year of the Extended NFP, students will obtain the NITEC Foundation Certification (NFC). If they are unable to complete the career core modules in the third year and obtain a NITEC certificate, the NFC will allow them to continue their learning journeys in the future after gaining some work experience.

For the 2014 pilot, ITE will admit 180 Normal (Technical) students with zero or one N-Level subject passes into the Extended NFP. The Extended NFP will also be open to eligible candidates from NorthLight School and Assumption Pathway School, who are currently unable to enrol into the existing two-year NITEC programme as they may not have acquired the necessary literacy and/or numeracy foundations required for the NITEC programme.

Members will see from this that we are striving hard to give each student the right kind of support at every step of the way, to bring out the best in them depending on his or her aptitude, ability and speed of learning. What is important is that at the end of the day, they come out knowing that they have the opportunity to go further if they wish to, and with confidence and belief in themselves, knowing that we believe in them, too.

Mr Zainudin Nordin asked about the longer-term role of the Polytechnics. Together, the five Polytechnics form a core pillar of our education system, and will remain so. They offer over 200 Pre-Employment Training (PET) and 110 Continuing Education and Training (CET) courses across various disciplines.

Polytechnic graduates are distinguished by their work-readiness – nine out of every 10 Polytechnic graduates go on to secure employment within six months of graduation. Many opt to enter the workforce immediately and apply their vocational training in their respective industries, before pursuing higher qualifications. MOE understands that going back to school as a working adult requires some flexibility, so we have rolled out a plethora of part-time upgrading pathways. Polytechnic diploma holders can re-skill or upgrade by taking up part-time diploma and post-diploma programmes. They are modular, giving them flexibility to pursue the degree, together with work or other commitments.

Last year, the Government extended a 70% subsidy to all Singaporeans pursuing their first part-time diploma programme at the Polytechnics, even if they held a diploma or degree previously or had previously consumed a partial subsidy in the course of full-time study. Polytechnic graduates may also pursue degrees at our Universities.

Let me touch briefly on the University landscape. Currently, we have Universities which offer full-time degrees but we also have those which offer part-time degrees, and the Singapore Institute of Technology was established in 2009 to provide more degree opportunities for Polytechnic graduates. The Government has also started to fund degree programmes at our tertiary arts institutions like the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), and LASALLE College of the Arts.

Mr Lim Biow Chuan and Ms Mary Liew were concerned about access to University education for Singaporean students. MOE recognises the growing aspirations of Singaporeans for a degree education.

We are currently on track to achieving a 30% university Cohort Participation Rate (CPR) by 2015. In August last year, the Prime Minister announced that we will further expand access to publicly-funded full-time degree places for Singaporeans. We will add 3,000 publicly-funded full-time degree places by 2020, growing University cohort participation to 40%. This translates to about 16,000 publicly-funded full-time degree places each year from 2020.

SIT and UniSIM will play key roles in bringing this vision to fruition; SIT will become an autonomous University, and UniSIM will start to offer Government-funded full-time degree programmes. They will roll out many more programmes to suit different interests and passions. SIT and UniSIM will also pioneer a new applied degree pathway, which adopts a practice-oriented pedagogical approach. This applied degree pathway provides an alternative to the more theoretical content and pedagogy of our existing AUs.

One unique aspect of their degree programmes is the work-study component, which provides a strong nexus between what is learned in school and what is learned in the workplace. SIT and UniSIM are working closely with the industry on the curriculum and structure of their new degree programmes.

Asst Prof Eugene Tan asked about remuneration paid to Singaporean and non-Singaporean academics in the AUs. To be internationally competitive, we need to give remuneration that would attract both local and international talent. The AUs are autonomous Universities, which means that they have autonomy in governance, including flexibility in the areas of appointment, promotion and remuneration of faculty members. This enables them to tailor competitive remuneration packages to better attract and retain top Singaporean and international faculty.

The base salary and criteria for performance-based bonuses at our AUs are the same for Singaporean and non-Singaporean academics. Housing allowances take into account whether academics have to relocate and whether they have their own housing in Singapore. Academics recruited from overseas may, therefore, receive housing allowances but, similarly, Singaporean faculty recruited from overseas may be eligible for a housing allowance if they do not own a property in Singapore and have to rent in the open market. The exact terms of these allowances differ across the Universities.

Mr Gan Thiam Poh shared concerns about the affordability of tertiary education. The Government is committed to ensuring that no student is discouraged from taking his or her education as far as possible.

We provide generous subsidies for post-Secondary education, as well as Government-funded loans and financial assistance in the form of bursaries. The Post Secondary Education Account (PSEA) is another tool which the Government uses to help Singaporeans with the cost of post-Secondary education. When students complete their general education, the balance in their Edusave Account is transferred to their PSEA and their Edusave Accounts are closed. The Government tops up the students' PSEAs from time to time and the students can use the PSEA to pay for post-secondary education in our AUs, Polytechnics and ITEs.

Mr Png Eng Huat raised the issue of Edusave and the concern about the fact that parents may not be able to afford some of the activities. There are, in fact, a range of different funds for different uses which parents would be able to have access to. These include the Opportunity Fund to further help students from lower-income households; there is also the MOE Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) which helps those who require assistance in relation to the basic cost of schooling, such as fees, textbooks and uniforms, as well as school-based financial assistance which is available to meet these needs for those who require more help or who just miss out on qualifying for the FAS.

In conclusion, Madam, I wish to say that MOE's policies and efforts aim to support each Singaporean on his or her lifelong education journey. We start early – building a strong foundation through pre-school education. We create diverse opportunities and pathways in the education system, to help every Singaporean fulfil their potential. We try to keep education affordable to help each student go as far as he or she can. And our goal is that each and every Singaporean will have a fulfilling educational journey and can develop to the best of his or her full potential.

5.15 pm

Naming of Schools

Mr Baey Yam Keng (Tampines): Madam, Dunman Secondary School is in Tampines and Dunman High School is in Tanjong Rhu. Both were previously at Dunman Road sharing a common field.

North Vista Secondary School was set up in Sengkang in 2000. Before that, it was known as Thomson Secondary School. Its Chinese name, 德新中学, was maintained to preserve its historical links. I guess the English name was changed because the school is no longer at Thomson Road.

Why did Dunman Secondary keep its name but not Thomson Secondary School? Is it because Thomson Road is a longer and more prominent road than Dunman Road? We have to remember that both roads were after all named after people who lived in the 19th century, John Turnbull Thomson who was the Government Surveyor, and Thomas Dunman, the first full-time Commissioner of Police.

Nowadays, due to changing demographics, schools merge, close down or relocate. Teachers and principals no longer stay many years in the same school. So, when the alumni cannot find attachment to the school building or people in the alma mater, the school name is the only link left. Like National Service, our education system is a rite of passage that brings Singaporeans together for a common experience, a collective memory that helps build our Singapore identity.

I met a senior alumnus of San Shan Primary School two years ago. He lamented that his school is no longer around and said that if the name "San Shan" could be revived in any new school, he and other alumni would be more than happy to come forth and contribute to the school. I am sure there are many more such people who have been "orphaned" but still have fond memories and feelings for the alma mater. We should tap on the network and spirit.

Madam, every school is a good school, not because they have good students, good teachers, good results or good infrastructure. The goodness in a school goes beyond what it is or what it possesses today. We need to preserve, respect and promote its heritage and tap on its alumni to build on what is good today so as to be better tomorrow.

The Chairman: Mr Alvin Yeo is not here. Mr Yee Jenn Jong.

Student Care Services

Mr Yee Jenn Jong: Madam, student care services are now in 80 out of some 190 Primary schools. It is commendable that MOE has stepped up efforts to have more student care facilities within schools. Student care had been a low priority in the past, and a poor cousin to childcare, which has more attention and funding support.

With more dual-income working parents, the demand for student care will follow the rise we saw in childcare. Student care has the potential to be a social leveller by providing homework coaching and lessons, as well as much needed nutrition for children from disadvantaged families.

