JUNIOR COLLEGE/UPPER SECONDARY EDUCATION

Order read for resumption of Debate on Question [25th November, 2002].

"That this House, having noted the Report of the Junior College (JC)/Upper Secondary Education Review Committee 2002, contained in Paper Cmd. 8 of 2002, (1) supports the new JC curriculum which will better develop thinking, communication and other process skills and engage students in greater breadth of learning; and (2) endorses greater diversity and opening of new pathways in JC/Upper Secondary education to cater to the different strengths and interests of students.". - [Minister for Education].

Question again proposed.

Mdm Ho Geok Choo (West Coast): Mr Speaker Sir, my parliamentary colleagues in the last two days have debated on the merits and demerits of our existing education system as well as the recommendations in the proposed new model.

Among some of the pertinent points brought up in the debate were concerns with implementation of the recommendations, in particular, how can we ensure that teachers are able to deliver effectively. Other points pertain to the further stress that will be loaded on teachers, parents and students because of the introduction of new subjects as well as the danger of creating an elitist society.

Having heard through the debate, I am reminded of a Sunday school song that I used to sing and used to feel very troubled when singing it. The lyrics of the song go this way:

Look all over the world,

No one likes me,

Look all over the world,

No one exactly like me,

Some people are short and

Some people are tall,

But God loves them all.

I used to feel very troubled singing these lyrics until one day, I ventured to ask my mother why is it that "no one likes me", and that was when my mother gave me a lesson on the reality of the world that we are living in.

She told me to put out my 10 fingers and to note that the 10 fingers are of different lengths and they also bear different fingerprints. However, each finger is unique in itself and they are all precious to our Creator. So, it was about being different and not about being liked.

Going by this illustration, at home, our siblings can be very different from one another, yet we are all loved by our parents. Extend that to the nation state; the citizens are all different individuals, yet they are all loved by the Government.

This reminds me of what NMP Dr Jennifer Lee has mentioned about the 400,000 potential workers at the bottom rung of the ladder. In fact, I would say that 75-80% of the student cohort will not benefit from the revised recommendations for the Upper Secondary Schools and the JCs.

Anecdotally, this is similar to putting nail polish on the two middle fingernails. When we hide away the other eight fingers, the fingers with nail polish look very pretty. However, when you put up the other eight fingers, the two middle fingers with nail polish that happen to be the longer ones will stick out like sore fingers amongst the other eight fingers with no nail polish. This pair of hands will not look as pretty as another pair of hands with nail polish on all the finger nails. So, the way to close the gap between the top 20-25% and the other 75% is really to level up the lower cohort.

Mr Speaker, Sir, this is where Dr Jennifer Lee's and the other MPs' point about the need to take care of the other 75% or so of the student cohort begs attention, lest we inadvertently cultivate students who feel that "no one likes me".

Granted the fact that resources are limited and that it is only natural that resources are allocated to investments that give the best payoff, no one begrudges that we ought to concentrate our resources on the top 20- 25% of our student cohort. This is one way that we can ensure that our creme-de-la-creme are nurtured to continue to lead our nation and economy into the future. Nonetheless, it is necessary that there must be some leftovers for the other 75% or so.

Granted that the schools cannot afford to give equal resources to the other 75% and the fact that going forward, our economy depends also on the input of the other 75%, how can MOE ensure that this 75% will be given the opportunity for that life long learning?

As pointed out by my parliamentary colleague, Assoc. Prof. Koo Tsai Kee, education is a life long journey. Preparing our students for the new society requires a long-term plan where we will need to continually educate knowledge workers. This is because knowledge workers, unlike the traditional workers, no longer work with their hands, and knowledge gets obsolete very rapidly because it is made irrelevant by advanced improvement in science and technology.

Therefore, what the Ministry is doing in terms of providing the foundation and fundamental training for the general cohort of our students is correct. However, I would like to urge that the Ministry thinks beyond the schools to ensure that the majority of the product of its system is given an opportunity to level itself up when it is in the real working world. In this way, this lower cohort can continue to contribute to the economy, although they may not be at the helm of leadership.

This is where I would like to compliment the Sub-Committee of the Economic Review Committee on Enhancing Human Capital. The Sub-Committee has come up with two very pertinent recommendations that I feel the MOE should make a point to support, although I reckon that it is not in the charter of the MOE to bother itself with adult education.

Nonetheless, the directions and long-term plan of the MOE to churn out knowledge workers of the economy cannot be formulated in an ivory tower. The determinants of MOE's policy are very much grounded in the working world.

The two recommendations of the Sub-Committee of the ERC on Enhancing Human Capital make important reference to educating and nurturing our students for the new society. We are aware that the new society will be a society populated by knowledge workers.

Knowledge is unlike traditional skills, which change very slowly. To give an example, a museum near Barcelona in Spain contains a vast number of hand tools used by skilled craftsmen of the late Roman Empire, which any craftsman of today would recognise immediately because they are very similar to the tools that are still in use today.

For purpose of skill training, it is therefore reasonable to assume that whatever that has been learned when you are 17 or 18 years of age would last for a lifetime.

On the other hand, knowledge becomes rapidly obsolete and knowledge workers have to regularly come back to school. Continuing education of already educated adults will become a big growth area in the future. The information revolution which already has an enormous impact on education and on traditional schools and universities will probably have an even greater effect on the continuing education of knowledge workers.

Hence, the recommendation on stimulating creativity and innovation by the ERC Sub-Committee. I quote:

'Our prime engines of growth will need to be fuelled by capabilities that are indigenous, knowledge-based and services-oriented with a greater emphasis on value creation, innovation and international orientation. We need our organisations to be places that consciously and intentionally enable workers to be at their best and, at the same time, build and expand their capabilities to become more productive, more resilient, able to tap their creativity and initiative, and bring forth new innovation.'

How can our schools partner the corporate world for this bigger game plan? Here, I would like to recommend that our schools partner the corporate world to develop a virtual creativity and innovation centre. The whole idea is to encourage students to upload their creative ideas and the best ideas could then be rewarded publicly.

Support perhaps could be given to the contributors of these ideas through adoption by an interested company, for example. Such initiative can go a long way to benefit the other 75% of our student cohort. To nurture a bigger cohort of students for more creative and innovative contribution, the environment and infrastructure must be all-encompassing.

The second recommendation of the ERC Sub-Committee on Enhancing Human Capital is on transforming the education institutes into suppliers of knowledge workers. It was stated in the recommendation that "we need to re-position schools and universities, so that in addition to teaching and educating, they serve as creators of knowledge, engines of innovation and cradles of enterprise".

Perhaps, schools can explore the possibility of tying up with the corporate world to run a KBE-Readiness Enhancement Project, which the objective would be to ensure that education institutes supply operational knowledge workers to the corporate world.

In such a project, representatives of education institutes and representatives of the corporate world could meet, to assess which key knowledge, skills and traits the business organisations most urgently require of their employees but feel are not yet properly encouraged/developed by the education sector.

Both parties can then identify how the corporate world can most efficiently help the education sector in developing these knowledge, skills and traits, and which third party may help with this project. Such help can actually be done through lectures, provision of case studies and other materials, internships, exchanges and interviews.

Sir, the suggestions outlined so far attempt to close a gap between the top 25% and the other 75% of the student cohort, which if left unattended, will only widen the divide. All that MOE needs to do to make this happen is to take a more flexible approach in extending itself beyond the schools and link up with the resources in the corporate world.

Notwithstanding the good and timely work put in by the Committee, I would like to highlight four other issues for review by MOE.

The first area of concern which MPs have talked about pertains to having enough supply of teachers. My parliamentary colleague, Mr Chew Heng Ching, has suggested that we should look to taking in more foreign teachers. I would propose that we also should look to the pool of retrenched executives who would be able to take on a second career as teachers because their commercial and real life experiences will put them in good stead as non-academic character development programme specialists.

The Minister for Education, RAdm Teo Chee Hean, has stated in his speech at the Ministry of Education Investiture of the 2001 National Day Awards in January 2002 that one of the key challenges for the Ministry of Education in the years ahead is to continue to build high quality teachers. He had acknowledged that good teachers are the foundation of a good education system. The challenge, he said, was to ensure that we maintain a high standard of teaching profession even as the profile of the teaching force changes.

Sir, 3,500 of our experienced teachers will be retiring over the next five years. This lot needs to be replaced. With the revised syllabus, we know that there is an additional load on existing teachers and we need to beef up the pool. Besides, MOE also has to recruit more teachers in preparation for the larger student enrolment at the secondary and junior college levels over the next few years. Student enrolment at this level is projected to increase by 25,000 from 220,000 today to 245,000 in year 2006.

The Ministry was expected to recruit 3,000 new teachers for the recruitment cycle which started in August last year to July this year. This recruitment was supposed to replace those who are retiring and also to set up recruitment in advance for secondary school and junior college teachers.

I wonder to what extent the Ministry has met its target. We are aware that, apart from the traditional source of fresh graduates joining the teaching service, the Ministry has also been recruiting those with some working experience as teachers. This is very encouraging and opens a window of opportunity and hope for the many retrenched executives today.

I would urge that the Ministry consider a conversion programme that will put the professionals, executives and managers who have been retrenched through a non-academic teaching diploma course within this 3-year window before 2006. This group of retrenched executives constitutes a fairly high percentage of the retrenched employees of 100,000 in Singapore today. They can be converted to be economically active and gainfully employed again.

We may lament that the issue really is that we can have such a scheme but there would be no takers. Well, I reckon that in this aspect, we need to champion for the fruition of such a scheme and even launch campaigns to bring about awareness of a second career in teaching.

In this, perhaps the MOE could partner the National Job Task Force and other agencies such as SPEC, to identify suitable candidates, design the conversion programme for character development and deliver the programme. Such effort and new opportunities in the education industry will give a boost to these retrenched executives who will be able to find hope in a second career in this industry.

The second area of concern has to do with the broader range of subjects that students are now faced with and would have to make a choice. Independent counsellors may be needed because of the much wider choices to be made by students in the Integrated Programme.

Our students have had little experience of free and wide choice. So far, they have been channelled through the whole education system almost totally on the basis of their various scores. They and their parents are not ready for freedom of choice to this extent. These independent counsellors could be trained up from the ranks and file of the retrenched professionals, executives and managers.

In the third area of review, I would advocate that we integrate project work into the real life working environment. As project work gives an opportunity for nurturing EQ and character development, as well as leadership, we ought to think in terms of internship during school vacation for students in the working world. Therefore, arrangement should be made to encourage employers, as good corporate citizens, to help nurture the future manpower of Singapore by being more forthcoming in their internship programme.

