Ideal Education System for Next Decade

Mr Sitoh Yih Pin asked the Minister for Education in respect of changes to the PSLE and education system, what is the key driving ideal behind the education system envisaged for the coming decade and how this education system is envisaged to mould our children.

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Education is fundamentally about helping each individual to discover and develop his or her interests, talents and strengths. It is about developing the whole person, enabling each individual to lead a full, creative and meaningful life.

At the same time, education helps all of us to appreciate our roles and responsibilities to our fellow men, as citizens of our nation and of a global community. This enables us to build a cohesive and harmonious society.

MOE's policies and programmes thus aim to achieve these two overarching objectives, guided by the needs of the future, while building on the strengths of our education system.

We aim to help each child build a rigorous grounding in the key academic foundations of literacy and numeracy, and at the higher levels, knowledge of science and humanities.

On top of this, we seek to develop 21st Century Competencies – information and communication skills, critical and inventive thinking, and civil literacy, global awareness and cross-cultural skills – centred around values, character, and social-emotional competencies that enable us to succeed and interact meaningfully with others. These are critical in an increasingly interconnected, information-rich world.

We will be student-centric in our approach, by creating multiple pathways to cater to the different needs of every child. We want each child to learn at their own pace, in an environment that supports their needs, so that they can progress as far as possible.

To succeed, we will also need to forge a strong partnership with parents and the community.

As we evolve our education system over the next decade, we will reaffirm and preserve the strengths that we have built up over the years, but yet be bold in refreshing or recalibrating in areas where a better balance must be struck.

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