Singapore's Educational Reforms Toward Holistic Outcomes: (Un)Intended Consequences of Policy Layering

• In Event: Transforming Education Systems for Holistic Student Development: Learning From Case Studies Around the World

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to examine the educational reform efforts of Singapore as attempts are made to transform an entrenched narrow focus on academic outcomes towards a focus on children’s holistic development, and the effects of policy layering on attempting to create systemic coherence.
Perspective
Singapore’s efforts at systematic educational reform began almost six decades ago, with a strong emphasis on developing the necessary educational infrastructures for public education. With centralized governance structures and a long-standing government during this period, policies were designed for the long term. Teacher education was centrally managed in the National Institute of Education (NIE) that works closely with the Ministry of Education (MOE) to build teacher capacities as well as align initial teacher education programs to centrally designed curriculum objectives and assessment outcomes. Close alignment and partnerships between NIE, MOE, and schools facilitate reform implementations and feedback. Education is used to provide human capital for economic development and to enable social integration in a multi-ethnic society.
Efforts to focus on holistic student development began in 1997 with a simultaneous shift in focus, from developing school infrastructures to enhancing instructional quality. Policies were implemented to reduce the emphasis on academic performance and a societal pressure to perform in high-stakes national examinations, including increasing teacher agency and school autonomy, diversifying educational pathways, and recognizing diverse student abilities and talents, while retaining national examinations for school entry.
Methods
This paper draws on research literature on Singapore’s educational development, document analysis of national policies and extant theoretical understandings of education systems. The authors’ involvement in Singapore’s education research for close to two decades, and one author’s contributions towards research policy planning with NIE and MOE have provided further insights for the report.
Results
Policy layering to shift systemic emphasis from academic performance to holistic development, and from developing school infrastructures to enhancing instructional quality, has resulted in new education system infrastructures as well as tensions from old and new configurations.
1. New infrastructures are developed to facilitate closer school collaborations and networking with MOE and NIE, with the aim of increasing decentralization, school autonomy, and enhancing instructional quality. Empirical research into such infrastructures show variations in how teachers and schools leverage them to improve teaching and learning.
2. Two parallel education systems co-exist, a sanctioned system that is driven by MOE’s policy push towards holistic development, and a shadow system driven by non-governmental stakeholders (parents, children, textbook publishers, private education providers) that continues to provide resources for academic outcomes.
3. Policy reforms to increase school innovations and autonomy resulted in a form of centralized decentralization, with centralized management and incentivization of school improvements while allowing school leaders autonomy to innovate for specific educational outcomes, including children’s holistic development.
Significance
The analysis shows the effects of a long history of policy layering as an education system attempts to push systemic innovations from academic to holistic outcomes, with interesting, and conflicting, tensions that have unintended consequences as the system develops new infrastructures to achieve new educational aims.

Authors

• Hwei Ming Wong, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University
  Presenting Author

• Dennis Kwek, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University
  Presenting Author

• Jeanne Ho, Nanyang Technological University - National Institute of Education
  Presenting Author