However, experience has shown that if there is no proper monitoring of this type of programme, very often these interns end up as mere hands and legs in organisations. This is really a waste because it would not provide these students with the necessary learning that they are looking for.

In this instance, it would be good for MOE to think in terms of how they can work out a suitable programme with employers to enhance some of these internship programmes for project work.

The fourth issue I would like to raise is that the Review Committee's proposal is not clear as to what percentage of the learning will be on nurturing the student in the EQ and character development aspects.

In the area of EQ, besides the innate characteristic of an individual, I believe a certain amount of nurturing and exposure can actually create awareness in an individual to realise and understand the importance of developing strengths in this area.

This proposal has recommended that one way to do it is to allow the nurturing of these characteristics to reside in the non-academic area. It would appear to me that a paradoxical situation could arise for a young teenager in the JC because he would be torn between focusing his energy in the academic pursuits rather than striking a balance simply because the non-academic pursuits may not be given equal weightage in terms of measurement.

This is fine provided that there is a campaign to create understanding and awareness amongst our teachers, parents and students, that though not as measurable as the academic pursuits, the non-academic pursuits will be recorded as track record and experience.

Due recognition for such pursuits should include appropriate and meaningful proportionate weightage in the admission into university programmes as well as for appointments in their careers. It is necessary to establish a quantitative measure of non-academic or co-curricular work in order to incentivise pursuit of such activities.

In the US, the top universities like Yale, Harvard and the other Ivy League universities place great emphasis on students' co-curricular activities in their admission criteria. Of course, the applicant has to fulfil the basic requirements but it is common knowledge that the student's non-academic activities have important weightage. In our case, the university admission criterion states a bonus 5% on CCA, which for all the big bang on promoting non-academic pursuits as in the recommendations, would be insignificantly effective.

Together with project work which encompasses a big chunk of EQ quality and integrating skills, would MOE consider increasing this aspect of learning and development, ie, CCA and project work to 15% of the university admission criterion? This is approximately equivalent to the credits earned in one subject. Since much time is spent on such pursuits, we ought to give some credit here and not because many Singaporean students adopt the attitude of "if you give me points then I'll do it".

Yet we know that in truth, there may be little sport done by these students for pure enjoyment. CCA is not imparting mental strength in many of our students. It does impart a scoring mentality. This happens because we have yet to be able to deliver a system, which would motivate students to pursue purely for the love of it.

I am not advocating for a materialistic approach but being practical about things, in my opinion, the idealistic philosophy of "I do it for the love of it" has got to be cultivated. It takes time to do that, and in the interest of time, let us begin by buying in as many as possible, with an approach that can win big scores among Singaporeans. Once we have achieved a culture for the non-academic pursuits, we can then throw away measurement.

In fact, co-curricular activities of a person are given high weightings by multinationals corporations such as Shell, Exxon-Mobil and Mars Chocolates. They have a value-add contribution in determining the holistic individual.

In conclusion, I ask what should any system of education set out to achieve?

According to a recent study conducted by Towers Perrin, the attributes most sought after today include creativity, the ability to learn, versatility, awareness of the business environment and the ability to think beyond functional and cultural boundaries. These attributes encompass a combination of knowledge, skills and mindsets or attitude. In a sense this model, attitude, skills and knowledge, the ASK model, gives us something to start with but we need to think carefully about how we go about to achieve this.

The underlying philosophy of any competence-based initiative is based on the perceived need to help individuals respond to an environment, which is becoming increasingly diverse and unpredictable. The revised JC and upper secondary course syllabus should incorporate a competence approach to development and learning to learn for all and not just the top 25%.

What we should be looking at is a broader definition of learning - one that is process orientated, integrated, holistic and ongoing for all. And that also takes into account the wider environment, as well as the learner's personality traits. I believe that the recommendations of the Review Committee would ultimately drive towards these objectives.

I urge the Ministry or the Committee to be responsive to suggestions for improvements made and to initiate a whole new discussion on the implementation follow up.

On this note, I would like to support the motion.

Ms Braema Mathiaparanam (Nominated Member): Thank you, Speaker, Sir, for letting me join in the debate. I rise in support of the motion and also to raise a few concerns.

I found the Education Review Committee's report on the Upper Secondary/Junior College curriculum well-placed in wanting to give students a breadth in knowledge as well as depth in subjects that they hold dear.

I was particularly excited by the subject 'Knowledge and Inquiry', seeing it as an opportunity to introduce modules, such as certain aspects of university 101 courses, such as anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, management skills, or perhaps best practices, and mass communication skills.

I am keen on this widening of the curriculum as long as long as it holds true to what I see as a key operational phrase in the report - giving students the "space to pursue". I think it is pivotal that we give them the space and the time to learn, to redefine, to review, and the whole process repeats itself again. That is part of the initiative to which I think individuals can pick up those skills to become confident in coming up with new ideas. On a larger scale, I see this initiative as something that is very important to our society because it is giving a clear signal that perhaps from maybe 2006, or from now on, we are placing a larger emphasis on the value of learning, the process of learning, rather than just the facts. So I commend and congratulate the Committee for coming up with such a proposal. It is going to take some time for people to shift their gears into understanding what it all means at the ground level.

Coming now to the concerns, primarily, I would have been most comforted if the report had also engaged itself on the ranking scheme, the university admission criteria and the appraisal scheme for teachers. These have to be in tandem and aligned with the outcomes of this new review where the curriculum is concerned. If we are expecting our students to perform according to these indicators, whatever the outcomes be, then likewise we should be following that through with an appraisal scheme, whether it is appraised in schools, whether it means admitting students into university or appraising teachers in tandem.

Let me just go back to an old issue that has come up in Parliament many, many times, in the media and, I am sure, in many feedback sessions - the great ranking scheme. It has always been based on pure academics, whether it is the value-added side, or whether it is just the schools or JCs, they are ranked according to the academic achievements of the students. Perhaps this has led to, at the ground level, a lot of us sacrificing what is the learning process and going just for the score.

Let me just give an example. As a former teacher trying to persuade students or coming to that kind of conflict, whether I should persuade a student to drop Literature because the grades are not there, or whether I should let the student continue, it is a tough scheme to be up against the system that does not encourage the breadth that we are right now seeking when we are interested only in the scores. So I am heartened by this recommendation. But I also wish the ranking scheme can be reviewed as part of that recommendation.

What I would like to see, and this has been suggested before, is the schools and junior colleges listed in alphabetical order with perhaps five stars for particular strengths, be they in Sciences, Moral Education or whatever, and three stars for internship programmes. Such a resource library of information for parents to choose and for students to choose what they would like to pursue will be a clear signal that we are giving to society as to what we are putting emphasis on.

Another side effect of the ranking scheme, at present, is that a lot of polytechnic students end up having remedial classes in additional Mathematics because they have been encouraged to drop it, or it was not offered. So the breadth is important if we want things to happen according to this Review Committee's proposals. And ranking, in my opinion, is a stumbling block and can also subvert what the Ministry is trying to do. So it becomes quite ironical.

Next, university admission criteria. Changes are already happening and it is heartening. However, like Mdm Ho Geok Choo, I too wonder whether the project work could have a higher weightage, and the 'A' levels themselves, instead of 75%, should come down a bit lower. The interviews at universities should play an important role so that we can assess whether the student is capable of whatever the outcome that we are trying to measure the student for.

Next, teachers' appraisals. It is common knowledge that teachers are appraised on the kind of results that they bring back where their students are concerned. It is quite a major criterion, talking to teachers and principals. They do tell you that it plays a part and, in some cases, a big part. Appraisal of teachers is then linked to performance bonuses and teachers themselves are drawn into this scheme. If we do not change the appraisal scheme, making it perhaps even an open appraisal scheme whereby teachers and principals negotiate what they mean by teaching a student to be creative, what they mean by teaching a student to be critical, these are intangibles in a lot of ways, how are we going to measure that and give due credit to teachers so that they do not get demoralised for the efforts that they put in but can continue and buy in into what this recommendation is all about?

In conclusion, for this aspect of what I am talking about, I feel that I would have been most comforted if there is an assurance that these three areas are going to be in sync, in tandem or aligned with what this report sets out to do.

Like the others, Dr Amy Khor, Mr Iswaran and Dr Jennifer Lee, I too feel that, while tackling the top, I have got no quarrels with making the system better for the top 25%. I feel that it is equally important to handle the lower primary. I wish that, in the same nine months, this same Committee, or another, could look into reviewing the curriculum, etc, for pupils from Primary 1 to Primary 3. They are the years that really give the child the fundamentals in language skills and in Arithmetic. There are good programmes like LSP and ENABLE. But still, where language skills are concerned, for the demands that are coming up, can we equip our children well enough? So this has to be in tandem too, that we try and fix the lower primary classes as well as the upper end. So I am hoping that that too is on the cards and will surface perhaps quite soon.

I heard the Minister of State, Dr Ng Eng Hen, and also Minister Teo Chee Hean, on how we have come very far and how we have helped our students to come along. 90% is a good, big average that we have looked after, as what was said, and that a lot of our students now are well equipped to converse in English. This is laudable. I do feel that while it is a good place to arrive at when we are in a global world with demands that are becoming greater, we also have to relook at the quality and think about, besides the numbers appearing at 'O' levels and the numbers who are passing through the language courses, the quality of our students. One trend that I personally find disturbing is the number of students who are now ending in the Normal (Academic) stream, not to say that that is a wrong stream. But when we first started with small numbers, I think, today, it is three out of every eight students. And it begs the question that, while we review and do better for the top, offering choices, etc, should we not go further back and try and see what are the trends where quality is concerned? So I am hoping that the review will cover that because, like what was said before, fixing the top is well and good and needs to be done. But the group that is feeding the top too needs to be given better vitamins, etc.

On this whole issue on the importance of the mother tongue, again, back at JC curriculum level, a lot of our students have become, through 10 years of education, quite well emplaced in their proficiency where mother tongue is concerned. May I suggest that perhaps it is a better idea that we offer a second language, with not the high rigours of a mother tongue at the JC level, that makes them become a global citizen, whether it be something for the region, or something across, and that should give them more language-based skills as well as not to overload them with the mother tongue emphasis. Likewise, the university admission criteria will have to be readjusted.

Next, the Centralised Institutes. There are 1,063 students who attend the Centralised Institutes. They have a good record of being able to send quite a number of their students to university. My fear here is, under the present 2006 curriculum that is supposed to come, can our students from these Centralised Institutes cope with such high demands? It might be a better idea to take the lower end of the junior college intake, perhaps the 19 pointers and the 20 pointers, fill them with the students from the Centralised Institutes and put them under a college programme whereby these efforts are intensified, and they have a better chance of surviving the 'A' levels which we all know is going to get a bit more stressful, and make it to university. Because, by 2006, in my opinion, it can be quite out of sync for them.

