Criteria for Merging Schools and Junior Colleges

Mr Desmond Choo asked the Minister for Education (Schools) in view of the smaller enrolment of students in the longer term (a) how can our teaching staff be prepared for school mergers; and (b) how can training be provided to give them more redeployment options.

Mr Pritam Singh asked the Minister for Education (Schools) why the Ministry did not consider shelving the establishment of the new Eunoia Junior College and convert one or more junior colleges out of the four that are to be discontinued to offer the same educational programme planned for Eunoia Junior College.

Mr Zaqy Mohamad asked the Minister for Education (Schools) (a) whether the reduced supply of junior college places following the merger of JCs will result in higher aggregate scores for JC admission; and (b) whether the Ministry was expecting an increase in admissions when Eunoia Junior College was set up.

Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Education (Schools) (a) what is the junior college enrolment size that is deemed to constitute minimum "critical mass"; (b) what is the expected percentage of total JC places with a cut-off point at or over 10, post-merger of the JCs; and (c) why did the Ministry reject the option of retaining the four JCs slated for the merger and reducing class size with some programmes operated on a cluster basis with JCs or Institutes, as necessary.

Mr Seah Kian Peng asked the Minister for Education (Schools) whether junior college mergers will continue beyond 2018 in light of falling birth rates.

Mdm Speaker, the Ministry of Education (MOE) regularly reviews the education landscape to ensure students' educational experience remains relevant. In planning for schools, our priorities are to meet the demand for school places at both the national and local levels and ensure accessibility to students based on proximity to housing developments and public transport.

At the national level, the fall in live births over the past two decades has led to a corresponding decline in the demand for school places. This demographic wave is felt across all levels of our school system. Since 2015, MOE has merged or announced the mergers of 18 pairs of schools, including four pairs that would be merging in 2018. Earlier this year, MOE announced the mergers of 14 more pairs of schools in 2019.

We recognise that school mergers are painful for students, staff and alumni, but they are necessary. Without mergers, some schools will be facing such low enrolment that they will not be able to provide our students with the array of subject combinations, co-curricular activities (CCAs) and enrichment programmes that they deserve.

The 32 mergers which have been announced since 2015 will bring down our overall school places. Mr Patrick Tay and Mr Seah Kian Peng asked if there would be further school mergers, given the falling cohort sizes. We want to give some time for things to settle down and monitor choice and enrolment patterns before making any further decisions. Our priority for the next few years is to support our schools, staff and students as we adjust to these mergers.

However, in the longer term, with the demographic shifts both at the national and localised levels, we cannot rule out the need for more mergers in the next decade, difficult though they may be.

Four pairs of junior colleges (JCs) will be merged for the first time in 2019. The JC1 intake is projected to fall by 20%, from 16,000 students in 2010 to around 12,800 students in 2019. This fall of 3,200 JC1 students is equal to the intake for four typical JCs. If MOE does not take any action now, several of our JCs would find themselves with JC1 intake of below 400, less than half of the typical 800. Some would even struggle to fill 200 places. When this happens, the educational experience of the students enrolled in these JCs will be severely compromised. We decided that it is better to plan for the mergers now to ensure a smooth transition for the merging schools and affected students and teachers.

We settled on the eventual JC merger pairs after taking into consideration a few factors, especially student choice and the enrolment patterns of the JCs. We also considered geographical spread of the merged pairs and compatibility of merger partners. After the mergers, we would preserve good geographical distribution of Government non-IP JCs, with one each in the West, North, Northeast and East regions. The mergers involve the eight Government non-Integrated Programme (IP) JCs as mergers involving Government-aided schools pose significant issues and additional challenges due to their governance framework.

MOE considered different options before making the difficult decision to merge schools. One was to retain schools even when enrolment has fallen very low and bring together students from various schools and run programmes at the cluster or regional level. However, we decided against it as staff and students will face operational challenges, such as timetabling constraints, and travelling between different schools for activities would add to their commute time. Our students' educational experience and their experience of school life would inevitably be compromised. We also believe that there is value in enabling students to immerse themselves in their schools. That is what builds a sense of belonging and school spirit.