Unlike childcare, there is no general fee subsidy for student care other than for the low income. Also, it is not mandatory for student care teachers to go for training. There is a Certificate in Student Care course but it is not widely promoted or mandatory for centres to have trained staff.

Some schools are constrained by space. Student care facilities should be considered as essential school infrastructure and factored into the design of all schools. Schools waiting for such facilities can work with nearby student care centres. MOE and MSF can work together to help secure new facilities if there are no nearby operators. I hope MOE and MSF can work together, just as they are doing now for pre-school, to provide better accessibility, affordability and quality in student care.

Students with Disciplinary Problems

The Minister of State for Trade and Industry (Mr Teo Ser Luck): I met a friend at an event for small and medium enterprises, so those who came were business people. I almost could not recognise him because he had put on quite a bit of weight. But we were childhood friends for a while and, after Primary school, I did not really see him. We were in the same school. He was actually suspended from school at first because he had behavioural problems and disciplinary issues. He got into trouble with students, friends and also teachers; and, finally, he was expelled. I did not see him for a long time and when I finally met him at this event, he is already a businessman who owns several businesses, which created hundreds of jobs. I asked him about his studies. He said he took two years off and managed to get back to school, continued his studies and finally got a diploma. And he made good.

I think those cases in the past seemed to be common amongst my friends. Several of my friends who dropped out of school never really got back. I think he is one of the rare cases. But, today, it is the reverse. We do have schools that are more embracing and they are giving some of these students a second chance. A few years ago, in my first term as a Member of Parliament, I actually managed to help someone who had a problem getting back to school after being suspended or expelled from school for about half a year, and I think he took another half a year. But after one year, he decided to get back to school. So, I helped him to make a few phone calls to the schools and, finally, he got back into one of the schools.

My question was: why should you need the intervention of a Member of Parliament? Should schools be a bit more inclusive and embracing and give people a second chance, especially students with some of these problems? Because if you do not give them a second chance, they may go off-track and lead a stray's life, and what will happen is that they will create more social problems for the society. So, let us give these students a second chance.

Psychological Care for Students

Mrs Lina Chiam (Non-Constituency Member): Madam, the number of school children seeking mental healthcare is on the rise. According to the Asia Pacific Committee Mental Health Department project's report in 2012, failure in schools is amongst the most common referral to the child mental health service. I believe more students require psychological care and support due to various emotional and behavioural problems but fear the stigma of being labelled a so-called "mental" case.

Clinic attendance is only a proxy indicator and we lack robust data. Last year, the Minister abolished the banding of Secondary schools. I applaud this move towards removing such unhealthy stressful measures in school that detract from a wholesome educational experience. Going a step further, the Ministry should also look into building up an environment in every school that provides readily psychological care for school children and teenagers from qualified counsellors when needed.

Perhaps, the Education Ministry should commission a more detailed study to look into the issue more closely. The Ministry should review its policies and bold moves are needed to give our children a better, healthier and holistic education.

Special Needs Sector

Mr Lim Biow Chuan: Madam, for the past few years, I have received feedback from VWOs managing the special needs schools that they need more resources from MOE to help them run the SPED schools.

As a member of COMPASS, MOE's sub-committee, I had visited several SPED schools with Senior Parliamentary Secretary Sim Ann. I am touched and humbled by the tremendous efforts put in by the VWOs, the teachers and staff of these SPED schools. I also saw the determination of parents with special needs children to do more for their children.

I could only imagine the many daily struggles which all of them faced. Hence, I join in their appeal to MOE to do more to integrate children with special needs into mainstream education schools. I understand that not all of them would be able to join mainstream MOE schools. But I urge MOE to give SPED schools more resources so that children with special needs get as many opportunities as possible to integrate into society. Wherever possible, education should be made compulsory for them as well. Can MOE share more about how much resources would be given to SPED schools and VWOs so that they can be better equipped to make improvements to the lives of special needs children?

Disability Support Offices

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng (Moulmein-Kallang): Madam, MOE has, in the 10 years, granted much needed support to the special-needs students in Singapore. Higher funding and attention in curriculum, quality assurance and governance are some of the deeply appreciated support granted over the years.

MOE is working now on plans to continue raising the quality bar for the students in the SPED and mainstream primary and secondary schools. I ask that similarly structured education support be extended to the post-Secondary institutions of higher learning.

Many students with, for example, hearing impairment, dyslexia, ADHD, Asperger's syndrome, high-functioning autism and so on, have overcomed many challenges to be qualified enough to proceed to institutions, such as the ITE, Polytechnics and Universities.

Support for these students, however, is dependent on the vision and resolve of these various institutions. The quality and range of support is found to be inconsistent. Sometimes, the needed support, for example, in sign language interpretation, is provided by student volunteers who themselves need to attend classes. These volunteers cannot be expected to volunteer when priorities, such as their own examinations and examination preparations, come in the way.

By comparison, one can easily conduct a desktop research to find that in many progressive education systems, Disability Support Offices are standard features and render services, such as a complete student guidebook for disability, teacher resources, assistance in registration and orientation of persons with disabilities, application and counselling in classroom accommodations, such as note-taking, sign interpreters, seat arrangements and liaison with the relevant faculty lecturers and tutors

The same type of education support can be found in countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States and many other progressive systems. Singapore cannot expect to be a major global education player or a 21st century education provider if no support is provided in a systemic and structured manner for those with special needs or disabilities.

Madam, I am confident that Singapore can develop its own brand of disability support offices through collaborating with the network of disability VWOs in its social service sector and the SPED sector.

We will be in a tight labour market for a long while. Every developed potential will not only contribute to their own financial independence, thereby reducing the Government's need to provide them welfare; they would also contribute to the economy by becoming part of our country's manpower asset.

Hence, the Disability Support Offices in the ITEs, Polytechnics and Universities should even have a larger vision to not only provide academic support but also consider working with the VWOs to provide employability assessments and training so that these persons could be gainfully employed once they graduate.

Special Education

Mr Ang Wei Neng (Jurong): Madam, the SPED schools are envious of the many good policies that MOE has implemented for the mainstream schools, many of which are not extended to the SPED schools. For example, the ICT Master Plan which provides mainstream schools with generous funding for purchase of computers and support services provided by e-learning platforms, suppliers and ICT executive, the SPED schools only receive a minimum ICT start-up fund and lesser funding the year after. Another example is the building of an indoor sports hall. MOE has decided since 2007 that every Primary and Secondary school will have an indoor sports hall to cater for physical education lessons on days with wet weather. However, SPED schools are not entitled to indoor sports hall. Certainly, students from the SPED schools share the same needs as the MOE schools. Hence, I urge MOE to consider extending some of the good MOE policies to SPED schools as well.

On another note, there are cases of SPED school graduates who met the minimum requirement to gain admission into ITE or Polytechnic but could not enrol for the course of their choice due to stiff competition from applicants from the mainstream schools.

Senior Minister of State, Ms Indranee, has earlier stated that some students from the mainstream schools choose ITE's pastry and bakery course although they could qualify for the Polytechnics. So, that might cut off some of the students with special needs like Miss Clara Tan, whom I am going to cite as an example.

Miss Clara Tan, who graduated from Grace Orchard School and progressed to Assumption Pathway School (APS), obtained a GPA score of 3.5 in her final year, making it to the top 25% cohort of APS. Clara did well in the baking classes in APS. Owing to her deep passion in baking, she applied for the pastry and baking course at ITE. Unfortunately, she could not pass the interview and she was offered a less popular course in facility technology. Clara has to reject the offer because she has never done any technical module in her school. Clara is skilful in baking pastries but is slightly handicapped in her verbal skills.

In general, SPED students may not do well in interviews as they need a longer processing time in hearing and responding to questions. It will be fairer if the interview panelists could recognise this shortcoming in the SPED students and see the potential of the students beyond their verbal inadequacy.