I have a few concerns where implementation is concerned. One of them is the revised curriculum that is to be written. I have some questions. Who would be the planners? What is their expertise? What are their specialist areas? And what kind of training? On the training of teachers, much has been said - Dr Amy Khor has spoken on it and I am echoing that - quite a number of the teacher trainees, who now go through the National Institute of Education, are students who have come through this programme of being quite examination-smart. How are we going to retrain them within the next four years such that we can open up their minds to start thinking more creatively and critically? Could we have some assurance on both the numbers as well as the quality where teacher training is concerned?

On this issue of the teachers and students, those who are already in the classrooms right now, how are they going to be trained where the training hours are concerned, because we have just got our first group of 'A' level students who are sitting for their 'A' level examination under the revised syllabus? And the teachers have just adjusted to the revised syllabus. I am concerned about who is monitoring this and how will teachers cope with trying to vacillate between two systems, the revised syllabus for the 'A' levels at present as well as the 2006 curriculum that is coming. I would like to hear some kind of a plan or programme in this aspect.

It is wonderful to have specialised tools to cater to students who want to excel in sports, the arts, etc. But I also wonder, if by this proposal, we are very keen in opening the window and letting students come up with a path that suits them best, why are we not opening the sports school to students from the Normal (Academic) stream or the Normal (Technical) stream? Such students will learn much from the discipline of sports to excel also in the academic curriculum with much help from such a school. So it is a little bit beyond me to understand. On one hand, in summary, there is this proposal, a very good exciting one, and yet there are these few things around this proposal that can run the risk of subverting these good intentions.

Lastly, such a proposal, to be successful - and I personally hope that it will succeed - cannot act in isolation. Society too needs to embrace this proposal, understand what it means for them as individuals - parents, students or teachers - and, with that understanding, force themselves not to be over-eager, not to be so kiasu, as we normally call it, and to give this a chance to breathe.

With that, I would say that sometimes our obsession with saving face and not wanting to make mistakes, as a cultural norm too, can thwart the progress of such a proposal.

Mr Arthur Fong (West Coast): Sir, this motion to debate on the White Paper on education in the name of the Minister for Education, RAdm Teo Chee Hean, has caused two different reactions. On one level, that includes most, if not all of us in this House, the stated intentions of the recommendations of the education White Paper are so positively constructed that no one can find fault with. On the other level, some Singaporeans and some of our foreign friends overseas are befuddled with the White Paper. They wonder is it that when our students keep coming out tops at international mathematics and science tests, we are still not satisfied and have to try and change it.

Sir, I initially had some thoughts along these lines too. I had the benefit of a local education in my formative years and a good overseas tertiary education. When I returned from the US in 1988, I compared and found our local curriculum too stacked up in terms of knowledge acquisition. My colleagues, who were local graduates, were extremely competent in the technical aspects of their work and found it interesting when I shared with them the US system where undergraduates must take courses other than classes that are required to satisfy the major that they are taking. Such classes include Holistic Medicine, Speech, Communication and Rhetoric. I was also required to take courses for both an Arts and Science cluster as a Business undergraduate. Without the completion of such university requirements of the clusters, a Business undergraduate may not even get a degree, if the Business classes are completed. The Arts cluster may include subjects like Social Psychology, German Language, Russian Literature, or Geography. Examples of Science clusters include Physics of Light, Astronomy or Fluid Dynamics. This gives students a broader knowledge base and, certainly, some competence in participating in a discourse that is outside their major field of study.

I had a nagging thought that something needed fixing then, and again thought to myself, our system had met Singapore's national needs for the longest time. So, if it ain't broke, don't fix it or, rather, if it isn't broken, leave it, to emphasise support of RAdm Teo's point that we do have a good standard of English. Also, it was a system that let me stay well above others at a good university in the United States.

However, then to now, a lot of water had gone under the bridge, to borrow the often-used phrase, "the world has changed". We are indeed in a very different world. Education reform has now become a global trend and is now discussed and has taken centre-stage at many international conferences. Part of the reason for this is the rapid and drastic socio-economic change that is taking place on a global scale. In an era of increased economic competition, it is critical to have a trained and qualified workforce to support, sustain and advance the scientific, technological and economic capabilities of our nation.

Education reform, as an integral part of a nation's strategic policy, is not something new. The US and the UK have promoted improving the quality of education as a means to strengthen international competitiveness since the 1980s. France has integrated educational reform into its policies for the development of the country. China has been using the slogan "Invigorating China through Science and Education". In Japan, two years ago the government has pledged to make educational reform the foundation of all social systems in this century.

If these countries, which are richer and better endowed in terms of natural resources than us, are giving such a high priority to educational reforms, we too should look at how else we can build upon and improve our system. We cannot stand still. In resource-limited Singapore, we not only cannot afford to stand still, but we need to run doubly fast. I mentioned in one of my speeches during the Budget debate earlier this year that Singapore is like an airplane navigating in very turbulent and difficult airspace. I said that we needed to snap on new engines that will take us through. To do that, we need to look at our education system so that we have the innovative ability to conceptualise to make the tools that will help us build that kind of engine to take us through for years to come.

In the US, the importance of education and educational reforms enjoys very high level support. In fact, almost every US President in the last 20 years had put their mark on improving education through legislation. We are no different in Singapore. In 1997, the idea of "Thinking Schools, Learning Nation" was introduced. In this regard, we have appended much of our resources to the PRIME initiative. From the completed PRIME schools that I have visited, I must say, even at this middle stage of the programme, it is a great success. Similarly, a lot of effort and resources had been put into getting honest and useful feedback, practical suggestions and to lay down these suggestions and recommendations in the form of the White Paper on education. This will certainly be one of the most important blueprints in the remaking of Singapore.

Sir, we all know that having a good education is an important factor, not the only, but certainly a strong contributor towards economic success in life. This is especially true in a meritocratic and academic-driven Singapore. If you have good academic results, you are almost certain of a good employment which, in turn, would provide a good and comfortable life. Thus, having a good employment is a motivating factor for almost every Singaporean in their academic pursuit.

And in the area of employment, the civil service sends the signal on what is important. In most of the senior positions in our civil service, the minimum entry requirement is at least an Honours (Second Upper). For a student in Singapore, studying hard and aspiring to be amply compensated, his or her work is cut out for him or her, and the route to be taken clearly marked out. They will be singled-minded and study to sit for the examination subjects that will count towards entering the university, never mind that the intent of the White Paper on education calls for a thinking person.

Sir, in many fields, compensation does drive behaviour. Am I going to spend much time in other co-curricular activities, such as sports or music? Maybe. And only if I have some spare time left after studying the rest.

Sir, one of the most important determinants that drives students' performance must be university admission. Since the White Paper leaves it to the university/campus to decide on the weighting to be given to co-curricular activities and, at the same time, calls for a downgrading to a 15% SAT, the university/campuses must review their admission criteria too. It would appear that when the recommendations of the White Paper come into play, the admission criteria would be outdated. University admission criteria will have to be redrawn, in line with the proposed changes in the White Paper. Perhaps, there will be another debate then.

The recommendation to allow for private schools is a step in the right direction. In the area of knowledge acquisition and the quest for wisdom, no one can claim to have the right of monopolistic hold on it, not the least the Government. It does not do any good to have only one system of education in a country. The existence of private schools would spur greater performance all round. In the US, on a standardised achievement test, ie, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, private school students generally perform higher than their public school counterparts. We already have a high-quality public school system. Certainly, the private schools will also add to setting new benchmarks that we may at some stage consider for yet another White Paper. I would urge then for the Ministry to govern private schools with a light hand and to let the market find its own level in terms of operations, pricing and curriculum. The private schools will then play a value-added role in promoting Singapore as an education hub.

The White Paper calls for a reduction in the teaching hours for the students to be reduced by 10%, but with an increase in the intensity of the curriculum of 25%. I understand that the teaching staff in the schools that applied for IP is ready to take on the prescribed load. This is not surprising, considering those schools such as the Raffles cluster and ACS(I) had been doing their IP-similar programmes for some years. My fear is for the readiness of the teachers - whom some of my parliamentary colleagues have talked about over the last two days - whether those who are expected to teach the increased intensity subjects as recommended in the White Paper, although at a reduced 1,300-1,700 hours, are prepared.

Sir, I understand that, presently, a secondary school teacher spends more than 50 hours on average per week on teaching and related activities. In a year, they spend close to 500 hours on non-teaching related activities, such as Sports Day or Speech Day. I wonder if we had thought about over-stretching our teachers a little bit too much. The teachers are an important resource; in fact, very important in achieving the goals set out in the White Paper.

Sir, education is a key to having a competitive and highly qualified workforce. One thing is certain: as sure as there are jobs that have vanished forever, it is also correct to say that there are jobs that have not been configured yet. It is vital, then, to prepare our nation and our people with a wide exposure through education, so that the fit into tomorrow's job evolution is possible. I think this is very important, where we can add to the talent pool that is culturally connected, especially for our leaders-to-be.

As a Singaporean, I urge all to support this initiative to ensure that we stay ahead of the curve, in order that we may survive in a fast-changing and uncertain world. As a parent, I urge all to understand the importance of these changes in order that our children may have an opportunity to enjoy a more diverse and broader education, and for our country's survival.

Sir, I support the motion. 1.25 pm

Assoc. Prof. Ngiam Tee Liang (Nominated Member): Thank you, Mr Speaker, Sir, for allowing me to join in this debate. At the outset, let me declare that, as a university educator, I am very interested in the motion for obvious reasons.

The recommendations of the Review Committee in the White Paper, when implemented, will have a direct bearing and significant impact on university education in Singapore. It will have major significance on how the universities will carry out their mission, as well as on how university faculty members like myself will discharge our responsibilities. I am therefore delighted to rise in support of the motion in principle and, like my fellow parliamentarians who have spoken before me, wish to see the successful transformation of these and other changes that will make JC and the diversified secondary school education truly meaningful and fulfilling for generations of students to come.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I wish to congratulate the Review Committee for its bold views, vision and ideas to transform part of the education system. In any major change effort, there is always the danger that a gap will emerge between policy intention and implementation action. Hence, it is necessary, indeed vital, for pro-active consultation, feedback and revisions to occur at the conceptual and planning stages, and not wait until implementation time before improvements will be made. Fortunately, we have heard many thoughtful and useful comments and ideas in this House on what can and should be done to bridge or narrow the gap between system ideal and action realities. It is in this spirit and with the welcoming invitation of the Minister for Education that I offer my take on the matter.

