LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS

LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS: **

(Local teachers on placement and exchange of ideas): **

23.

Mr Gautam Banerjee:

Mr Gautam Banerjee asked the Minister for Education whether the National Institute of Education, as part of its normal teachers' training programme, regularly places trainee teachers in international schools so that they get an opportunity to experience different teaching methods and practices.

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Mr Gautam Banerjee asked the Minister for Education in light of the increase in the number of international schools in Singapore, whether there are programmes in place to promote the exchange of ideas and best practices between local and international schools.

Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam: As part of the efforts to expose Singaporeans to a global environment, MOE encourages and facilitates efforts to collaborate with international schools. This includes providing opportunities both for our students and teachers.

In 2006, 31 of our schools were involved in 58 collaborations with foreign system schools. The collaborations range from joint efforts on projects, immersion programmes, sporting and cultural exchanges to sharing of good practices and ideas.

For example, Yumin Primary School has an ongoing collaboration with The Japanese School (Primary) since 2000. There are mutual visits by teachers to learn about the different school systems. They also organise an Immersion Programme every year for the P5 and P6 pupils, and a home-stay programme for the P5 pupils with their counterparts. Another example is the collaboration between Paya Lebar Methodist Girls' Secondary School and the Australian International School in the Arts Programmes. A few of our schools like St Andrew's JC, St Andrew's Secondary and CHIJ St Theresa's play friendly rugby, hockey and soccer games with the United World College.

MOE is continuing with its efforts to encourage more schools to establish collaborations. We are also exploring other platforms for interactions between our schools and the foreign system schools in areas such as sports leagues, the Singapore Youth Festival for performing arts and an international friendship camp.

For the teachers, MOE values the importance of building a strong foundation in pedagogy as well as developing the teaching force through broadening of their experiences. The exposure gained by teachers will benefit them professionally and enable them to contribute more to the teaching service.

As the objective of the pre-service training is to lay the foundation for our trainees to teach in local schools, trainee teachers are therefore not sent for teaching assignments in international schools. However, when they become trained teachers, there are opportunities for them to be attached to overseas or local international schools, such as Tanglin Trust School, Singapore American School, United World College and Overseas Family School, as part of Teacher Work Attachments or overseas immersion programmes to broaden their outlook on Education. In the first half of 2006, more than 200 of our teachers participated in these attachments.

Apart from teaching attachments and immersion programmes, there are also secondment opportunities for interested teachers to different type of schools, such as the Singapore International School in Hong Kong and the Bangkok-Pattana School, for them to experience different teaching practices and methods.

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