If tested on an actual baking skill, there is a high chance that Clara will be able to clear the test. Nonetheless, Clara has not given up. She is now working part-time at a bakery and intends to reapply during the ITE April intake exercise.

I would like to appeal to MOE to consider giving special considerations to students of special needs as long as they meet the minimum admission criteria for ITE and Polytechnic. Perhaps, a Disability Office could be set up, as suggested by Ms Denise Phua earlier, to handle the application and admission of students with special needs.

5.30 pm

Malay Language Use, Teaching and Curriculum in Schools

Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar (Ang Mo Kio): ( In Malay ) : [Please refer to Vernacular Speech on Pg xx.] The recent announcement during the 2013 Budget to set up the Early Childhood Development Agency is a welcome move. This is a signal that the Government will be giving more attention to early childhood education.

I support the focus on the sector and, at the same time, I call on MOE to study how a framework or guidelines on Malay Language education at pre-school can be drafted and implemented. This is important to ensure that the learning and appreciation of Malay Language and culture are done at a young age in the classroom and also through interaction and play.

There is much to be gained through the learning of the Malay Language, not just speech and writing abilities, but also the values and traditions of the Malay community. For instance, learning Malay proverbs teaching why we should be humble even as we succeed, speaking the truth no matter how tough it is, and undergoing hardship in order to enjoy success later. This will help children learn about values, humility, honesty and working hard. In addition, reading Malay folktales, such as Malin Kundang and Batu Belah Batu Bertangkup , can also teach children about the importance of respecting and loving our parents and, at the same time, remind parents about their parental responsibilities.

Schools need capable teachers to perform this job. What are the Ministry's efforts to train Malay teachers who can teach their students to use the Malay Language well and teach them about Malay values and culture? I hope the Ministry can consider my questions and suggestions.

Malay Language Teachers

Mr Zainudin Nordin (Bishan-Toa Payoh): ( In Malay ) : [Please refer to Vernacular Speech on Pg xx.] Mdm Chair, one of the pillars of Singapore's education system is the bilingual policy. It provides access to our culture and enables Singapore youths to connect with the cultural features that make Singaporeans unique. This bilingual policy also brings good economic benefits for our country. However, this can only happen if we have bilingual education that is high in quality, relevant and identifies the latest developments in pedagogy and culture.

We also need language teachers who are talented and of high calibre. So, I would like to ask MOE what are its plans to improve the capabilities, skills and abilities of Malay Language teachers so that they can continue to provide quality language education for our students in order to enhance the learning of the Malay Language in Singapore.

The Chairman: Senior Parliamentary Secretary Hawazi Daipi.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education (Mr Hawazi Daipi): Mdm Chairperson, the Minister has spoken about the importance that we place on every Singaporean child. This is why all schools must be good schools that place strong emphasis on developing each child holistically. We must instil the right values in our students, build up their character, and reinforce their Singaporean identity.

We have heard these topics echoed many times by Singaporeans in Our Singapore Conversation (OSC) – many of them educators and parents themselves.

Now, MOE is committed to developing close partnerships with our stakeholders, including our parents and the community-at-large. This will better enable students to learn more holistically, and for us to emphasise a student-centric and values-driven education. I will elaborate on how we are working together with parents and other stakeholders to help students realise their full potential.

First, as part of the Programmes to Level Up Students, MOE will set up more Student Care Centres (SCCs) in more Primary schools. Educators can work in partnership with these SCCs. The aim is to provide care and supervision to students who may not be well-supported by their parents despite their best efforts.

Ms Mary Liew suggested extending the school curriculum to incorporate student care and tuition. I thank her for her proposal. Since year 2000, all our Secondary schools have already been operating on single-session. CCAs in these schools are usually held in the afternoon after school. And after school, many teachers can also conduct remedial classes and small group coaching. For our Primary schools, 64% of them are on a single-session model.

Nevertheless, a school's chief responsibility is in education. As such, after-school care services can be better addressed through the setting up of more student care centres, or school-based SCCs. MOE will continue to improve the accessibility of SCCs, a point raised by Mr Yee Jenn Jong. Eighty of our Primary schools now have school-based SCCs to provide after-school care. Fourteen have been set up in January this year alone. Let me assure Mr Yee that we will continue to set up more school-based SCCs at a good pace. Schools without a school-based SCC can continue to leverage on community-based SCCs in their neighbourhood, until it is opportune for them to set up one.

Let me share with Members the example of Yue Ling, a Primary 2 girl at Corporation Primary School. Her sole guardian is her paternal grandmother, who takes on several jobs to support her. Yue Ling has no other family support. Since last year, she has been placed in the school's SCC and receives close guidance in her studies. Yue Ling has learnt to work well and has become independent. She has also shown perseverance and resilience in coping with her problems. As such, she was nominated and selected as a recipient for the Edusave Character Award last year.

Madam, we are also committed to improving the impact of SCCs on students from less advantaged backgrounds. We do this by strengthening the coordination between school-based SCCs with their schools. This will enable the children to have a sense of connection with what they have learned in school.

In Macpherson Primary School, for example, as part of the enhanced SCC model, the SCC has aligned its Character Education programmes with the school's focus on school values. During their daily story-telling session, the SCC emphasises the particular value which the school has chosen for the term.

Now, let me talk about how MOE will also partner other Government agencies to better support students. This includes pastoral and psychiatric care for Primary and Secondary schools.

Since 2008, every Primary and Secondary school, and JC and Millenia Institute is resourced with at least one school counsellor. Schools will also refer students with more complex issues to the Response, Early Intervention and Assessment in Community Mental Health (REACH) which forms teams for professional consultation and assessment. REACH is a collaborative project between MOE and the Institute of Mental Health. The charges for REACH services are currently waived.

MOE also works closely with MSF to look after students who have dropped out or are at risk of dropping out of schools. Schools refer these students to the Enhanced STEP-UP Programme set up by MSF. Under this programme, VWOs will engage the students and work with their families to bring about positive changes in their lives.

Mr Teo Ser Luck wanted to know the options a student has after he is expelled for disciplinary issues. I would like to emphasise that a student is only expelled after he commits a very serious offence. Allowing him to remain in school would threaten the safety of other students or undermine school discipline. Nonetheless, a student who is remorseful and committed to learning will be allowed and given a second chance to return to school. Each year, there are expelled students who have been readmitted back to schools, either to their former schools or other schools, with MOE's facilitation.

Mdm Chairperson, allow me now to talk about how we will deepen our engagement with parents, our key partners in education.

A central focus of our schools today is to provide a student-centric, values-driven educational experience. But values are not just taught, but "caught", not just in school but also outside of school. I agree fully with Mr Lim Biow Chuan on the importance of partnership between or among parents, schools and the community. I share his views and I know very well that Mr Lim, as Chairman of the GPC for Education, is very passionate about developing or enhancing further the collaboration among the various stakeholders in the education of our children, so I thank him for the support. We realise the primary and critical role that parents play in a child's development. In fact, for values education to be truly effective, parents must agree with our educators' efforts. They must also play their part so that we can achieve common objectives.

I find it heartening to notice that parents wish to be more involved in their child's education today. Being more educated, parents place greater attention on each child's growth and development. They are also more eager to be involved in this process. In many cases, they can be an extremely valuable stakeholder to the school.

For instance, there are many parents who volunteer to cook dinner for students who stay behind in school to prepare for their upcoming examinations. There are many schools where members of the Parents Support Group (PSG) and volunteers do this. In the case of Gan Eng Seng Secondary School, I was told that these parents did not repeat the menu throughout. So, the students have a lot of opportunities to sample different types of food

Another example I would like to cite is Mdm Juliana Juhari. Having been a PSG member for five years, Mdm Juliana shares why she volunteers her time with Tampines Primary School's reading programme, on top of her full-time work. She says at the school's Annual Prize Giving Ceremony, "To see a few of the kids formerly in our reading programme now awarded the Best Progress Award gives me a strong sense of satisfaction and pride." Madam, this is a good example of how our PSG partnership with the teachers or school has benefited our children.