Much has been said in the past two days, and I will not belabour some of the same points that I had originally thought of but which have since been brought up. Some of my friends said that this should be my maiden speech. But I feel that actually I am making a page-boy speech, since I am only left with a little bit to say, so as not to repeat myself and those of my colleagues.

Instead, I would like to touch on the bigger picture about our educational reforms. The revision to the JC curriculum and the inclusion of the three new types of secondary school structures are not all there is to the educational reforms we need for our country. They form but part of the bigger picture called the learning revolution, in which active learning and lifelong education are the key words to signal the type of education required in an innovation-driven and knowledge-based new economy.

We have heard, and sometimes robustly explained, that MOE has actually been overhauling Singapore's education system over the years, the latest being this set of recommendations. As such, the Review Committee came up with this new JC curriculum, the additional types of secondary education structures so as to offer more choices for students to receive an appropriate education at a pace suited to their learning abilities and aptitudes. Clearly, this is in response to past criticisms about our rigid educational structure and system. Nor in my mind would this be the last of the series of major changes to our education system. Given this background, Sir, I think it is important that the public should understand where the changes to the JC curriculum and secondary structures are coming from. Unfortunately - this is not the fault of the Review Committee - the White Paper did not provide this larger backdrop of how the proposed changes will fit into the overall education system for Singapore. That is why we have a lot of ideas that sometimes touch on areas which are not fair for the Committee to have commented on. I do not think that was in their terms of reference.

We need to explain to the public, and even to Members of this House, since we all may not have been keeping up with all the changes. Whenever we think about education, we tend to recall what we had gone through and use that as part of the reference point. We need to understand what should be the overall educational goals for the whole education system and in this, I even include the pre-schools and not just primary, secondary, JC or tertiary institutions. In the light of this new world economic order, we have to find out whether the desired outcomes of education that MOE has spelt out some years back do need revisiting and updating in this globalised world. I would say that, whilst we are mindful of the need to have thinking students, a learning nation, the kind of education that we are striving for should not negate those earlier concerns we have about what a true education should be. And I recall many, many years back, SM Lee mentioning that we can be a literate nation, but not necessarily an educated one. I think that also needs restating. In this regard, I have three main concerns.

One, the education outcomes of this revamp on the curriculum and new secondary school structures. We are trying to redress some of the over-emphasis we have on rote learning so that now we can be more creative, we can be thinking more imaginatively, we would have the means to be able to be adaptable and flexible in the new workforce, and so on and so forth. However, I would like to caution that in doing so, we do not go for form over substance as a result. We have heard how in comparison with overseas graduates, our local graduates are good in following or executing orders, that is we have content knowledge. But we are not so good when it comes to the showmanship, the ability to present, the ability to bring issues up, debate them, discuss them, and so forth. But I hope we can retain the best of both because we need both work horses as well as show horses. So it is important that students should be given the opportunities in this new revamped curriculum to be show horses but not at the expense of being able to do the work. An example of some of the dangers we have of form over substance would be, as my colleague, Dr Maliki mentioned yesterday, the danger of students wanting to be spoon-fed and not being original in their answers. In fact, they just 'cut and paste' from the Internet. They plagiarised. This is becoming an increasing concern for us.

How do we get them to be able to craft essays well and project work well? So the communication skills are important. But I think some aspects of literature and the humanities should also be grounded in our students even though they are in the Science or Mathematics stream. In this regard, having to cross disciplines would be very welcoming. But more importantly, Sir, how would different groups of stakeholders - the parents, principals, teachers, students and employers and the public at large - take to all these proposed changes? There would be differential impact among the stakeholders here for the different types of recommendations mentioned. I think MOE needs to look into what the various stakeholders would feel and understand in terms of the various recommendations. The JC curriculum change is one; having the through-train is another; and then having specialised schools. Probably, you will not find a uniform consensus on all the changes. It will differ. I think we need to look into that. For instance, can there be room for more life skill subjects to be taught, to be incorporated into the new curriculum for the JCs and the various secondary school structures? Even though they are specialised, private or through-train, can we ensure that they form part of an all-rounded education - life skills on interpersonal relationship building, effective interpersonal communication skills, problem-solving, mediation, negotiation, etc? I know that elements of these are taught in the primary and secondary schools at different stages, but we should ensure that they continue and, in fact, go on even to the universities.

Sir, much has been said that we need to have a mindset change for us to comprehend the profound implications of such changes for the future of our children. In this regard, the changes that we see around us, the new global effect of terrorism, the need for us to go regional and to go global, require us that we also have a good understanding of our neighbours, their history, their literature, their culture. In this regard, some of these should be incorporated, especially for those who are going on to JCs and universities. Even for those who do not, if we want to create entrepreneurs, they will also need to have a good knowledge of the market conditions in the neighbouring countries and the world, and these are subjected to social, political and economic forces.

Another thread I would like to emphasise, and I share this with many of my parliamentary colleagues, is that we should look at how, at the pre-primary level, kindergartens and child care centres have actually incorporated project work. If you look at some of the child care centres' curriculum, they are very imaginative. Can we continue to ensure that this kind of active learning will not be stifled at the primary level? In this, I share the sentiments of my colleagues that we should not just stop with the IP and JC changes. We have heard that it is easier to start at the JC level and the upper secondary rather than to revamp all the way since we have resource constraints. Nevertheless, we need to build up our cadre of expertise, we need to have the experience and we need to change mindsets from educationalists all the way down to the employers and the public. I would like to emphasise that we have started something that is needed, and it is something that we are grappling with. In some respects, we are going into the unknown as to how we can transform our education system whereby multiple intelligences would be recognised and nurtured and not just focusing on a uni-dimension concept of intelligence.

In conclusion, Mr Speaker, Sir, the "streaming" and "stress" issues that we have, in a way, with all these changes going on, will force a rethink, hopefully in the parents' minds of the misplaced importance that they place on just academic achievements. Hopefully, we will take pains to explain to the public how a common tool now on ranking will no longer be relevant. New forms of ranking will, in fact, take place. How do you evaluate someone who comes through on a specialised school system or a private school and rank him lineally from top to bottom? Probably, you will have different categories and we will have to include efforts for project work and co-curricular activities.

This is probably a way to force a crisis in the parents' minds. So they will say, "I need new guidance". That is where the role of MOE and the schools becomes very important now. We have to take pains to guide the parents along. We need, in fact, some steering committee, some coordination, a better network of schools with the grassroots bodies and the VWOs coming in. In fact, Mr Speaker, Sir, I dare venture that even for some of these new types of schools, a closer, more deliberate attempt to involve the community should be made by MOE and the schools so that all these very useful suggestions that we have made will not just end up as records for us to look through, but actually, where we will put our words where our mouth is and get us involved with the schools in making sure that some of those ideas that we champion could actually be realised.

At the same time, I realise that when we create a more thinking population, it is a double-edged sword. There are also other societal changes that we must be prepared to put up with because a more thinking and creative educated citizenry of the future might also mean a certain amount of critical feedback and action, and demand for more individual choice, more freedom of action.

This is all part and parcel of fostering a climate of intelligently thinking citizens so that even though there is divergent thinking, we have convergent interests that will propel Singapore as a first-world nation and we will continue our stride, and we can take our rightful place in this new world order. As Mr Chan Soo Sen has mentioned yesterday, there are many roads to Rome. In this set of recommendations, we are allowing some students to take the road less travelled. We wish them well.

Mr Steve Chia Kiah Hong (Non-Constituency Member): Mr Speaker, Sir, although the 30 MPs before me have touched on most of the topics concerned, it is still my duty to rise and address these changes, especially from the non-PAP perspective.

Sir, I speak in support of this motion in principle. Although more can and should be done to make education a learning and enjoyable experience, the proposed changes are a good start and a good sign of more positive changes to come, especially and hopefully for the lower secondary and primary levels. To that, I credit the Education Ministry and the Senior Minister of State, Mr Tharman and his Committee, for taking the effort to identify the shortcomings of our education system and make the necessary changes to make learning more relevant and enjoyable.

Singapore has built its reputation on an open economy and free trade. To that, let us work towards a third reputation, and that is "creative spontaneity". Senior Minister Lee had said that there is something in Hong Kong that causes it to have more "buzz", and that something missing in our Singapore society to give it more buzz is this element that I term "creative spontaneity".

We need to reduce the number of rules in our society and allow our citizens and our young to generate greater spontaneity in their actions. We also need to free the minds of our young and give them lots of room to explore; to allow them to think out of the box and identify other dimensions and angles to a problem. That is creative thinking at work. Together with the spontaneous action to experiment and try, it will create greater buzz as our society develops. Our current education system churns out a production line of workers, managers and instruction takers. This used to satisfy the needs of our industries during our development years, but not anymore. We have reached a First World economy and no longer in the league of those cheap manufacturing bases. The road ahead is unclear and paved with stiff competition. Singapore businesses must compete on ideas, innovation and originality.

The quality and standards of our future workforce to be churned out through our current education system is no longer going to be adequate. We need more thinkers, creators and innovators. We do not need more order-takers. We need them to be spontaneous and gung-ho in spirit and in action. We also need to remove the standard pathways for future generations. As what Mr Chan Soo Sen said yesterday, there is more than one road that leads to Rome. And the road less travelled may bring more meaning and fulfilment to life than the congested highways that every graduate seems to be scrambling to get on.

It must be clear also in the minds of the students and their parents that having a degree or even a Government scholarship may not be the best career path for them anymore. If they are that good, they do not need a scholarship to chart a future for them. To be very successful, they may even need to follow the footsteps of Bill Gates - leave school and follow their dreams. The nature of careers has evolved so radically and dramatically that there is no longer one standard career pathway. For example, a person can be very highly paid just by playing and testing computer games.

Let it also be clear in our young children's minds and their parents' that they do not need a degree or scholarship to be successful in society and in life. What they need is this ability to free their minds from the standard pathways set by the Government and society, and take the gung-ho spirit of "can-do, just-do-it and never-say-die" spirit. It is no longer what degrees or scholarships you have that are important, but what innovative ideas and patents you own that make your future. We need to be creative and to be spontaneous at that too.

When the proposed Junior College and Upper Secondary education review is fully implemented across all schools, I hope this new cohort will be the generation that will bring about more buzz and vibrancy into our Singaporean society.

Sir, as I first mentioned in the debate on the Budget Statement in May, there is a great need to develop "thinking creativity" in our young. We need to inculcate the inquisitive spirit in them. They need to learn to ask tough questions like "why" and "why not", and develop the courage and tenacity to explore and give it many tries. By asking "why", they learn to explore the fundamental concerns surrounding that issue, and develop their own justification that they will internalise into their being. So, questions asked by Senior Minister of State Dr Vivian Balakrishnan's son like, "Why must I die for Singapore?" is highly relevant and important to the psychological and character development of the child.

