Plans and Admission Criteria for Special Assistance Plan Schools

Assoc Prof Fatimah Lateef asked the Minister for Education what are the Ministry's future plans for Special Assistance Plan schools.

Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar asked the Minister for Education whether the Ministry will consider reviewing the admission criteria for Special Assistance Plan schools to allow admission of students who do not take Chinese as their Mother Tongue Language, provided that they fulfil the academic requirements for admission to the respective SAP schools.

Special Assistance Plan (SAP) schools play an important role in nurturing bilingual and bicultural students well-versed in the Chinese language and culture.

SAP schools seek to cultivate students’ interest in Chinese language-related studies, and groom cultural transmitters, for example, journalists/reporters for the Chinese media or language specialists like Chinese language teachers.

To provide students in SAP schools with an immersive language environment, assembly periods and most of the non-examination subjects are conducted in Chinese. SAP schools also emphasises the transmission of cultural values that are relevant to our Singapore context. The plan is for our SAP schools to continue to seek more effective ways of nurturing bilingual and bicultural students. This is a challenging task as students are exposed, through the internet and mass media, to a variety of cultural norms.

For students to benefit fully from and contribute in the SAP environment, a basic grounding in the Chinese language is important.

To meet the diverse educational interests and needs of our students, our schools offer a variety of programmes. Each school develops its own initiatives and creates positive experiences that allow students to discover and develop their strengths, and maximise their potential. As the global landscape and our local context evolve, MOE will continue to review our education policies to remain relevant.

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