Clearly, when parents, schools and the community collaborate to complement the efforts of one another, our children are the true beneficiaries. Therefore, MOE will further support schools to deepen and strengthen such partnerships:

Firstly, last year, we introduced the Parent Support Group (PSG) Fund. Schools could use it to organise activities to promote parent-child bonding, fund parent outreach programmes, or strengthen the capabilities of their PSGs.

Fifteen Primary schools have also received the Parents in Education (PIE) Fund to enhance their parent partnership efforts. Some schools have used the funds to organise workshops to equip parents with the skills to support their children's learning.

Secondly, in Naval Base Primary School, for example, the fund was used to organise an evening activity called "Reading under the Stars". Over 300 Primary 1 pupils and their parents attended this event in their best pyjamas. The programme encouraged parents to be role-models and create a reading culture at home. Parents also learned how to choose age-appropriate storybooks for their child, and how to motivate them. Apart from promoting family bonding, this activity reinforced the importance of reading.

Thirdly, we have also provided schools with a Partnership Resource Pack, including a copy of "Building on Trust, Partnering as One", which aims to strengthen further partnership among the various stakeholders and parents. This pack contains practical tips and examples of good initiatives on parent engagement. These resources will help school leaders to reach out to, and garner the support of parents and the community.

Other than schools, MOE will also greatly enhance our outreach to parents. MOE launched the new Parents in Education (PiE) website last year. We hope it will eventually become the go-to website for parents looking for educational news, learning resources and parenting tips. Parents have provided positive feedback on this website. We have launched a Mobile App of the website for use on smartphones to link parents quickly to the resources and updates.

There will also be a series of upcoming parent engagement seminars and parenting talks held by MOE in every zone across Singapore.

Madam, as the Chairperson of COMPASS or COMmunity and PArents in Support of Schools, which comprises representatives from schools, the business community and self help groups, I am pleased to announce that COMPASS is launching the COMPASS Speakers' Series. Talks, seminars and sharing sessions by parenting experts will be organised. Parents will also be interested to know that we are launching forum theatre, a drama-based interactive experience where various parent-child scenarios are played out. Forum theatre is a public forum where parents in the audience can either offer suggestions to the problems presented, or take over the enactment of solutions from the actors. Participants can actively explore complex parent-child scenarios to co-create new ways of resolving them. In the process, they tap on the collective wisdom of all parents in the audience.

Madam, we truly hope that our schools will continue to grow and leverage on these helpful, harmonious partnerships with parents and other stakeholders. It is clear that partnerships which draw on the combined efforts of schools, the home and the community will help us to better develop all Singaporeans to their fullest potential. It will also draw us closer together as a community – as Singaporeans.

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Now, Madam, for the last part of my response, allow me to speak in Malay.

( In Malay ) : [Please refer to Vernacular Speech on Pg xx.] Mdm Chairperson, I would like to thank Dr Intan and Mr Zainudin Nordin for their suggestions to formulate a framework for Malay Language curriculum at the pre-school level, and also on the training for Malay teachers. MOE is in the process of developing a Teaching and Learning Framework for the Mother Tongue Languages, which will be distributed to pre-schools by the middle of this year. The Framework will provide a common understanding about the teaching and learning of Mother Tongue Languages across the pre-school sector.

I strongly agree with Dr Intan that we can impart values through the Malay culture and language. I would like to add that we cannot separate the learning of language from values and culture. Within the teaching and learning resources currently being developed by MOE for the pre-school sector, there are already plans to include folk tales and children's songs in the Malay Language. Furthermore, since 2005, MOE has also distributed pre-school Teaching Guides for Chinese, Malay and Tamil to all pre-school centres. These guides emphasise the need for children to know their culture and heritage through their respective Mother Tongue Languages. MOE is currently refining these Guides for distribution by the end of the year. We will then provide training for teachers to use these resources in their daily classroom teaching.

These efforts by MOE will be further complemented with the teaching and learning resources developed by the community and funded by the Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism. We hope to nurture a love for learning of two languages in our children from young − in our pre-school centres, at home and in the community.

I would like to assure Mr Zainudin that we will also continue to support the professional development and upgrading of our Malay Language teachers. Our teachers can tap into our in-service professional development opportunities – for instance, courses on content knowledge, pedagogy, and assessment based on Malay language, literature and culture, and also ICT courses. They can also participate in the Malay Language seminar organised annually for sharing of best practices about the teaching of Malay Language among teachers, and also attend the Arif Budiman Lecture Series that enable our teachers to follow and understand the latest developments in the Malay Language from international experts.

We also provide awards and scholarships in the Mother Tongue Languages to support teachers' upgrading. Non-graduate teachers can enrol in the part-time Bachelor of Arts programmes in Malay Language and Literature at UniSIM or full-time at the National Institute of Education (NIE). Graduate Malay Language teachers can continue their studies by pursuing a Masters of Education at the NIE.

Since 2009, over 200 beginning Malay Language teachers have benefited from the courses offered by the Malay Language Centre of Singapore (MLCS), which is a unit in MOE, shortly after they were deployed to schools. I am also pleased to announce that the MLCS building is going to be ready soon and it will have good facilities to give more resources to more teachers to attend courses that can improve their ability to teach the Malay Language.

Of course, parents still play a key role in creating a conducive environment at home for their children to learn the Malay Language. Early exposure to spoken Malay and its use at home will surely provide children with a stronger foundation for them to learn the language formally in school. I hope that parents can leverage on the various programmes that have been organised by the Malay Language and Learning Promotion Committee (MLLPC) in collaboration with community organisations, Institutes of Higher Learning and schools. Over the past six years, MLLPC has provided funding support for over 200 activities that have benefited students, teachers and their parents. Such activities help our Malay students deepen their appreciation of Malay language and culture. MLLPC is also collaborating with NIE and schools as well as language and cultural organisations, including the Malay Language Council, to organise workshops and camps to promote Malay values to our students. Specifically, MLLPC will encourage those organisations to organise a Malay Etiquette Camp to provide more opportunities for our students to learn and appreciate Malay manners and culture.

We are certain that all these combined efforts will help to better support the learning of the Malay Language among our students. These efforts will also internalise Malay values and culture, within the context of a multilingual and multicultural Singapore, into the soul of our younger generation.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education (Ms Sim Ann): Madam, in the Our Singapore Conversation (OSC), many Singaporeans have expressed a wish for a more fulfilling pace of life. Madam, I wish we could have a more fulfilling pace of debate, but the fact remains that our Members have raised many weighty issues. I do have quite a lot to get through in the remaining time. So, I hope Members will bear with me while I raise the tempo of the speech.

Also from Our Singapore Conversation (OSC), we hear Singaporeans' aspirations for a society with strong values and a "kampung spirit". I agree with Mr Baey Yam Keng that our national schools are key institutions that help to build national identity and strengthen social cohesion. Many of us are proud of the schools that we come from, and rightly so.

Owing to demographic changes, from time to time we merge or relocate some schools so that school places are geographically distributed, and can better meet the community's needs. We do not make these decisions lightly.

In merging or relocating schools, we are mindful of the importance of preserving their heritage. Where possible, for example, where it is not geographically confusing, the name of the relocated school will be preserved to maintain the link with its past heritage. Schools are also encouraged to preserve various aspects of their heritage.

We hope that Singaporeans will similarly see these merged or relocated schools as their alma mater, and to continue to support them.

Madam, Minister Heng talked about how every Singaporean child is precious, and I will be speaking about students with special educational needs today. Education is a powerful tool for us to equip these students with the skills and values to thrive as integral members of society.

To achieve this, we take a differentiated approach, customised to best meet the needs of the child. Currently, students with mild special needs are educated in mainstream schools, with appropriate learning support.

For students with moderate to severe needs, they are served in the 20 SPED schools, which are established by VWOs but operated with extensive support from the Government. Each of these schools caters to the disability profile of the student and is organised to help students with specific special learning needs learn effectively.