To survive and prosper in this knowledge economy, we need to free our minds. The revised JC emphasis on thinking and communication skills is a good start, but it is not enough. Like what Dr Jennifer Lee mentioned the day before, the Education Ministry needs to bring it all the way down to pre-primary and primary level. The children in the schools need to be encouraged to ask questions, and tough questions too. The teachers need not have all the answers to these tough questions like "why" or "why not". But at the very least, the teachers should encourage these questions, and force the students to go home and think about it for the next few days, and ask their parents or their friends. We will be surprised by the range of replies that could be thrown up by the children in their search for answers. Participation and answers with wit or originality should be given greater assessment credits.

Such processes will also build up the communicative skills in our young children to communicate their thinking and ideas to the class and authorities in a benign setting. This will be the key to their future success, and has to be done starting from primary level. It will be too late to turn the engine of thinking on only when they reach the JC level.

Sir, as I see it now, if there is one skill that international talents have in abundance over Singaporeans, it is their ability to talk their way out and argue convincingly. Singaporeans are often tongue-tied and stuck when confronted. And this has nothing to do with genetics, mind you, but how we were brought up in our education system.

When young, students are constantly told to shut up and do not make too much noise, nor to ask too many questions in class. This suppression has become so strongly internalised in our young, so much so that they grow up learning to keep quiet and shut their mouth - to the detriment of a creative society at large.

The Education Ministry needs to break this bad practice. Stop stopping the asking of questions by our children in primary and lower secondary level. Instead, make them ask questions, and force them to think and search for their own answers. Then, when they reach the upper secondary and JC level, encourage them to articulate it out and defend their answers. When that is successfully done, there will be more hope for our future.

In order to facilitate greater interactions between students and teachers, the class size needs to be cut. A big class is useful for the one-way impartation of knowledge. However, it is not going to be effective if we are going to encourage more speaking up and more interactions. When classes are too big, there is no way a teacher can handle a class of 40 talkative students. The only way to control such a big class is to order everyone to keep quiet, and punish those that do not. This is not going to help in teaching our students communicative skills later on in life.

From a young age, the students will have internalised into their sub-conscious that speaking up will bring about negative consequences and punishment, and will resist all attempts in speaking up. This is operant conditioning at work. The Education Ministry needs to recognise this aspect and work hard to eradicate it.

Our children and future leaders must be equipped with the right thinking skills to reinvent themselves and acquire specific work skills to stay relevant. There is no job security these days. The fact is that, globally, we are moving towards a free agent nation - towards contract and self-employment. Having a degree or even a scholarship is only useful for those who want an easy and well-paved life, and may even be a psychological barrier towards greater personal achievement in life.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I will now touch on the second part of the motion - having greater diversity and the opening of new pathways to cater to the different strengths of students. As several MPs before me have raised, there is concern about these new pathways becoming another form of streaming and a higher form of elitism.

Sir, there is room for genuine concern. While I applaud this move to open up more pathways, I hope the new privately-run schools will not be a gathering place for the average sons of the rich, famous or connected. I hope the Ministry will put sufficient checks in place to ensure that only the top per cent in each cohort will be admitted - based on intelligence and academic ability, and not on family backgrounds, links or contributions.

Also, with the introduction of the Integrated Programmes in selected schools, I expect greater emphasis to be given in the area of co-curricular activities, values upbringing, character building and leadership training. It is one thing to channel our best resources to train our brightest students for their future. It is another when the desired outcomes of such specialised training fail to deliver a future generation of leaders who are committed to Singapore, and improving our Singaporean society.

It will be a failure of our education system if we are to train our best and brightest with our best resources only to be told that they are going to be quitters of our society; or that they lack the compassion for the weak and the down; or that they behave in a snobbish class of their own; or behave condescendingly to their peers and followers; or that the elites only care about their own self-interests. The elites in our society must appreciate the opportunity and resources given to train and develop them, and seek to return back to society - more than what they have taken from it. This will be the way for our society to grow.

Thus, values of integrity and character building should be a key emphasis in these IP schools. As it is, I have come across very bright scholars and very brilliant individuals - the elite among their cohort - who lack the values of integrity and honesty; who behave condescendingly to their peers and think themselves a class above the rest.

If such is the end result of these Integrated Programmes, we would have failed in our education process and as a society in teaching our young the values of our society. It is useless to train our students to be the best and brightest in the world if these common values like patience, kindness, gentleness, compassion, integrity and respect for others are not internalised into the character building process.

Mr Speaker, Sir, while I support the Education Ministry in these proposed changes, I hope the Education Ministry will also give greater emphasis to the character building process of the individual. Let us not build a city without a soul, nor develop a person without a strong character. 2.00 pm

The Senior Minister of State for Education (Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise to support the motion in the name of the Minister for Education. Let me start by making a few observations on the process by which the recommendations of the Review Committee were formed.

It was a consultative process, drawing on a diverse constituencies. The Review Committee itself was a diverse one, with politicians like Ahmad Khalis, Chan Soo Sen and myself, educationists, private sector entrepreneurs, scientists and a few senior officials. We also consulted widely with parents and employers, besides educationists themselves, ie the teachers and principals in our schools. The major directions that are recommended in the Report were strongly supported amongst all these constituencies - the university academics, the teachers in our schools, parents and employers. It was not a situation where people outside the Ministry were challenging the MOE to change the system and the MOE was doing the defending. I must say that my colleagues in the Ministry were themselves amongst the boldest of vision and amongst the most anxious to get ahead with changes that will prepare our students well for a very different future.

There was a common recognition that the Singapore system has strengths that we would not like to erode. It is a system that provides a rigorous education, and a system that encourages every student, regardless of ability and talent, to aim high and to work hard to achieve something more than what he can achieve easily. It is a system that stretches and challenges every student, and that is a strength.

But there was also a common perception that our past and current achievements do not assure us of success in a future that is going to be quite different from what we are used to. We have to change to stay relevant to the shifting demands of an innovation driven era and an environment that will, in one way or another, place an increasing premium on flexibility - flexibility in the workplace, as well as the ability to adjust to ensure that we remain a strong society.

We cannot say precisely how we have to prepare for this more fluid innovation-driven future. After all, there is no direct means of training innovation, there is no direct means of producing flexibility. There is a certain amount of buzz-words and catch-phrases that we all use - you will find some of it in the Report, and it has been repeated in the debate. And sometimes the catch-phrases assume a certain precision in what we are trying to do. But there is no precision . We know that we have to make major shifts in direction, but a lot of the substance and details will need to be worked out as we go along, intelligently and carefully.

What I have been struck by is the freshness and boldness of perspective that we derived from everyone we have consulted, and in this debate itself. There is a desire to push forward, make the major shifts now, so that we can stay ahead.

The intensity of the debate reflects the importance which Singaporeans, and which Members of the House, place on education, for Singapore's future. Education is our most important strategy for long term economic competitiveness, and it is our most important strategy for building a strong society. But there is recognition that there is no single formula for preparing students for the future, no optimal path, no golden mean, no unique set of skills and talents that will secure our future. There is a recognition that we need more diverse talents, more diverse Singaporean talents, and we will not get this unless we nurture, groom and train our young along diverse paths, each no less important than the other. And all Singaporean students, regardless of paths they go through, ending up Singaporean in character and in spirit. Or as Dr Ngiam says , we can have divergent thinking, but we must have convergent interests.

The broad directions have been well supported. But at the heart of the debate, we really have questions about balance in education, in four respects. First, the balance between depth and breadth of study, particularly in the junior college years; second, a balance between structure and flexibility of choice; third, preserving a rigorous and challenging education, without overloading our students; and fourth, achieving diversity whilst preserving a sense of commonality amongst Singaporeans. These are inherent tensions in education. The debate reflects these tensions, and it is as well that we address these squarely.

We have reached the stage of advancement where there are no easy models for us to borrow or import. We have outgrown the UK system of "A" level education, and there is no new UK model that is satisfactory for us, or any other foreign model that we can import and implant. We have looked carefully at other foreign systems, the various Baccalaureate systems, the US system and other Asian systems. They all have their strengths but they also have their weaknesses. And they are all looking to reform their systems with the same considerations that we have - to prepare for a rather different future. We can learn lessons from them as we go along, but we have to chart our own destiny.

Let me now address some of the key issues of balance that I have just mentioned.

First, concerning the JC curriculum. The key issue is one of depth as against breadth. It is a non-trivial issue. There is broad support for greater breadth of learning amongst our JC students. We have been moving in that direction at the universities, we have a fairly broad "O" level curriculum, but as Ahmad Khalis said, there is a coca cola structure, in which the JC education we provide in between is too highly specialised. So there is broad recognition that we have to broaden out. There are a number of reasons why this is important.

First, of course, it is important for students who are going to be citizens in a modern, knowledge-based world to have a grounding in different areas, different disciplines. It is intrinsic to a good education. And as Warren Lee pointed out, it is important that we provide, especially for students from less privileged homes, this ability to receive a broad exposure which they would not always receive very easily at home.

Second, and this is a significant change in environment, it is becoming more difficult for us to predict the type of specialisations that will be in demand in future. Job definitions are changing more frequently, people are having to shift careers more frequently. Even our fresh graduates, if you look at recent years, our fresh graduates in various disciplines, especially the engineering disciplines, a very substantial number move on to different vocations, either the moment they graduate, or within two or three years. So early specialisation is not helpful in preparing ourselves for an environment where there will be frequent change in specialisations, continuous change in the nature of skills that are advantageous in the workplace.

Finally, and most importantly, the reason why we need a broad education is that we need to expose our students to different methods of thinking, different methods of learning, different methods of training the mind. A breadth of education in the sciences and the humanities is one way of achieving this. The present situation is not optimal. There are some details in the Report, but 40% of our "A" level candidature do only Science and Mathematics subjects. Of course, they have got General Paper, project work, mother tongue, on top of that, but as far as the content disciplines are concerned, 40% do only Science and Mathematics, and that is not satisfactory.

But let me address an alternative view, which has been, I think, quite well articulated by Prof. Low Seow Chay. Prof. Low's argument is that the knowledge-based economy needs individuals with specialised knowledge that will give us an edge over others. And the broadening of the curriculum, he sees as lowering standards. Lowering standards where it counts. His view is that the thinking skills that we are talking about are best achieved by changing teaching methods and learning methods, rather than changing the specialised curriculum that we have. It is a coherent view and worth addressing.