Mr Leon Perera suggested that instead of merging JCs, we allow a reduction in class sizes in those JCs with low enrolment. These are two separate issues. We are merging schools to ensure a good range of programmes for our students in schools that would otherwise face low enrolment. MOE takes a needs-based resourcing approach for teacher resourcing, targeting additional support at students with greater learning needs by reducing class sizes in a selective manner, so as to improve our educational outcomes across different schools and student profiles. We have been able to do this due to our steadily improving teacher-to-student ratios, which are now comparable to that of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. We believe that this approach in reducing class size is more targeted and sustainable and can be applied across all schools based on needs, rather than just the schools with low enrolment.

The sites of the merged schools in 2019 are chosen based on a number of factors, including the accessibility to public transport and the quality of school infrastructure, which includes the age of buildings and facilities available. In addition, for the JC mergers, the selected merged sites took into consideration the desire for us to have a good spread and distribution of JCs across the island.

Schools' heritage and identities are valuable aspects of our students' experience. The names of the merged schools have not been decided. In naming the merged schools, MOE will consider the schools' history and heritage, stakeholders' interests and the sentiments of all schools involved. Similar to primary and secondary school mergers, the merged JC will comprise a significant proportion of staff from both JCs. We will retain the special programmes and events, plus the signature CCAs of both JCs, so that the heritage of the merged JC is enriched from merging aspects of both colleges.

Over the years, MOE has engaged school leaders and many educators on the issue of falling cohort sizes and the rationale for school mergers at various MOE engagement platforms. As Members would appreciate, the issue of the actual school merger is very emotive and we need to approach this matter with care. This is not a matter that we can do extensive pre-announcement engagements without causing unnecessary anxiety. Our engagements are focused on the post-announcement phase, targeting key areas of concerns for staff and students, such as support during the transition and preservation of their school heritage. I would like to assure Mr Dennis Tan that we work closely with our key stakeholders for the mergers and will continue to do so with the affected schools to ease the transition for all staff, students and parents.

I understand that some parents and students are concerned that fewer JCs would mean stiffer competition for places. Let me give a categorical assurance that all JC-eligible students, that is, those with a score of 20 points or below, who opt for the JC pathway will be able to enrol in one of the JCs. For 2018, we plan to increase the JC1 student intake for the remaining JCs and we have sufficient capacity in our JCs to ensure that no JC-eligible student would be denied a place.

A related question is how the eventual JC cut-off points for the 2018 Joint Admission Exercise would change with the JC mergers. MOE does not predetermine JC cut-off points. They vary from year to year depending on students' choices. We do not know how students' choices may change with the announcement of JC mergers. For this reason, I am unable to give specific answers to Mr Zaqy Mohamad's nor Mr Leon Perera's questions as to whether we will see higher aggregate scores for JC admissions or specific percentages following the mergers. With the change in the 2018 JC landscape, variations in cut-off points may be slightly more than in previous years. Most importantly, a student who qualifies for JC and chooses to go there, will have a JC place. Our educators, as well as Education and Career Guidance Counsellors, will continue to guide our students in selecting their post-secondary pathways based on their strengths, aspirations and interests.

Mr Pritam Singh asked why we chose to set up Eunoia Junior College (EJC), and if we had anticipated falling JC cohort sizes in the coming years.

MOE had decided to set up various new schools in 2010, namely, Crest, Spectra, as well as EJC, as part of our efforts to provide more options in our education landscape, and better meet our students' diverse aspirations and educational needs. This was even though we were aware of the falling cohort sizes in the coming years. Crest and Spectra were specially established to offer a special Normal (Technical) curriculum to cater to secondary school students who are more suited for the applied learning track.

In the same vein, we set up the new EJC to cater to students who would benefit from the IP pathway at three secondary schools − Catholic High, Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) St Nicholas Girls' and Singapore Chinese Girls'. We started the new IP pathway in 2004, with the intention that this would, over time, admit up to 10% of the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) cohort, and the IP pathway has been valued by students. The extension of IP to these three schools and the announcement of EJC in 2010 were part of this planned IP expansion.

The suitability of a JC to partner its feeder secondary schools to offer IP is an important consideration to ensure that the programme offered will be meaningful for the students. At that time, there was no suitable JC to partner these three secondary schools. EJC was thus set up to leverage the strengths of the partner secondary schools and to add diversity to the JC landscape.

Like Mr Desmond Choo, MOE recognises that school mergers are unsettling for school staff. In the case of teachers, this sometimes involves redeployment to another level, for example, from secondary school to primary school, or JC to secondary or primary school. There are also areas of needs in MOE Headquarters, such as developing resources for information and communications technology learning for our students, and other vacancies where teachers could contribute.

