Further Initiatives to Achieve Goal of Every School A Good School

Mdm Speaker, as emphasised in the 2014 Committee of Supply debate on MOE and in MOE's Addendum to the President's Address this year, we are deeply committed to making Every School A Good School – one that caters to the needs of its students, creates a positive learning experience for each student, enables teachers to be caring educators, and fosters supportive partnerships with parents and the community.

To support this, we are encouraging and supporting schools to develop rich learning programmes that will cater to our students' diverse talents and interests. Each of our Secondary schools is working towards developing an Applied Learning Programme (ALP) and a Learning for Life Programme (LLP) by 2017. This will create a diverse and colourful landscape of Secondary schools with distinctive and authentic programmes that enable students to apply knowledge and develop life skills. MOE supports schools in the development and implementation of the ALP and LLP. Each Secondary school will receive $50,000 per year for each programme or $100,000 per year in total.

MOE continues to ensure that all our schools are well-resourced to provide a holistic education for their students. First, schools are equipped with the facilities needed. We are also upgrading facilities across 71 more Primary schools in the next few years. Second, all schools receive a range of funds for their school operations and programmes. MOE adopts a needs-based approach to the provision of funds. For schools with more students on financial assistance, their Opportunity Fund quantum would be proportionately adjusted. The Opportunity Fund has enabled Singaporean students from less advantaged backgrounds to participate and benefit from the co-curricular and enrichment activities organised by the schools.

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Beyond funding and infrastructure, at the heart of every school is a core of teachers who lead, care and inspire. Our educators are at the forefront of our drive to make Every School A Good School.

We are introducing Student Development Teams where Year Heads are appointed to safeguard the quality of school experience and learning opportunities of each level of students. By 2016, all schools will have Student Development Teams.

We are strengthening professional development and improving instructional practices across schools. The Academy of Singapore Teachers is leading this, assisted by other professional platforms and specialised teacher academies.

More teachers are deployed to support levelling-up programmes for low progress learners, such as the Learning Support Programme (LSP) for English and Learning Support for Maths (LSM).

Finally, a good school fosters supportive partnership with parents and the community. Since 2014, schools have received an annual top-up of the Parent Support Group (PSG) Fund to enable them to organise a variety of parent engagement and parent education programmes.

We already have a strong education system with a good level of achievement across all the schools. Going forward, MOE will continue to strengthen the system and enable all our schools to deliver a student-centric, values-driven education. We will continue to invest in our schools and support our teachers. In doing so, we will have a wide range of good schools that bring out the best in every child.

Mdm Speaker, I would like to ask the Senior Minister of State this question: would MOE allow for a heritage fund, or enhanced one if it already exists, to be allocated to each school so that each school can record and display its own heritage within the school. This would allow every school to establish its own identity, entrench in its own unique history and heritage. Why I say this is that parents and potential students can then see the rich identity of the school and that could draw them to that particular school. This could augment the drive words, "Every School A Good School".

Mdm Speaker, I thank the Member for his supplementary question. I should say at the outset that I agree that a school's heritage is important. It gives the students a sense of identity, it gives them a sense of the school's history and it gives them a sense of belonging and knowing where they come from and the community from which they sprang, if you like. We can see this very clearly in the number of parents who want to send

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their students to the schools that they came from. That sense of identity and bonding is very strong.

That said, I am not sure whether it would be necessary to establish a specific heritage fund. As I said earlier, all schools receive a range of funds according to their operations and programmes. I think the first approach is to see whether a school can fit it within its current funding and there is no reason why it cannot be combined with something else. For example, if you wanted to do something for your co-curricular activities or Citizenship and Character Education, that can also be wrapped up in the heritage values. But if a school has, let us say, a specific project which requires more funding, it can certainly put up that request and we can consider that.

Thank you, Mdm Speaker. I think it is a good initiative for MOE to strive for every school to be a good school, yet we still see long queues every year for Primary 1 places in certain schools and also the huge pressure during the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) because of the desire to enter certain academic streams and certain schools. I would like to ask the Senior Minister of State how is the Ministry tracking how we are moving towards this goal of achieving "Every School A Good School". Are there any KPIs that MOE is using to measure how they are achieving this goal, especially in getting the public to buy into this message?

Mdm Speaker, I thank the Member for his question. I think it is a work-in-progress and certainly some parents may see it or feel that some schools are preferred from their perspective. But, overall, in terms of what makes a school a good school are really the things that we have outlined.

Firstly, a good school caters to the needs of its students well. Secondly, we must nurture the student; make sure that the student is engaged. Thirdly, you want to make sure that the teachers are resourced, equipped and supported so that they can be good and caring educators. Fourthly, a good school would foster a strong community relationship and good partnership with the parents.

These are actually the KPIs. These are the things you look at to determine whether the school is a good school. And then how do you support that? You have to make sure that the school is properly resourced, that the pedagogy is well delivered, that the school engages with the parents and that the teachers have good training. In terms of KPIs, those are the things we would look at.

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Over time, as the Minister had explained at the Committee of Supply, "Every School A Good School" does not mean every school the same school. What we are really striving to do is for each school to be able to deliver all the base things perfectly well but, at the same time, for each school to have certain specialities or what we refer to as peaks of excellence which students can look at and say that, "Well, this is more suitable for me than that particular school", so that, over time, you spread across the spectrum schools that meet the diverse talents and needs of our students.