First, I agree that it is important to retain a certain depth of learning in core disciplines. This is our strength and we do not want to lose it. We should not lose the advantage of a strong grounding in core disciplines. It has held our students very well wherever they go - including top UK universities, top US universities. But the present system of specialised training at an early age - and this is what the university academics and those who are involved in research - is not well geared to future demands even within the core disciplines. In other words, if we are to encourage innovation in the sciences and engineering, for instance, we need a broader education to begin with, before you finally go on at the graduate and post-graduate stage to specialise. This is an important shift. The British have been a little later in recognising this than the Americans, but they are also now moving in this direction. It is a recognition that early specialisation is not necessarily the best route to developing the innovative abilities and research abilities required as you move up the value curve, in manufacturing or in services.

So the key question is: how do we best train innovative minds during the school and junior college years? Do we do it best by specialising in a few disciplines or by exposing students to a range of disciplines? And I ask this question whilst recognising, of course, the fundamental truth, that teaching methods and learning methods are critical, whatever you study. Whether the curriculum is specialised or broad, teaching methods will be critical, probably most important at the end of the day. But it should not distract us from important issues of structure in curriculum, within which teaching and learning take place.

Some depth is necessary because to train your mind, whether rigorous conceptual analysis, logical thinking, or innovative thinking, you have to study something to a certain level of difficulty, whatever it is. So a certain level of depth in any subject, in your core discipline, is necessary in order to train your mind. It is also important to know some content. Education is not just about skills as distinct from content. Without content, you have a vacuum in which you would find it very difficult to shape your skills. That is why we have chosen not to import wholesale, features of some foreign curriculum systems that we looked at, including the International Baccalaureate and in large part the American High School System, which have the strength of providing a broad education but are not renowned for rigour of training, particularly in Science and Mathematics. Well suited for some students, but not suited for all. And in refashioning a JC curriculum for a large 25% of cohort, you have got to make sure that it has features which meet the needs of the majority of JC students.

So depth is important and we do not want to dilute it too much. But we are going to need more breadth for the future than we have had in the past, to groom future scientists, bankers, managers, anyone who wants to be a good specialist eventually will be advantaged by a certain breadth of education early on. We are no longer importing knowledge, but having to create knowledge. We are moving up the value curve - innovating, not replicating. It would require an ability to spot opportunities, see connections and patterns in disparate events and phenomena, and make decisions in situations of uncertainty and ambiguity. None of this is new, but it will be much more present with us in future than it has been in the past. And it will be an advantage hto have multiple perspectives, and habits of minds that are shaped from having gone through learning in multiple discliplines . We need many faceted minds.

Philip Yeo is right - to succeed as a biomedical hub we need many more Masters and PhD graduates amongst our Singaporeans. But the question is: what should their earlier education look like? What should school and junior college education be to best groom Masters and PhD graduates of excellence in the sciences or any other field? We cannot specialise too early if we want to develop multiple frames and habits of mind that are necessary to do well in an innovation-driven climate.

Earlier this year, I accompanied Minister Teo Chee Hean to the UK. We were studying how they are coping, how they are trying to reform their system to cope with similar demands of the future. One of the people we met was Prof. Peter Goddard, Master of St John's College, Cambridge, and Chairman of UCLES (University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate). He was, by profession, a Professor of Theoretical Physics. We asked him what were the attributes that he and his colleagues in the field looked for at the 'A' level stage, that they considered important in grooming or in producing future research scientists in the area of Physics. He thought for a while - he did not give us a pat answer - and then said, first, Mathematics is important. He wanted to make sure the person is good at Mathematics and has learnt it with a certain degree of rigour. Second, he said reasoning skills, an ability to think differently and to transcend disciplines, to think outside the box. So I asked him: what about Physics? My question was really about training research scientists in Physics. He said, well, it is optional, not strictly necessary. Helpful, but not really necessary.

I think this illustrates the point - the importance of a multi-disciplinary orientation to breed reasoning skills and learning skills that are not uniform and not singular, a range of learning skills and thinking skills. So we have got to shift focus, broaden the curriculum in order to develop these skills.

The Sciences and Mathematics provide very useful training, as Prof. Low Seow Chay says, provide very good grounding in logical thinking and in experimental method. But it is not satisfactory that the majority of our Science students at JC do not take humanities. The humanities, by and large, are better placed at training an ability to appreciate ambiguity and deal with ambiguity. There are no right answers in the humanities. There is a range of possible interpretations on every question. Every time, you read the Mahabharatha, or Dream of The Red Chamber, you get a different lesson and a different meaning. Almost every economics question you ask does not have a deterministic answer. There is a range of possible answers and a degree of uncertainty. There is no linear fashion in which monetary policy determines a certain rate of inflation or shapes economic growth. There is no one way to balance a budget.

It is interesting to look at what the specialised schools in Science and Mathematics abroad do in their curriculum. These are schools aimed at gearing budding scientists, and I am referring here to schools like Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in the Washington DC area. There is a similar school in Illinois and you have got Bronx High, Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Technical High in New York. We have spoken to their curriculum designers and they are very clear in their minds that they want to ensure that students who aim to be budding scientists must have a breadth of learning at that age. Thomas Jefferson is the typical case of a Science and Mathematics school. They require that students take credits to the advanced level in Languages, Social Studies, Fine Arts, Humanities. Otherwise, you cannot graduate. Typically, these specialist schools will require that at least 20%, but usually more, of your credits are in a contrasting area.

Likewise for schools of the Arts, there are a few that you find internationally, and I visited one recently in San Francisco - broad curriculum, strong emphasis on Mathematics and Science, although it was a School of the Arts. They distinguish themselves from the average school by putting an added emphasis on the area of specialisation that they were known for, often going beyond regular curriculum hours, and more importantly, adopting a different method of learning. So the Science and Mathematics school adopts quite a different method of learning in Science and Mathematics. And the Arts school likewise - different ways of experimenting with methods, different activities for the students rather than an altogether different curriculum.

So I think the proposed JC curriculum framework achieves the right balance. We have tried to take a holistic view of how best we can develop a range of thinking skills. We have to broaden out, but we must avoid a shallow exploration of subjects that does not develop the mind. We need to study a few subjects in some depth but within a stronger, multi-disciplinary orientation. It is not just the core subjects that will achieve this. Project work, GP and the new Knowledge and Inquiry subject will enhance this multi-disciplinary orientation. They will also enhance our ability to build up communication skills amongst our JC students.

And, finally, training of conceptual thinking skills has to take place across the curriculum, regardless of subject. This is where teaching methods, learning methods are quite important and changes in our mode of assessment, which I will come to briefly later.

I am not so keen on some of the other suggestions for the types of disciplines we should introduce at JC. Ms Braema Mathiaparanam mentioned sociology, anthropology and a range of others. Mr Gan Kim Yong and some others mentioned management studies. These are interesting subjects. At the university level, there is usually opportunity to take an elective or option in these subjects, if not to specialise in them. But I think we should keep our JC curriculum focused on fundamental disciplines, disciplines where you can develop conceptual thinking abilities as well as a basic appreciation of the core areas of knowledge, and then go on from there to specialise when you are in university. I do not want to say this in a doctrinaire fashion. But, as a matter of priority and balance, I would say we stick to the fundamental disciplines for now.

Then there is the non-academic curriculum which several Members have spoken on quite eloquently, and which I agree on completely. CCA and Character Development Programme (CDP) - we have not spelt it out at great length in the report. But it is a very important component of the broader and more rounded education that we would like to see our JC students go through. Not just because it provides you with the skills to be a useful citizen, or to raise a strong family, but also because these are the life skills required to succeed in even your career, in any endeavour. Ms Indranee had an example of an international law firm that looks at the candidate's CV to see what team sports he has played. It is one that is replicated in many sectors of the economy when you talk to firms that think hard about how they select their people. They will often look at what you did in CCA. It may not always be team sports, but they look at what you did to see whether you might have acquired instincts and habits that are different from the rest. So the non-academic curriculum is integral to the JC education. We make some recommendations as to how we can increase emphasis on it, including a change in weighting at the university admission system. But a lot will depend on how principals and school leadership actually conduct their programmes in the school.

Next, the issue of structure versus flexibility of curriculum. We have debated this extensively in the Review Committee and in the consultation process: how much should we prescribe and how much we leave to choice, especially in the JC curriculum? Dr John Chen says, perhaps we should leave it to "moral suasion" rather than prescribe that you must take a contrasting subject. I do not agree with that. I think we are quite clear that a broader education is a necessity and we should make that a requirement of the curriculum. But we should retain flexibility of choices. Which contrasting subject you take can be left to the student. We have decided, after extensive discussion, not to go down the route of the International Baccalaureate, or the American High School system, where you are mandated to take a wide breadth of subjects. It is quite a noble aspiration, but it has some of the side effects I mentioned earlier, a certain shallowness in areas where you rather have more depth. It does not play to Singapore's strengths and what we need for the foreseeable future. So let us allow a range of options - provide students the flexibility of choice and give them these three levels of subjects - H1, H2, H3 - so that they can go for configurations that suit their individual preferences and talents.

We will have the JCs offering more combinations of subjects, as well, more than they have done in the pastThere are a fair number of combinations you will find in our junior colleges, both in Sciences and Humanities. I think it was Dr John Chen who said you cannot do both Literature and Biology. It will be possible to do that in future. But it is not a situation of more the merrier. It is important that students choose combinations that are meaningful and that expand their opportunities. And as many Members have pointed out, schools will need to engage in counselling of students and advise on how they can choose subjects that match their talents, match their interests and match the opportunities they could have in future.

Next, workload. This is an important and valid issue that came up most frequently in the debate. If you want greater breadth while retaining a certain amount of depth in all disciplines, something has to give. As many have pointed out, breadth is intrinsically a little more difficult for the student to handle. It requires more time on the part of the student. As Mr Cedric Foo has pointed out, you also need more time to provide for a learner-centred education. It takes more time to learn independently and in curious ways, as distinct from listening to a lecture. As Mr Iswaran has also pointed out, you need some down time in the system for students to reflect and to detect inter-linkages.

MOE agrees with this. We want to see what we can do to reduce total curriculum load. First, however, we will also address the JC calendar which has some inefficiency built into it, a large amount of wastage in the first three months. So we will implement a system that will have a single JC intake, therefore reducing that inefficiency and expanding the length of the real school year.

On the curriculum itself, we will have to prune the size of each subject, prune down content, whilst retaining the rigour of learning that is entailed in learning that subject. It has to be a careful exercise, which MOE will do in close consultation with the universities, to make sure that our students continue to be well prepared for any discipline that they take in our universities. It is not a simple issue of chopping off a subject halfway and thinking that makes for a lighter load. We have got to make sure that we avoid shallowness of treatment. It probably means we have fewer topics within a particular subject, but you still need to have a certain depth of treatment of each topic.