MOE takes great care in managing staff matters in school mergers. We work closely with school leaders and support them in engaging affected staff. For all school mergers, we have assured our MOE staff that they will not be retrenched. Staff are engaged on the deployment plans and manpower needs for the merged schools. They are also informed of the redeployment plans and support available to them. Many of these conversations take place on a one-to-one basis. Thereafter, staff are given time to explore options they are interested in through our internal posting exercise. MOE will also assist staff who need additional support during the redeployment process.

MOE will provide the necessary training for teachers who will be redeployed to levels they have not taught before. The training includes bridging courses to equip them with the necessary pedagogical skills and content knowledge to teach at the redeployed level. Apart from deepening their understanding of the different learning profiles of the students they will teach, these bridging courses will also help teachers understand their students' different social and emotional needs, and how they can foster strong teacher-student rapport to help them better support these students in their learning. These teachers will also have the opportunity to be attached to their new schools before their formal postings begin. After they have been posted, MOE will continue to support these teachers through regular engagement sessions.

Apart from providing teachers with the requisite training, we recognise that redeployed teachers will also need personal time and space to adapt to their new environment. The receiving schools will pair each redeployed teacher with a buddy or mentor and provide a supportive environment to ensure a smooth transition. We also encourage schools to, where possible, adjust the workload for cross-deployed teachers in their first year. MOE is committed as a system to help these teachers transit smoothly so that our teachers continue to make a positive difference in our students.

I understand that the process of school mergers is a difficult and challenging one for the schools and all stakeholders involved. We are making every effort to ensure that the transition will be a smooth one. We value our students' learning experience and their attachment to our schools. Thus, we are also committed to continue the rich heritage and history of our schools through the cohorts of students to come.

Madam, I have four supplementary questions for the Senior Minister of State.

The first question is that if geographical location is one of the criteria that was taken into account, did the Ministry consider that in closing Serangoon Junior College, potential students residing in the northeast areas like Sengkang, Punggol and Hougang, would be affected, that is, they would have to travel to a college that is further away?

The second supplementary question is that there is some talk that only the Government-funded, non-IP, non-Mission, non-affiliated JCs are being merged. If we look at the list of schools to be closed, that hypothesis does not seem entirely baseless. What is the Senior Minister of State's comment on what I would say is a popular view that is being taken?

The third supplementary question is that if low enrolment is a criterion, last year's Straits Times reported about the growing popularity of a few JCs, namely, Meridian JC, Nanyang JC and Serangoon JC. Was this taken into account for this particular criterion of low enrolment? Does the Ministry not agree that by choosing to close down these schools, they would, to some extent, have undone some of the hard work that the principals and staff had put in?

Finally, the Senior Minister of State also mentioned about consultation. Could I just ask who were the stakeholders from the affected JCs who were consulted? How long ago was this consultation? How long did the consultation take place?

Madam, I thank the Member for the four questions. With respect to the first and the third questions, the geographical considerations and enrolment were taken into account. But no single factor was overwhelming. So, for both dimensions − the enrolment as well as the geographical location − we can find examples where it is not ideal. There is no nice or ideal solution to this. It is painful to close a school, merge a school or relocate a school. There is anxiety when staff have to change jobs, to do something that they have not been doing, to move from one place of work to another. There is no easy answer to this. But we did try as far as possible to ensure that the merged pairs result in a good geographical spread of JC places across the nation.

Yes, there would be some students who will end up having a slightly longer commute. It is not the only factor, but geographical considerations were taken into account.

Low enrolment was taken into account. The point the Member made was that we were undoing the work of the staff to build up a JC. I think whether you are a low-enrolment school or a high-enrolment school, you would feel that your work has been undone. This is a very understandable concern. It is not about whether it is a low-enrolment school or a high-enrolment school. That anxiety is going to be there. So, we are trying as hard as possible to preserve the ethos and values of these schools when we merge them, through the preservation of their niche programmes, CCAs, engagements with the renaming, the history and the heritage.

Ultimately, that work and the values and the effort rest in the professionals who are involved. The key part of a school is the teachers, staff and the ethos and values they bring. They are staying within our system; we are not losing them. As we merge these schools, these professionals who are part of our education landscape, the key part of our education landscape, the work that they have done in developing their profession and developing their schools, will be preserved within our system because they are all being retained within our system or have the opportunity to be retained within our system.

All the stakeholders in all the merging schools have been consulted and continue to be engaged with thoroughly − staff, students, alumni − and the engagement is ongoing as we have to think of names and various other aspects.