I will elaborate further on how we have been customising our policies to meet their needs, and also the other kinds of support that we provide.

Mr Lim Biow Chuan asked whether more financial support can be given to SPED schools. Mr Ang Wei Neng also asked for us to extend good mainstream school policies to the SPED schools. Madam, in recognition of the needs of SPED students, as a baseline, MOE provides generous funding to the SPED schools so that they can run customised programmes. The funding provided for SPED students is substantially more than the funding provided for a student in a mainstream school. The funds are used to run the SPED schools, pay for staff salaries, support professional development and provide administrative and curricular support.

In-principle, any additional support given to mainstream students will be customised and adapted for SPED students. Some recent examples of additional financial support extended to SPED students are:

(a) the Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) for Singapore Citizens from lower-income families;

(b) the School Breakfast Programme (SBP) for all SPED FAS students aged 7 to 12, similar to the programme in Primary schools; and

(c) enhancements to the Opportunity Fund for schools in FY2013, where more funding will be provided to SPED schools with more needy students.

MOE will also continue giving financial support to expand the physical capacity of the SPED sector. To meet the learning needs of SPED students, we customise the infrastructural provisions, for instance, special facilities like sensory integration rooms. We also review these needs regularly.

Over the past decade, we have committed $150 million towards the upgrading and building of the 20 SPED schools. From 2013, Metta School will be able to take in another 150 students with the completion of its new extension block. We want to assure Members today that no child with special needs will be deprived of a quality education because he or she cannot afford it.

There are two key pillars in a good education – quality curriculum and quality teachers. The SPED Curriculum Framework was developed together with our stakeholders. It sets a unifying direction for excellence in teaching and learning. We are working towards high standards and strong outcomes, to prepare the students for a fulfilling future.

For schools to effectively implement the curriculum framework, we need customised curricula to meet the needs of children in different disability groups. MOE specialists support schools in the customisation efforts through workshops and school visits. This is time-consuming work, but well worth the effort.

At the SPED Conference last year, I announced the addition of two domains to the SPED Curriculum Framework – "Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) as a Foundation for Values-based Special Education" and "Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as an Enabler for Teaching and Learning".

Mr Ang Wei Neng has talked about more ICT support for SPED schools. Technology is an enabler that unlocks the potential of each child, especially those who have difficulties communicating or learning, using conventional methods. Hence, together with the Tote Board, MOE has introduced an ICT Funding model for SPED, totalling $4.5 million over the next three years.

Teachers, too, are essential for a quality education. This is why, from last year, more funds have been made available to raise salaries for staff in SPED schools.

Today, a large majority of students with mild intellectual disabilities have the potential to attain nationally-recognised vocational certification, and be placed in open employment with the right kind of support. MOE piloted a certified course on vocational education in 2012 to build staff capability in this area, and will be working with SPED schools to put in place vocational education to benefit more students.

To improve accessibility to SPED schools, we have increased SPED school capacity and facilitated placement. The Multi-Agency Advisory Panel (MAAP), comprising specialists from MOE, MOH and also SPED schools, was set up last year. It has developed a new SPED School Application Form to streamline application processes, and the Panel has been useful in bringing together the stakeholders, as an initial effort to better understand the complex issues revolving around placement for students with special needs.

We are also aiding parents of children with special needs to better understand the needs of their child, and that is why we have published an online guide "A Parent's Guide to Choosing the Right School for Children with Special Educational Needs". We will publish versions in the Mother Tongue languages by the end of this year.

Beyond providing information, we recognise it can be emotionally hard to cope with news of the diagnosis, and to decide what to do next. Hence, last year, we prototyped the Post Diagnosis Education Guidance (PDEG) initiative, and the prototype was introduced to North Zone schools last year. It will be rolled out to all zones by the end of 2013. These initiatives are part of a whole ecosystem of support for parents. We have, therefore, also extended the Parent Support Group (PSG) Fund to SPED schools.

Madam, we are also enhancing how we support students with mild special needs who are currently educated in mainstream schools. Students with dyslexia have persistent difficulties in reading, and this creates many downstream challenges for learning. They form the largest group of students with special educational needs. They have a very good chance of overcoming their literacy difficulties if appropriate intervention occurs early.

I am pleased to be able to provide an update on our school-based dyslexia remediation (SDR) programme, piloted in 20 Primary schools last year. Normally, students with dyslexia are referred for remediation by the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS). These classes are conducted outside school, at DAS learning centres.

The SDR programme will augment the support for literacy available in our schools. Students with literacy difficulties can receive continuing support within the school starting from Primary 1. In Primary 1 and Primary 2, they are identified for literacy support in the Learning Support Programme (LSP). Students whose literacy difficulties persist and who are diagnosed with dyslexia, then receive dyslexia remediation conducted by the Allied Educators (Learning and Behavioural Support) (AED (LBS)) and teachers in Primary 3 and Primary 4. The goal is for them to overcome their reading difficulties by the end of Primary 4. Beyond Primary 4, their learning will be monitored and continuing support will be provided by their teachers and the Allied Educators for those who need it.

The SDR programme has helped those who are weak in spelling and reading. The key benefits are:

First, better engagement of pupils, as the curriculum is customised for their learning needs and takes into consideration what is covered in the mainstream English curriculum.

Second, a more supportive home environment because the reading materials and games provided for use at home, together with weekly progress reports, have helped parents to play an active role in the intervention process.

I have examples to share of students who have benefited from this programme. First, Anshaqil from Xinmin Primary. When he was in Primary 2, he was only able to name six out of 26 letters of the English alphabet. After a year in the programme, Anshaqil not only picked up reading and spelling skills but started to love reading and is now reading books to his mother as her bedtime stories! His Allied Educator, Miss Lim Siew Lian, observes that Anshaqil has become more confident and vocal.

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Another student, Guan Ming from Bukit Panjang Primary, has shared that while he could not read in the past, he is now able to do so after undergoing the programme. He greatly enjoys the interesting activities in the dyslexia remediation classes conducted by his Allied Educator, Ms Fadilah. Guan Ming's teachers note that he has become more confident, and shows keener interest in his studies.

We are glad to see that students have benefited from the SDR programme and I am happy to be able to update today that MOE has extended it to another 22 Primary schools this year.

Madam, a number of our students with special needs, both those from mainstream and from SPED schools, will progress to our Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs). Mr Ang Wei Neng and Ms Denise Phua have asked about support for students with special educational needs in the IHLs.

We are heartened by the achievements of these students, and we want to provide them with the appropriate support so that they can continue to succeed. There are two key areas that we are focusing on, as a start.

First, we will provide more systematic transition support. Instead of relying on self-declaration, we have piloted the transfer of relevant diagnosis and support information of students with special educational needs from 64 Secondary schools, to ITE. The transfer was performed with consent from students and parents, and was very well-received. This year, we have expanded the pilot scheme to include the Polytechnics. This allows the IHLs to be able to provide necessary support for students as early as possible, that is, from the point of admission.

Second, we are working with the IHLs to build staff capability. There will be a comprehensive training programme to equip administrative and faculty staff with the skills to establish a support system and render practical help to students and we will kick-start the training programme this year.

Madam, as I have described, we are making significant steps towards strengthening support for students with special educational needs in our Institutions of Higher Learning. The suggestion of setting up a Disability Support Office, given by Ms Denise Phua as well as Mr Ang Wei Neng, has a lot of merit and we will consider this in partnership with our stakeholders in the SPED community.

Finally, Mr Ang Wei Neng has also talked about the admission into IHLs for students with special education needs. Admission into our IHLs is merit-based. We consider both the results and other attributes of the applicant holistically. This is not to discriminate against these students, but to determine how best to cater to their learning needs. However, Mr Ang's point about SPED students meeting or facing certain challenges in interviews or, perhaps, other aspects of the admission process is well-taken. Again, this suggestion has merit and we will consider how best to support students with special education needs throughout the application as well as admission process.