We are clear about our intention to reduce the curriculum load. We will work out the details carefully to make sure that we do not just end up with a smaller curriculum load, but one that retains this rigour. How far should we go? The report says that from 330 hours currently per subject, let us move down to 270 hours. There is no magic in the number. But it is a sensible objective. It is higher than what the International Baccalaureate would have for a typical subject, or a typical US High School subject, but that is because they take more courses. They have a broader curriculum.

What perhaps is more important is the total amount of curriculum hours, and some Members have pointed out that we may not be going far enough. We are expecting that total curriculum hours over the two years will be between 1,300 and 1,700. For the top end, for students who are currently doing four 'A' levels, particularly in Science subjects, there is a significant reduction. For those who are doing just three 'A' levels, there will not be much reduction under this proposed system. But 1,300 hours for these students is not an overstretch. It is not an overload. It is not significantly higher than what exists in the UK, or the International Baccalaureate. And if you speak to some educationists in the UK, they will tell you that their students are still under-stretched, and they are concerned about it. In the US, although the minimum you will find in High School is typically between 1,300 and 1,400 hours, most of the best schools have a curriculum that is between the range of 1,500 and 1,700, not very different from what we are proposing. So although Dr Wang Kai Yuen noted that our proposal of 1,300-1,700 hours was higher than the US, I should clarify that that refers to the minimum requirement in the US, rather than what the best schools provide.

The main reduction, as I said, will be for students who take more subjects. For them, they will see a significant reduction in curriculum time. For those who take just three 'A's, they will not see much reduction or any reduction at all. But the problem is not one of overload of the curriculum for students taking three A's. Some of them may find problems with the curriculum because it is an intellectually challenging curriculum. But it is not one of curriculum overload as such.

Mr Iswaran is right that this is all about the front-end of curriculum time, and not what happens at the back-end or outside the formal curriculum - self-study, research, and a lot of things students do to try to improve their performance and how well they will do in their examinations. There is not very much we can do directly to reshape how much students do outside of the curriculum, outside of what is necessary. And we are not unique in that respect.

We have a competitive system where parents and students see education as a path to future success. We are still a society in momentum, where no one's background pulls him back from a better future. Social mobility is still there in the system, and that is the source of competition. And we have equipped students to compete, much better than we have done in the past - to compete at increasingly higher levels - so that at each level that you look at, there are far more students now competing to get ahead than used to be in the past.

If we look around East Asia, we will find exactly the same phenomenon. If we look at China, Taiwan and Korea, I would say there is more stress, more overload in the system. These are the reports we get. Singapore expatriates who send their children to schools in China or Taiwan tell us it is more stressful. In Korea, there is a saying that they drum into kids at a young age, `Sleep five hours, fail. Sleep four hours, pass'. Richard Lim, who runs Majullah Connection in the US, told me recently over the email that he was talking to some students from China who had the opportunity of studying in Singapore along the way, who spent a few years studying in Singapore. They told him that our Singapore system struck them as being much more rounded than the system that they had gone through.

So, we have a problem, but let us look at it in perspective. This is in large part a social phenomenon, not an educational one, and it is in large part a positive phenomenon of a society that is still in momentum. Our students probably work too hard at their examinations. I agree with that. And our parents should set more realistic expectations for their kids. But the solutions are not obvious.

Taiwan attempted to change the situation two years ago. They had a commission that was set up in 1996, that was very concerned about rote-like preparation for examinations and the stress in the system. They devised what they called a multi-path education system. Admission into senior middle school from junior middle school will no longer be determined by a common examination, but will be determined by recommendations by the school, interviews and the candidate's own proposals for his future education - a range of criteria will be used. Similarly, a quarter of the places in colleges for those from senior middle schools are now to be reserved for this qualitative means of entry - - - instead of by common examinations.

Now, two years later, surveys are being done of parents and teachers to see how they feel about this system that was aimed to relieve examination stress. The result - situation more stressful. Parents and teachers, the majority are saying that students are more unhappy now. Students are stressed out by having to take interviews, write applications to different schools and write proposals about their future education. Many are now calling for a return to a universal common examination, with all the stress and unintended side-effects that that will entail.

Japan tried - Assoc. Prof. Koo Tsai Kee went into this at some length - a very interesting experiment by cutting down on content, seeking to reduce the stress in the examination system. Prof. Koo has covered some of the unintended effects of what was done, eg, reduced rigour, reduced depth of learning in key core areas, but there was another interesting side-effect. Not only did the students need to study less hard, but they are also less interested in their studies, and less interested in each other and in society. So, there has been a general decline in intensity of education, not just with regard to examinations, but intensity of education in all its aspects. There is reduced interest in education as a whole.

I was speaking last week to the Chairman of Fuji Xerox, Mr Yutaro Kobayashi, an eminent Japanese industrialist, and he said that this is now of great concern to Japanese businesses, ie, the fact that students are not taking learning seriously and they are not interested in each other. They are not interested in society. It is not a problem for the top end, the top 20%. If you cut down the curriculum, they just spend more time in private juku schools and, in fact, that has been happening. They are advantaged because their parents know what they have to do to get ahead in life. But there has been a widening dispersion between the top-end and the bottom-end precisely because education has become less intense.

So, one merit of our system - where we put it all in the education system, ensure that every student works hard within the system and aims high - is that it also reduces this dispersion that comes about when you leave it to market forces to determine which parents urge their children to take studies seriously.

We have to shift focus, shift balance, encourage non-academic pursuits and encourage students to take a subject which they are interested in to as far as they can go and have a passion in it. But let us keep the overall intensity in place. Let us change what students do within education, but not reduce the intensity as such.

Examinations and teaching methods are clearly critical. We will continue to change the nature of the examination system. It is an evolutionary process, not a sudden one-off break. We are attempting to place greater emphasis on testing the understanding of concepts, students' ability to reason and to evaluate subject matter critically, ie, greater emphasis on students' ability to apply what they have learnt, rather than to reproduce what they have learnt. It is being done across a range of subjects - eg, in literature, history and in the science subjects. In science, for instance, we are moving towards a school-based science practical assessment, ie, a form of continuous assessment that looks at students' laboratory investigation skills, the ability to design experiments, as distinct from a one-off end-of-year science laboratory test. This process will continue, and it is important.

There is a perception on the part of many hon. Members that some subjects are easier to score in than others. Dr John Chen and a few others have mentioned that literature seems harder to score in and that is why students shun it. I think it is not a situation where some subjects are easier to score in than others, but the fact that Singaporean students are stronger in some subjects than in others. All over the world, students take subjects that they are strong in. In the UK, in fact, preferences are exactly the reverse. Students shun science and mathematics because they think it is difficult. So, there is nothing wrong in taking subjects that you are strong in. We must want to make sure that you do not over-specialise and that you have some breadth of learning, particularly while you are in school and JC.

I looked at the data on literature. We have to look at the data quite carefully. If we look at students of the same ability group, we will not find a big gap in performance in literature and the other subjects. For instance, if we look at schools like RI and RGS, we get a higher proportion of students who take literature obtaining distinctions, compared to the proportion of students taking chemistry or biology obtaining distinctions.Any student who has an interest and passion in a subject will be able to do well.

Mdm Ho Geok Choo and Ms Braema Mathiaparanam raised the issue of the university admission system, whether we should give greater weight to CCA, project work, and so on. The entire university admission framework would be studied carefully. Dr Ng Eng Hen chairs a committee that is looking at this, and we will have to make sure that the intent of the new JC curriculum is reflected in the new JC admission system. We should move away from a single formula for university admission, and we should move towards a system where each university evolves its own system of admission and perhaps, even across faculties, different criteria will be taken into account.

Clearly, the challenges faced by our teaching force are going to be central to this whole exercise. We will put more teaching resources into our junior colleges, so that they can confidently deal with this broader and more flexible curriculum. There are some specific new requirements. Knowledge and Inquiry is a new subject. It will require a new set of skills and we will probably train new teachers as well as some of our existing teachers. We may even import a few foreign expatriates. For instance, those with experience in the IB system where they have a Theory of Knowledge subject, we might import a few of them to help us out in the initial years.

We will be working closely with the NIE to ensure that teachers develop a broader repertoire of teaching approaches, and we will be retraining our existing pool of teachers. But none of these is new. It is an evolutionary process. We are not shifting from one mode to a completely new mode of teaching or learning. So, I am uncomfortable with some of the references to having to "remake" our teachers or "remake" Singapore's teaching force. They are not as rigidly captured by their background as we make them out to be. In fact, the distinctive about the Singapore teaching force has been its willingness to change, particularly if you compare it to teaching forces elsewhere. If you look at some countries where they attempted to introduce IT into education, they ran into many teachers who were passionately against change. We have very few teachers who are passionately against change, and we have many teachers who are passionate about change. This is our strength. It is a strength of our system. So, I am quite confident that if we size up the requirements carefully, put resources and energy into training our teachers, they will respond well and respond confidently. Let us not caricature the teaching force.

A diverse education landscape is the second major limb of the White Paper, and I will not be as long in my responses on this issue. The key issue that has been raised has been whether we are building elitism into the system by introducing the Integrated Programme schools, and I think this is a valid issue. The Minister for Education, RAdm Teo, has addressed this substantively in his opening remarks. My colleague, Minister of State for Education, Dr Ng Eng Hen, has spoken yesterday about the resources and energies that go into ensuring that all our students are equipped to go as far as they can.

Let me add a further perspective on this. We all accept that we need to have a more differentiated system. It is necessary to spur innovation, including innovation in education itself, and it is necessary to groom diverse talents. The question is how we do it. Do we have greater differentiation within the mainstream of the state education system, or do we have it outside the mainstream? That is the key question.

We are almost unique internationally in attempting to bring differentiation and diversity into the mainstream, with the principle of meritocracy continuing to apply, so that everyone with the determination and ability can benefit. Affordability will not be a criterion for taking any of these diverse paths in education. So, this is what distinguishes us from other countries that have differentiated systems, that we are providing differentiation within the system. We are keeping education relevant for the future while ensuring it remains a social leveller, as Mdm Halimah put it, a tool for social mobility, with equal access based on merit.