As for the issue of the Government non-IP schools, I think I have addressed that in my response initially that it is correct that the mergers involve the Government non-IP JCs, and there are a couple of reasons. I am just trying to find the paragraph, so I can refer the Member to it. One is the issue of governance. If you have a Government-aided school versus a Government school, the governance framework is different. If you are trying to merge two schools with two very different governance frameworks, there are additional challenges − not impossible but it adds an added layer of complexity and difficulty that we felt was not needed at this point in time, that we could do it without having to engage in an even more difficult exercise.

So, I had addressed that. Was there an additional point about that that the Member had? I mean, we do acknowledge that it is so, and I hope I have explained why it is so.

I thank the Senior Minister of State for the explanation. Two supplementary questions. Is there a concern by the Ministry that there will be a further decline in the number of JC places, in the sense that they are talking about future graduate workforce in Singapore?

The second question is whether the Senior Minister of State would say that the JC experience, in terms of infrastructure and environment, has not really changed compared to, say, competition, such as polytechnic places where today, there is a lot more vibrancy in terms of marketing and the variety of courses being made available. If you go to the polytechnics, for example, many of the students I spoke to and asked, "Why did you choose polytechnics over JCs?", for example, they would say, "You go to a JC, you see classrooms and classrooms and not much more, whereas if you go to the polytechnic, you will see labs, very interesting things". So, the experience also matters in terms of the erosion of JC places. Would the Ministry be reviewing that because there is value to a JC education? Would not having changed this environment and experience result in further erosion of students taking the JC pathway, given that you also have more competition for students today, with regard to whether it is the International Baccalaureate (IB), IP or polytechnics?

I thank the Member. To the first question, our anticipation is that the proportion of a given cohort that will apply for the JC pathway and then seek a graduate education is likely to be the same. In absolute numbers, it may change but in terms of proportions, the pathways are there. We anticipate that, likely, the proportions will remain about the same going forward. It is hard to say, but that is our anticipation of the future.

The Member brought up a very important point about the methodology of teaching in JCs. If I understand that correctly, that perhaps there are aspects of the curricular experience or the student experience in our JCs which are different from what someone might experience at the polytechnics. But that is a good thing. We have increasing diversity in the post-secondary education landscape.

For a student to be offered more choice where the choice is not merely about the certification pathway or the accreditation pathway, or the academic process that they are going through, but the holistic student experience they may have, is a good thing. If there is an opportunity for the JCs to think about how they can improve their provision of a student experience because of competition for the students to go to alternative pathways, that can also only be a good thing to improve our education landscape.

I do not think the changes in enrolment numbers, the falling birth cohort and our need for mergers of institutions would change any of these. This is a natural outcome of the increasing diversity that we want to have and that we are developing within our education space.

I have one supplementary question. Why was it not possible for MOE to transfer staff and to provide resources to support the IP Programme to existing JCs, especially since the Ministry was aware of falling cohort sizes in 2010? This would have allowed the long heritage of some JCs which are going to be closed shortly, as announced this year, to continue to grow and thrive?

I thank the Member for the question. We explored a wide range of possibilities to deal with this problem. I cannot speak specifically of the processes in 2010 but, certainly, across time, we have explored a wide variety of possibilities of how we might deal with falling enrolment, whether we need to change the models of some of the JCs, go for smaller JCs, go for larger JCs, including some of the suggestions that the Member has made.

There was no singular reason why that was not done. It was the larger reason that, system wide, we wanted to preserve a number of outcomes. We wanted to have, in 2010, the three schools that we talked about to increase diversity in our landscape and provide a receptacle for the IP Programme for the secondary schools that I spoke about in my earlier response. And later on, as part of the programme, we wanted to ensure that geographical distribution and access to public transport, the changes where housing is going to be going forward, where the population shifts are going, are considered. So, there is no single neat reason why one particular route was not taken. It was really an overall approach, and judgement was made that this was perhaps the best way to go forward to try to deal with the problem, which is a painful problem.

One consideration is the pain and the distress the alumni feel. It is very real. It is not something to be trivialised or ignored, and it is not something that MOE was unaware of. But MOE has to balance that with how we can best serve the next generation. Whether it is the geographical distribution, the enrolment, the emotional distress of the alumni, we cannot allow any single factor to override completely what should be our prime concern, which is, how to develop an education system that is going to best serve the next generation, looking forward to the future. There are unknowns but that is how we have to approach this problem. We acknowledge the problems and the distress that it has caused and we are trying our best to minimise them.