Madam, through Our Singapore Conversation process, we are hearing many voices to better support children with special needs. We have also earlier heard many of our stakeholders through the Enabling Masterplan 2012-2016. MOE will continue to work with our partners to embrace and empower people with special needs, as full and integral members of the Singapore society. And I am very happy to end with 10 seconds to spare; I think this is a reasonably fulfilling pace.

The Chairman: We have a bit of time for clarification. Mr Lim Biow Chuan.

Mr Lim Biow Chuan: Thank you, Madam. I have two clarifications. But, first, allow me to apologise to the Minister for the stress caused to him. I just want to assure the Minister that every Singaporean is important; every Minister is important. My GPC Members and I will try to recalibrate for next year's COS.

Perhaps, the Minister can share with this House how the schools can strike a proper balance between sufficient stress and unreasonable pressure on our students. Can the Minister share his views on this difficult spelling list for P5 students that I have shared during my speech? I do not know whether he has seen the list but it is quite difficult; you cannot even pronounce the word, much less spell it! Also, about homework given during key public holidays – does the Minister think that it is reasonable for schools to give homework during the Lunar New Year holidays? It does cause a break for students who are trying to celebrate the Lunar New Year, and I think it adds to the stress.

The other clarification is to ask the Minister whether he can share his thoughts about whether there are any take-away or lessons that we can emulate from the Finnish education system, because it seems to make education so much more enjoyable, whereas as a comparison, in Singapore, we tend to see it a lot more stressful. I wonder whether the Minister can share his thoughts on these two points.

Mr Heng Swee Keat: I thank Mr Lim Biow Chuan for his two supplementary questions. Madam, if I may clarify a statement I made earlier on. I mentioned about a pupil-teacher ratio of Primary and Secondary schools. I actually confused the two numbers. So, let me put on record the correct numbers. The pupil-teacher ratio for Primary school is 17.6 in 2012, down from 25.9 in the year 2000. For Secondary schools, it should be 14.2 in 2012, down from 19.2 in the year 2000.

Mr Lim Biow Chuan asked about two issues: first, what can we do about stress; and what our schools can do about it? First, let me say that the issue of stress, as I mentioned in my speech, is very complex, and how each of us takes to the challenges is quite different. But what MOE will do is that whatever that is within our ability to reduce the stress, and particularly if they are not necessary, we will do something about it. Let me outline a few things that we have done.

First, on workload. I think some Members would recall that I had spoken at the Workplan Seminar a few months back about homework policy and how teachers and the school should better co-ordinate the homework so that they do not all come together, that is, where the deadlines all come together on the same day. The other one is on testing. Sometimes, some students feel stressed when the tests are all bunched, again, around the same date; similarly, timelines for handing up projects, so on and so forth. The other area is testing. I think some Members have spoken about teachers setting tests which are too difficult, in order to stretch the students. This is something that we will continue to improve. I think it is important to improve the quality of assessments that are being done in schools. Good assessments are important to help students learn but not excessive assessments or not overly difficult assessments.

There are also other areas. The Member mentioned about the spelling list, and that is something which we will have to view it in perspective. I was given another spelling list, just as complicated, if not more, by somebody. And as it turned out, this was in some enrichment programme that was buried in certain pages. In this day and age, someone can just zap a copy of the list and post it on the Internet, and suddenly it gives the whole impression that all schools are using this when the whole intent of the spelling list was just to encourage certain students to take a more active interest. It is not very different from what Ms Janice Koh was speaking about on how to stimulate pupils' interest. Those enrichment activities need to be better explained. I think all schools should do a better job of explaining all these.

Having said that, I mentioned that MOE will do what it can. But let me say also that I have spoken to many students to try and understand what cause the stress that they feel they are having. I think one very common feedback that I get is "comparisons" − comparisons among siblings, comparisons with neighbours, cousins and so on. It is a very major source of stress for many students. The other aspect is societal expectations. So, I would urge Members that when they go to a party or dinner and as good uncles and aunties, do not ask, "What school are you in?" and "What do you get for your PSLE?" and so on, because it causes a lot of stress for the kids. So, I think we can all do our part. I also outline a number of things that we need to do relating to high-stake examinations, and I think we should study that very carefully. As the Member said, it takes a village to raise a child and I think it takes a whole village and a whole Singapore to try and reduce the stress level.

On Finland, we have studied this quite carefully as well. We have thought about what it is that we can learn − in fact, we learn from all over the world – and how we can improve our system. But one very important aspect as we make all these comparisons is to understand that societies evolve in very different ways, with very different history, culture, norms and values, economic system, and also geography. If you take Finland, for instance, there are about over 4,000 schools that are managed by about 450 municipalities. We have about slightly over 360 schools in a very compact city.

Sometime back I read this interesting article by Susan Sclafani in a well respected magazine called "Educational Leadership" , in the October 2008 issue. The article was about "Two roads to High Performance". She said that what Finland and Singapore had in common is that we are both high achievers. And she was trying to distil the factors which are common to both which might be of greater application elsewhere. An interesting point is that, first, the common factor that we have is a strong national commitment to education; that the entire society believes in education. Second, we have teachers who are highly respected and who are highly capable, engaged and cooperative. Teachers cooperate among themselves to share best practices and to help level up the entire system and, in fact, many Members would know that this is one of our key focus. In fact, we are going to have a major Excel Festival coming up where teachers will come together to share innovations that they have started in schools, with a view of scaling up these ideas across the system.

The other area is to engage students and the active learners who are engaged in their learning through a variety of learning and teaching approaches. Of course, one other thing that we learn is the support – very early support − that is given very early in a child's educational journey. And, today, I have outlined some of the things we are doing in pre-school and in levelling up at the Primary school.

So, we will continue to study what are the useful lessons that we can learn from all over the world and try and adapt and incorporate into our system. But I have to say that there is no substitute for thinking very hard ourselves about what are the fundamental pieces that we need to move, and that we can integrate and learn.

Mr Zainudin Nordin: Madam, two points of clarification. The Minister spoke about the Learning Support Programme (LSP) and its enhancements, and he also mentioned about working with the community groups and self-help groups. Can the Minister elaborate on how this partnership can bring positive outcomes to the LSP?

I wanted to say that what the Senior Minister of State Indranee Rajah has mentioned is quite good for the professionals in the pre-school. But we also know currently that there is an acute shortage of pre-school professionals to a point where the kindergartens and childcare centres are having difficulty to recruit. So, what can be done to improve the recruitment and retention of the pre-school professionals to ensure that we continue to be able to grow this sector to help the young parents?

Ms Indranee Rajah: I think that MOE is certainly aware of the need for more pre-school teachers and kindergarten teachers, in particular. This is something that we are actively studying at the current time. It is important not just to have quantity. We want to make sure we have quality. And it is not just quality, it has to be people who have a passion to teach children and the right disposition to be able to bring out the best in them. This is something that we are currently looking at the moment.

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng: Madam, two points for the Minister's clarification. One is about Finland and Singapore. I do agree that we need to put some more thought to it because I do not think we can just borrow wholesale from Finland because some parts of it are quite different from us. But what I observed about studying the Finnish system is, for example, the status of teachers. The citizens there seem to aspire to become teachers and the salary package, for example, of the teachers there is average or not especially high. And so that is something that is quite interesting to observe.

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The second point is, within the Finnish system, there is a lack of ranking and high-stakes examinations. Yet, students are still assessed fairly effectively and they still learn and achieve quite commendable results worldwide.

The third point is the fact that the schools there are inclusive, the classrooms are inclusive, the differentiated instruction is quite normally applied, and teachers are competent to do that. I think these are useful features about the Finnish system that we might want to study as we carry out the Singapore Conversation on this topic.

Another second suggestion is, I thought the Minister —

The Chairman: Ms Phua, you may want to put forward your clarification, not make a speech, please.