If we look around the world - and many countries have now moved towards highly differentiated systems, some very innovative ones - we will find that, generally, the differentiation takes place outside the system, because of the failure of the state school system. So, there may be an egalitarian posture in public debates in the UK, US and elsewhere, but it obscures a thriving private school system, which is where the bulk of the innovation takes place in their education systems. The UK had a big furore about equality of access to their public schools. They got rid of their grammar schools, got rid of the ability of schools to select by merit, and introduced comprehensives. But very little was being said about their thriving "public school" system or what are really private independent schools where parents with the resources and the motivation send their kids to, including even many of those who were themselves arch-advocates of the changes in the state school system.

In the US, private schools are at the pinnacle of the system. The US probably has some of the best schools internationally, but they are private, expensive, and you have to be able to afford their fees. Except for a few specialised public schools, the Bronx Highs and Stuyvesants, most public schools are unable to select students on merit. They select students according to where they live. Admission to school is determined by neighbourhood. I was recently told by a principal of a public school in the Bay area of the US that there is a saying amongst the principals that the higher the altitude of the school, the better the performance of the school. Because schools that are in the higher altitudes are in the better neighbourhoods where the professionals, scientists and engineers stay. And because they have a system where the local community funds a fair bit of the expenditures of the school, especially its enrichment programmes, it is really a system of social elitism, even in public school system.

Japan, a very egalitarian society, has had a thriving private education system, from pre-school up to university, for many decades now. It is so competitive that to get into the system, parents have to subject themselves to interviews to get their kids into the elite private pre-schools. And the system flows all the way up. Once you are into the right nursery, you get into the right primary school, the right secondary school and all the way up. It is a very egalitarian society but that is the way in which they have accommodated differentiation. And we are choosing a different path.

There are very few advanced countries that still have a largely public school system. Some of the European countries have it - Holland and Sweden. And there too, they have differentiated their system. In Sweden, in the upper secondary school system, they have 14 different programmes, of which only three are geared towards eventual university admission. In Holland, they have four quite distinct streams. But because they stream their students relatively late, many of their weaker students are not well-equipped for continuous learning and not well-trained in core skills. Today's Straits Times has an article on this.

Even China has no compunction in creating special paths for different talents, be it academic talents, musical talents, gymnastic talents. They have many experimental schools now which go much further than what we are proposing in our Report. Take for instance Beijing Jingshan School, one of their experimental schools, from primary school all the way up to senior middle. It provides a through-train for all its primary school students to go on to junior middle school. And the top junior middle students, the top 10% or so, are provided a through-train to go on to senior middle. If you look at some of their other experimental schools, they provide a through-train for the top students in Science and Mathematics to the top universities. Again, we are not proposing this, but I raise this as an illustration of how even China, a relatively egalitarian society, is providing these differentiated paths and not shrinking from it. Because they know that in the knowledge-based environment of the future, they need outstanding talents. That is the basic point. We need more outstanding Singaporeans in all fields - Science, Mathematics, law, diplomacy, arts. We need more outstanding Singaporeans to take us forward. We need to groom them as best as we can, nurture a spirit of Singaporeanness in them and maximise their contributions to society. So, let us build this diversity into the mainstream and seek to contain social elitism as we do so.

The Integrated Programme schools will actually offer us more opportunities to guard against social elitism than our existing school system does. They will have more time. If you look at the proposals that have been put forward by the schools that are applying to run the Integrated Programmes, they indeed intend to spend a lot more time on developing leadership and commitment to the community. So, this is not a change that is intrinsically going to lead to a more elitist system. If anything, it offers an opportunity for the top academic talents to develop stronger instincts of Singaporeanness and commitment to their fellow citizens.

I should clarify, because a question was asked about the GEP programme, that we see this also among the GEP students. We have done a longitudinal tracking of our GEP students, although they are still quite young; I think the first batch is only 30 years old. A far higher proportion of GEP students do community service compared to the population average for their cohort.

Several Members have asked the question of whether we should extend the Integrated Programme beyond the top 10%. Again, I must say that there was no magic in the 10% number. It was a matter of judgment, because we have to decide which students the Integrated Programme was going to be suitable for. It does not suit all JC students and we have to accept that. Some students will be confident of doing well in their "A" levels and proceeding to university and getting into a faculty of their choice. And others will be a little less confident. Some students would relish an unstructured environment in the middle of their secondary school years, and others would prefer a more structured environment. And many of the parents would prefer a more structured environment, to make sure he gets the "O" levels in hand before he goes on to the "A" levels.

We have to be realistic about this. In fact, Mr Ang Mong Seng and Mr Zainudin have themselves expressed concern about whether some of the Integrated Programme students will not do so well, and about what will they end up with. I think we will minimise the risk of IP students not doing well if we are stringent in selection of students into the IP schools. That is the main policy strategy - make sure that we are selective and do not just channel people into IP because it sounds like a better path to education. We have looked at the data. If we look at the top 5% of PSLE cohort, 92% of them eventually do well enough to qualify for our local universities. If we go to the 6-10th percentile, it already begins to drop significantly - only 86% of them qualify for our local universities. So, we have to be realistic. If we go beyond 10%, I think we will have a higher rate of error, and we will face more of the problems which Mr Ang Mong Seng was talking about, of students who go in quite confident but end up not so confident, because they have not done so well.

The Integrated Programme schools will themselves be in the best position to assess suitability. Once they have taken in their pupils, they will be in the best position to assess in the first couple of years who is really suitable to stay on the Integrated Programme and who should, in fact, opt for the "O" levels. Some, like ACS, are proposing to offer both the Integrated Programme and the "O" level stream, so that students will be able to switch. But RI has said that within a matter of a few years it is going to be a pure Integrated Programme school. So, if you want to switch, you move to another mainstream school. I think that is a reasonable scheme.

Dr Maliki, Mr Zainul, Ms Braema and a few others have raised the issue of what can be done to improve our 3-year pre-university programme. It is an important issue. I must tell Members that we deliberated at some length in the Review Committee on the issue of Centralised Institutes, because one perspective is that we should not actually provide for them within the system but let private schools take care of them. These are students who typically could not get into the right faculty in polytechnics and also cannot make it to junior college - why not let the private sector take care of them? We decided against it. We decided that the Centralised Institutes should remain part of the state system.

Mr Speaker: Mr Tharman, you have got about five minutes of streaming time left.

Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam: Yes, thank you. Every student benefits from a state subsidy for 12-13 years of education and from the resources and quality improvements that we keep putting into the system. We want to see the Centralised Institutes (CIs) not just as a residual of the system but as a quality component in its own right. MOE has been discussing this with the Centralised Institutes to see how we can improve their programmes.

Dr Wang Kai Yuen asked a question of what would happen to the Gifted Education Programme (GEP) with the introduction of the Integrated Programme. The Gifted Education Programme will have to be restructured at the secondary level with the introduction of the Integrated Programme schools. Four of the existing Gifted Education secondary centres - RI, RGS, Chinese High School, ACS Independent - have applied to the Ministry of Education to run Integrated Programmes. If their Integrated Programmes are approved, as I expect they will, three of these schools - RI, RGS and the Chinese High School - will cease to be Gifted Education Centres and will offer the Integrated Programme only. Under ACS Independent's proposal, it is somewhat different because they will decide on Integrated Programme students at Secondary Three rather than Secondary One. So they will continue to run a Gifted Programme. For students who do not end up on the Integrated Programme, they can continue to be in the Gifted Programme while pursing their "O" levels. Gifted Education pupils who opt to join an Integrated Programme that does not offer the GE Programme at secondary level will compete, like all other students, for places in Integrated Programme schools; in other words, RI, RGS, Chinese High, based on the admission criteria of those schools. And pupils who join those schools, who have come from the Gifted Programme at primary school, will join those schools as part of their mainstream classes. What the IP schools will do is to apply some of the techniques and programmes of the Gifted Programme across the board to all their classes. The Gifted Education Branch at MOE will support them in doing so. We will continue to offer funding, support, advice on the design of such programmes and the curriculum that is best suited to the top band of students. They will still need to have some programmes that are specific to the very top end of students. But we should have some flexibility in this and allow the schools to shape programmes that best meet the needs of their pupils.

Once we have the Integrated Programme schools in place, MOE will discontinue the supplementary selection exercise for admission into the Gifted Education Programme at Secondary One. This is because the Integrated Programme schools and the new specialist Mathematics and Science School, once it is formed, will open up opportunities for more pupils who are not already part of the primary school Gifted Education Programme. So, there will be ample opportunities to join these schools and there is no need for a supplementary exercise to select students for the Gifted Programme at secondary schools.

Mr Cedric Foo and a number of others have suggested that we should provide Government scholarships for needy students to attend private schools. I do not think it is necessary or desirable for us to do that. Anyone who qualifies for a place in our national schools, including our independent schools and any of our best schools, will not be deprived of a place on account of financial difficulty. With diversity in place in our mainstream system and with innovation and quality in place in our mainstream system, there is really no need to provide incentive or financial assistance for students to go to private schools.

On foreign system schools, some Members have questioned whether we should ease up on some of the rules for Singaporeans to attend the foreign system schools in Singapore. Currently, MOE considers this case-by-case. We will review the guidelines, particularly with respect to children of Singaporeans returning from abroad. But we should bear in mind that the international schools were established for the purpose of catering to children of foreign expatriates working in Singapore and they will have their character shaped by that objective. The children in these schools will not experience the same social environment that our national schools provide, the environment that makes them uniquely Singaporean.

Finally, very quickly, the issue of whether diversity is being restricted only to the specialist schools and Integrated Programme schools. This is not the case. Diversity is not just for the top 10%. It is being spread throughout the system. Look at our existing independent and autonomous schools. We have 23 autonomous schools now. 19 of them have already established substantial niches and specialisations of their own in the arts, in sports, in Science, in special areas of learning. Some of them, very recently, but some for several years now. Look at our neighbourhood schools. Through the cluster system that we have set in place, our neighbourhood schools now have available to them the opportunity to develop special talents in a broad range of areas. Take arts. For example, EastOne Cluster Art Centre at Siglap Secondary School, which caters not just to students at Siglap Secondary but to the whole cluster. It has three arts galleries, one graphic design centre, one ceramics room and one arts resource library. That is the hardware. It has teachers who are being continually trained, and sharing experiences in how to engage students in the arts. This is something which is spreading throughout the system in our neighbourhood schools. Anyone with a special talent will have an opportunity to develop it.

Sir, we are at a turning point. We have not painted an end destination, but I think we are confident about the direction that we are proceeding in. And if we implement carefully, ensure that our teachers are well provided with training, and keep them well motivated, I am confident we will achieve our objectives.

Sir, I support the motion.

Mr Speaker: Order. I propose to take the break now. I suspend the Sitting and will take the Chair again at 3.35 pm.

Sitting accordingly suspended at 3.01 pm until 3.35 pm. Sitting resumed at 3.35 pm