I thank the Senior Minister of State for his detailed answers. I just have four supplementary questions.

Firstly, I think the Senior Minister of State has acknowledged the emotional cost that this has created. My question would be in terms of the longer-term planning protocols and processes within MOE. Are there any learnings that have been drawn from this? Clearly, falling birth rates would have been foreseeable a very long time ago because these are patterns that do not tend to fluctuate too much year by year. Nevertheless, capacity did increase over the last decade. So, have there been any lessons drawn about how we can improve the forward planning in terms of establishing new JCs, establishing more capacity for JC places?

Secondly, it is in relation to JCs that cater to students who score 10 points and above, or students who score less well academically. It would appear that the number of JC choices available to such students would now be diminished and that would mean that there would be longer travel time for such students. For example, 14 to 16 pointers in the east would have fewer JC options, and students in the west with 10 to 12 points would have fewer options as well. I think the Senior Minister of State did acknowledge that in the context of discussing CCA clustering, increasing travel times does diminish the quality of the student experience. Would the Senior Minister of State acknowledge that this is in some sense penalising those students who opt for the JC path but perform less well academically, and what measures are going to be taken to manage that?

Thirdly, my understanding is that at the time when the JC mergers were announced, MOE was in the process of implementing a new curriculum in JCs and this was the curriculum that MOE invested in, bringing teachers in to train the JC teachers on this new curriculum. There was a period when the teachers would have to review the curriculum, revise and test their teaching materials, get feedback from the teaching process and so on. My question is just on the timing of the announcement. Would the timing not have been better if it had been either before or after the implementation of this new curriculum, which, it is my understanding, is currently in process?

Lastly, on the fate of administrative non-teaching staff and vendors in the JCs, I would like to ask about vendors, such as canteen operators, shop operators, lab technicians and so on, what measures are being taken to assist them in the transition.

If I could address the last question, we are looking at all staff, different groups of staff and different types of challenges. We are looking at all staff to ensure that they have opportunities.

The third question is about the timing of the announcement, the curriculum review and training of teachers. Yes, there were announcements of specifics for the JC curriculum review. But the reality is that curriculum review, pedagogical development and professional training are ongoing all the time. There is always going to be tweaks to our system. There is always going to be new courses and new skills to be developed. There is never going to be a good time. There is never going to be the equivalent of a "Now it is school holidays and we can clean the canteen". In terms of our education system, this ongoing professional review is constant. We will always find something happening and something going on. So, we had to make the choice for the timing of this in terms of how far ahead we had to plan for birth cohorts, at which point we were going to have an enrolment that was so low that a JC was not going to be able to run a viable programme with CCAs and performing arts and so forth, and the academic curriculum. So, that is fundamentally what determines the timing, not anything else.

As for the cut-off points, and how it may affect the students who are, perhaps, not performing so well, this will vary over time. As schools merge and other schools see changes in capacity, the cut-off point required to get into a given JC may change. It depends on some degree of competitiveness amongst the student cohort and it depends on the choices that students make. There is no deliberate attempt to penalise anybody here. There is no deliberate attempt to put the burden of these school mergers on a particular segment of our population. What will happen over time is that the cut-off points and the choices that students make will change. And, really, there is no way to accurately plan or predict that except to say, on the whole, every JC-eligible student will have a place in the system. We are not denying that to anybody.

The first question that the Member brought up was about lessons that have been learnt. This is going to be a dynamic process. The changes in birth cohort, the changes in where population lives and what we do in our education system, will require a dynamic process. Between 2005 and 2012, we significantly rammed up JC places. We had packed classrooms because we had maximised the capacity, because that was when we had the peak student cohort sizes going through. We are not going to turn around and say that was the wrong thing to do at that time because now we are reducing places and merging schools. That was what we needed to do then, and this is what we need to do now. We do have to take a dynamic approach.

The forward projection of the birth cohort is unknown. We had some anticipation but we do also have some anticipation that things would change. We have a window, we know about the births that already happened, we do not know about births that have not happened yet. There is some uncertainty in this, just as there is uncertainty about the choices that students would make over the popularity of a new JC or a merged JC. There is some uncertainty about this. There are a number of factors to take into consideration. We try to minimise the downsides, we try to have a key principle about why we are doing this and how we want to go forward in order to serve the future students of the education system, to service the next generation.