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng: Yes, Madam. I would like the Minister's comments on the first suggestion. The second one is, I applaud the Minister's efforts to level up students, especially in the form of parent materials, literacy, numeracy, dyslexia and so forth. I find that these are resources that are very good and applicable to the special schools system. Now, since including mainstream initiatives like that for special students is not quite yet in the DNA of MOE, I wish to ask if MOE can consider an opt-out system. Whenever these initiatives are rolled out, special needs students in SPED schools, especially, are naturally included, and if it is not useful to them, then they opt out. So that might make things better for them. I would like the Minister's comments on that as well.

Mr Heng Swee Keat: I thank Ms Denise Phua for the questions. On her last suggestion about SPED schools and the opt-out option, in my speech earlier on, I mentioned about how practices and resources which MOE is pioneering in the schools will be shared with the SPED schools, and certainly we will study her suggestions.

Now, on her comments about Finland and the status of teachers, I am glad to say that today, in Singapore, our teachers enjoy a fairly good status and there is respect for our teachers. I would like Members and I would like the public to continue to support our teachers in their work. It is not easy to be at the frontlines, day in, day out, having to deal with children from a variety of backgrounds. That is why I think it is very important for us to stand behind our teachers, particularly if parents are not reasonable.

Earlier on there were issues about – I think that Mr Teo Ser Luck raised the issue about discipline – it is very important for us to continue to support our teachers to maintain discipline in the schools and to make sure that their job is not made more difficult for other reasons.

Now, in terms of the attraction of teaching as a profession, I agree that beyond salary, the fulfilment that comes from it is very, very important. That is where I think MOE has been exploring a number of different initiatives. One major area is professional development. Teachers want to feel that what they do make a difference and that they are continually improving their mastery of this craft. It is a craft that takes many, many years to develop and to hone the skills.

I launched a Teachers' Growth Model last year. We have launched professional learning committees in almost all schools. The Academy of Singapore Teachers has also been bringing teachers together. We have set up three very specialised academies: Singapore Teachers' Academy for the Arts (STAR), Physical Education and Sports Teacher Academy (PESTA) and English Language Institute of Singapore (ELIS) for the teaching of English, arts and PE and sports. All those are measures that we will continue to look at, as well as any other issues that may affect the motivation of teachers.

On ranking, I agree the points raised. That is why I did away with the ranking. But I have to say that there are many Singaporeans who fully supported it. There are others who have also expressed reservations about doing away with ranking. MOE will move at a pace that the public is prepared to accept. These are important changes that we have to make.

And on the Member's point about inclusive classrooms, indeed, this is the direction that we should be moving towards but we have to do it in a systematic pace. You will notice from my discussions earlier and from the videos that I have shown that the additional support programmes that we are giving to our students in the coming years, involve action in the schools. These are all integrated into classroom practices. Students are not put into a separate school to do that but they are all part and parcel of that learning. As we evolve, as our teachers become better at this, we will be better able to cater to different groups of students with different needs.

Mr Yee Jenn Jong: Thank you, Madam. I have two clarifications for the Minister. I was watching very intently the lively video of Da Qiao Primary. It shows around eight students to one teacher. This is highly ideal for learning, but I would like to know how MOE is going to implement this in the operating environment of 30 to 40 students in the class. How does this gel with our operating environment today?

The second question is that MOE is going to re-introduce 好公民 and other civics learning. How does MOE ensure 好公民 and other moral education and social studies lessons will be conducted by the schools, especially during high-stake examination years? My own experience with my own children shows that they actually did not use the book at all during the PSLE years.

Mr Heng Swee Keat: I thank Mr Yee Jenn Jong for his question. On the example that he cited with Da Qiao Primary, let me say that the video that Members have seen is not the first time that MOE is having smaller groups of students. That is why I tried to explain what the pupil-teacher ratio is about. Maybe I should also make a further clarification because some Members have asked me what is the pupil-teacher ratio. It is essentially the number of pupils that we have divided by the number of teachers. That is a very important measurement besides the class size. Smaller class sizes catering to students who need special support have always been there. In fact, I have seen in our Normal (Technical) streams and in our pull-out programmes where class sizes are very small. I have seen many such support programmes where students are placed in very small groups with different learning approaches in the Secondary schools. We are continuing with that and our educators are quite experienced in doing this. I am confident that as we roll these programmes out, we will see better results.

Now, on the Member's question on how would the "Good Citizen" or 好公民 series be used and whether indeed will teachers continue to use them, I do not know when your child was in Primary 6. I think as we place a greater emphasis on this, I am very optimistic that our educators are fully onboard on this initiative. Like many Singaporeans, they see the importance of values and the importance of good citizenship in our children, and therefore the commitment to do something about this is growing. Even if it may be uneven across schools, but I think it is growing and I have spoken to many of our school leaders. They are fully onboard and we will see changes in the coming years .

Dr Lily Neo: Thank you, Mdm Chair. May I ask the Minister how does MOE ensure that our disadvantaged children get the good pre-school education they badly need? How does MOE identify these children, and then how does MOE guarantee pre-school education places for this group? Lastly, will MOE also ensure that the school-based student care places are available for this group and are targeted at them?

Mr Heng Swee Keat: I thank Dr Lily Neo for the questions. I think those are very important questions.

First, on whether our students get good pre-school education, today, over 99.9% of our students attend kindergarten and then K1, K2. That has been due to efforts which have been put in by various parties over the last few years, in particular, to try and get every child to attend kindergarten even though it is not compulsory. Now, in terms of how do we ensure then that these are good pre-schools, this is where the efforts that we are going to put in and the committee, which Mr Chan Chun Sing and myself are chairing, will work on. I showed the five areas of work that we are embarking on. In fact, some of those work areas have already been done and some of the work has taken place earlier, but we will continue with those efforts to raise the overall level of pre-school education in Singapore, and Minister Chan will probably speak more on this tomorrow.

Now, for the MOE-run kindergartens, all of the centres will be in HDB heartlands. We think that that is an important catchment area and we want to ensure that students living in the heartlands have access to pre-school. On school-based student care centres, today we have 80 and we are expanding further. Priority will be given to students from the lower-, middle-income groups. This is something which the schools are aware of and, in fact, they have been implementing policies to that effect.

Finally, let me say that where students require financial assistance, they will be given financial assistance. We have, in the last few years, enhanced financial assistance significantly so no child would be denied a good pre-school education because of family circumstances.

Ms Janice Koh: Thank you, Madam. I am really happy to note from the Senior Minister of State's response that MOE and I are on the same page with regard to the value and importance of Literature. I have got a two-pronged supplementary question, one is on passion and one is on perception.

On passion, I totally agree that students should be free to choose their subjects based on what they are passionate about, but in the case of literature, how do we support those students who happen to be in secondary schools where the schools do not offer it as an "O" level subject, and we know that only 50% of these schools offer it as an "O" level subject.

And on perception, you know, just yesterday on The Straits Times Forum online page, a Secondary 2 girl wrote in to the Forum Page to say that she did a poll of her friends to find out how many of them wanted to do literature. All of them said they did, except they were afraid of disappointing their parents if their grades were low. How can MOE reverse this impression of Literature and change the perception of parents?

Ms Indranee Rajah: Mdm Chairperson, I thank Ms Koh for her supplementary question, which is a very valid one. She raised two points – passion and perception. In terms of the perception, the main perception which deters people is the perception that it is hard to score at Literature. On this, the proportion of distinctions in Literature amongst "O" level graduates is about 41%. This actually shows that it is very much within the realm of possibility to do well for Literature. That is the first point. You can do well.

Then, of course, the next question is in the schools will they be encouraged to take up Literature? As the Member may know, a large degree of autonomy is given to school principals and the idea is that you do not have a one-size-fits-all approach. The principal and the school leaders should do what is best that fits the circumstances for each school. I think that is why we hear different stories about Literature is approached in different schools because some schools have a very strong Literature programme and some schools, well, less so. It boils down to the four points that I raised earlier in my speech which is that the distinctive characteristics of the schools which do well in Literature are where we have the students who are already interested; you have passionate teachers; you have supportive principals and there is good foundation in English.

Now, the funny thing, though, the key is when you have passionate teachers and a supportive principal, they will put in programmes to make students more interested. You could have some who were not interested to begin with, but if they see that the school has a good programme and they start to think about it, they may be encouraged to take it up. The key here, really, is getting principals and school leaders to see Literature as an important subject and to introduce programmes within their school that encourage a stronger take-up rate from the students. That, to me, is the key. From MOE's perspective, we will work with those principals and with the schools to encourage the taking up of Literature; and not just Literature as I have mentioned in my answer – Humanities as a whole – because I think that we need that balance.

Mr Baey Yam Keng: I am heartened by the Senior Parliamentary Secretary's reply that MOE values school heritage. If I understand correctly, the preservation of school heritage is practically left to the principal and principals do come and go. I would like to ask MOE if they could establish a proper framework and also provide resources so that the important aspects of a school's heritage is not just discarded or ignored based on the whim and fancy of a principal. These efforts should also be extended to existing schools, not just when schools are closing down or merging because heritage is a living thing. It is not history; it should be an ongoing effort and process.

6.30 pm

The second clarification is will MOE, when planning for new schools, be looking into its database of defunct school names, to revise some of these names? For MOE's information, my alma mater, Westlake Primary School's name is available. It was located then along Braddell Road, so it does not need to be located in the West.

Ms Sim Ann: Mr Baey, Westlake Primary School is duly noted. Generally, I want to say that there is increasing commitment on the part of our educators – principals and teachers alike – to highlight to our students the importance of heritage. We have seen a number of very good practices in various schools that have undergone the process of relocation for merging, to set up, for instance, heritage rooms where paraphernalia from the previous incarnations of the school are being duly preserved and good stories are being written down or maybe even published in the form of books to encourage students to understand the school's past. Mr Baey's suggestion is a very good one and we will be working together with our schools to perpetuate and share some of these best practices.

Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar: Madam, I have three clarifications. First, Minister has sketched the major directions and possible challenges for our educational system in the coming years. But we know that this cannot be addressed by the Ministry, schools and school leaders alone. Parents and teachers are equally important stakeholders.

Senior Parliamentary Secretary Hawazi Daipi has addressed the point about parents, but may I ask the Minister what more can be done to ensure that our teachers remain positive and committed to the rethink that Minister has sketched out earlier?

And the next two clarifications to Senior Parliamentary Secretary Hawazi Daipi, with regard to the new school-based after-school care centres, who will be the personnel to attend to our students, after school hours? Some teachers are quite concerned that their job scope might just be expanded. And the third clarification, in Malay please.

( In Malay ) : [Please refer to Vernacular Speech on Pg xx.] What are the status and updates of the Malay Etiquette Camp that was introduced in 2011? Has it been implemented widely?

Mr Heng Swee Keat: I thank Dr Intan for her question. She has made a very important point that having teachers who are fully committed and engaged in the process is very important. I am very pleased that our teachers are very engaged in this process. Earlier on, I mentioned that we have based one of Our Singapore Conversation within schools – over 5,000 educators have taken part in it. Many students have also been involved. I find it very important for us to hear the voices of our students as well.

Many of the issues that I surfaced in this House earlier on were surfaced by participants and we have collated them very carefully. There is strong support for the process and there is some clear direction in terms of the strengths that we want to reaffirm but also the changes that we ought to make, either in a more radical way or in a more calibrated way.

Some of the options that I mentioned today came from our educators. I am very happy that at our headquarters, our professionals are also very, very engaged in this process. The Director-General of Education herself is very focused on these issues. I am confident that as we evolve and as we discuss in the next step that we will be looking at the options and debating the options in much greater depth.

Mr Hawazi Daipi: Madam, there were two questions raised by Dr Intan. On the Student Care Centres (SCCs), these are run by operators engaged by the schools. When the students are there to take part in their activities, the responsibility rests with the SCC. What we have done is to improve the coordination between schools and the SCCs in two aspects. One is the programme, so that there is a greater coordination between programmes run by schools and programmes run by the SCCs. Secondly, the pastoral side. Where students need greater supervision, greater attention beyond the academics, there is a greater handshake between the school coordinator in-charge of working with the SCC co-ordinator as well as the SCC management.

On the part of the Malay mannerism camp that I spoke about, let me just respond in Malay.

( In Malay ) : [Please refer to Vernacular Speech on Pg xx.] In general, the camps have not been implemented yet at the Ministry. It has been tested, piloted by the Singapore Malay Language Council more than a year ago and we have found the programme suitable for implementation in schools so that it can be enjoyed by students.

In general, the activities are not just in the form of listening or watching lessons taught by the teachers, but the students will also be directly involved in learning Malay manners and courtesy. This can be conducted in schools. The teaching staff or mentors can either be teachers or local Malay language and cultural personalities.

We will be briefing schools to explain about this programme. We also hope that Malay language and cultural bodies can be involved by organising these activities outside of schools so that parents and their children can also take part.

I think this is a very good programme because it will be enhancing our children's understanding about Malay culture and manners as well as their culture.

The Chairman: Asst Prof Eugene Tan.

Asst Prof Tan Kheng Boon Eugene: Thank you, Madam, for your indulgence. I have a clarification to seek from the Senior Minister of State. I am all for University autonomy but I am concerned about autonomy being used to justify discrimination. The idea that we want to recognise the different abilities of the academics is fine; I think we recognise that in the base pay. But why should foreign academics be given allowances? We could have a situation in which we have two academics – one local, one foreign – both having the same qualifications, same abilities, but then they would be remunerated differently. I think this is blatant discrimination. I think it undermines the long-term development of our universities because it discriminates against our own Singaporeans.

Ms Indranee Rajah: I thank the Member for his supplementary question. I think the Member's concern is, if there is discrimination without a rationale or justifiable basis. Let us come back to the basic issue or the basic situation. We have Autonomous Universities. They have to look to see how they can recruit. The Member also acknowledges that for the base pay or the base salary and for the bonuses that is dealt with, more or less on par. The real crux of the matter appears to be the allowances, out of which the largest one is really the housing allowances.

My understanding of it is that when you are recruiting from overseas, what the universities do is they take into account whether or not the person has housing, and they look to see whether that is something which is necessary to be addressed, in terms of getting people over here. At the same time though, they also do look into that from the perspective of returning Singaporeans. So, one of the Universities, for example, has for Singaporeans, a housing allowance of up to one year of housing benefit if that Singaporean had been residing abroad for more than three years. There is another university where they are allowed to apply for on-campus housing if they or their immediate family members do not own a residential property. Then there is another one where they have the same allowance if they do not own a residential property in Singapore.

The Universities do not have the same practice across the board. They have practices which they feel are suited to their own University. To the extent that the Member is concerned about just pure discrimination on the basis that one is a foreigner, one is a Singaporean then obviously that is not correct. Not correct meaning that that should not be done. If the concern is whether or not the faculty staff is able to have housing in terms of how do you recruit; is one of the things that you need to add into your package to be able to attract people here, that, I think is what the Universities are doing.

I think the Member has flagged this as a cause for concern. That is something that we certainly convey back to the Universities so that they can review to make sure that their practices are fair and have a rational basis in terms of what they offer their faculty and their staff.

The Chairman: End of clarification time. Mr Lim Biow Chuan, you may wish to withdraw your amendment.

Mr Lim Biow Chuan: On behalf of the Education GPC and other Members of this House who are passionate about education policies, let me thank the Minister, Senior Minister of State, Senior Parliamentary Secretaries, Mr Hawazi, Ms Sim Ann, for their replies and clarifications. I would also wish to take the opportunity to thank the Permanent Secretary and MOE staff for their diligence and support during this COS Debate. Madam, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

The sum of $10,660,000,000 for Head K ordered to stand part of the Main Estimates.

The sum of $975,000,000 for Head K ordered to stand part of the Development Estimates.