Addressing Survey Findings Which Showed Decline in English Literacy Skills amongst Older Workers and Average Scores for Adaptive Problem-solving

Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Minister for Education (a) whether there are new or additional plans to address the findings of the latest survey results released by the PIAAC, conducted by OECD, which indicate a decline and below-average performance in adult literacy after the age of 35; and (b) what do these findings mean for the competitiveness of our Singaporean workers and workforce, given that we depend on our human capital for our country’s survival and prosperity.

Ms Foo Mee Har asked the Minister for Education (a) how has the SkillsFuture movement supported the skills development and upgrading of different cohorts of Singaporeans aged (i) 25-39 (ii) 40-54 (iii) 55 and above; and (b) how does the performance of these cohorts compare with their international peers in terms of skills development and skills currency.

Dr Wan Rizal asked the Minister for Education in respect of the results of International Assessment of Adult Competencies which is a global test of adult skills conducted by OECD (a) what targeted initiatives are being implemented to address the decline in literacy skills among adults over 35 years old; and (b) how does the Ministry support individuals in multilingual work environments to maintain and enhance their English literacy skills.

Miss Cheryl Chan Wei Ling asked the Minister for Education regarding the recent report on the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) (a) whether Singapore’s SkillsFuture programme have objectives that measure outcomes in a similar way to PIAAC in terms of (i) social and economic impact and (ii) performance of education and training system; and (b) whether specific areas of skills to be improved can be drawn from this report to enhance the SkillsFuture programme.

Ms Jessica Tan Soon Neo asked the Minister for Education in view of the results of the PIAAC released by OECD which have indicated that Singapore scored at the average for adaptive problem-solving and flagged a significant decline in literacy after age of 35 (a) whether this affects the employability of workers within this age group as businesses adapt to rapid changes; and (b) whether there will be measures to work with employers and institutions to support and enhance the literacy skills of mid-career workers.

My response will also cover the matters raised in the oral Parliamentary Questions (PQs) scheduled for the Sitting on or after 9 January from Assoc Prof Razwana Begum Abdul Rahim and the two written PQs scheduled for Sittings on 7 January and on or after 9 January 2025 from Members Ms See Jinli Jean and Dr Wan Rizal, please. And I invite Members to seek clarifications as needed.

The Survey of Adult Skills is developed by the Organisation for Economic and Co-operation Development (OECD) Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) to assess the proficiency of adults in literacy, numeracy and adaptive problem-solving skills. These are key information processing skills that are used and developed at work and in daily life, and also enable the acquisition of new knowledge and skills. Thus far, two PIAAC cycles have been conducted – the first from 2014 to 2015 and the second, more recently, from 2022 to 2023.

Overall, we have made progress since the first PIAAC cycle. Singapore was the most improved country for numeracy alongside Finland while our literacy proficiency scores remained stable. Our adaptive problem-solving score was comparable to OECD’s mean.

In this latest cycle, the OECD has found that in the majority of countries, including Singapore, older adults have lower skills proficiency. When comparing adults born in the same years across the two cycles, the OECD also found that nearly half of the countries had substantial age-related skill losses. In Singapore, this phenomenon was seen for literacy skills, but not in numeracy.

Further studies will be needed to understand these findings. But these observed trends are likely due to a combination of several factors.

First, the cohort effect. In Singapore, our education system has developed rapidly over the past decades and younger cohorts have benefited from significantly improved educational opportunities compared to earlier cohorts. This is reflected in the OECD PIAAC scores where our younger adults scored near the top in all three proficiency domains, while older adults scored below the average OECD scores. This is what we call the "cohort effect".

Second, the atrophy effect, where acquired skills decline after adults leave the formal education system and enter work. This could be because the skills are not as frequently used or as deliberately honed at work compared to during the formal schooling years.

Third, we also need to be mindful of the obsolescence effect, where skills become less relevant or even obsolete at the workplace, given rapidly changing market demands, technological advancement and enterprise transformation.

There is also growing research interest on how technology has changed the way we consume and process information, with many people moving away from complex writing to shorter social media posts and videos. As cognitive outsourcing becomes more prevalent with artificial intelligence (AI), there is also a risk of erosion of deep thinking and reflection.

Some Members have also asked what the results mean for the competitiveness of our workforce. We take part in PIAAC to help gauge our progress in adult continuous learning. In that regard, our improvements over the two cycles of testing are encouraging. However, the skills assessed by OECD are not the only skills that affect the employability of our local workforce. To put together a better picture of where we are, we need to consider other data points as well. For instance, whether our workers have job-specific skills is crucial to their competitiveness. There are also other metrics that measure the competitiveness of a country or workforce, such as our employment rate, the number of companies that continue to invest good jobs in Singapore and whether our workers command good wages.

Nevertheless, to mitigate the atrophy and obsolescence effects, it is necessary for us to continuously upskill and reskill throughout life, beyond the first 15 years of formal education. Which is why I always emphasise that while we have done well for the first 15 years of our student achievements in school, we must also focus on the next 50 years of our time beyond school.

To this end, the Government has been investing heavily in continuous education and training through SkillsFuture, and this is a key pillar of our refreshed social compact under Forward Singapore. However, the Government cannot do this alone. Individuals and employers also have key roles to play. Individuals must take ownership of their learning journeys throughout life and take steps to constantly upskill and reskill, to push against the natural skills atrophy that the PIACC results suggest.

Employers must also stay nimble and transform their business and jobs to compete internationally. They must also invest in their employees’ career health, such as by articulating their company’s skills needs and supporting their employees to undergo training so their employees have the capabilities to successfully achieve employers’ business goals.

Some have asked how we should interpret the PIAAC results in relation to our overall economic and workforce competitiveness. Our overall economic and workforce competitiveness also depends on other factors, including but not limited to, our ability to provide a business-friendly environment, consistent policies, stable government and measures to attract complementary talent and skills from the global networks to complement and supplement our own. These factors contribute to an ecosystem where businesses can make the best use of our workforce’s talent to innovate and thrive.

I thank the Minister for contextualising the PIAAC results. I have just one supplementary question for the Minister to consider. Would the Ministry consider collaborating more with Singapore publishers, booksellers and literary charities to enhance English literacy skills all round?

Just to provide some background, we have a number of them in Singapore, for example, Book Bar, Ethos Books, Epigram Books, the Singapore Book Council and SingLit Station, just to name a few. These entities have very successfully curated and created many interesting talks and lifestyle events that promote a reading culture around Singapore literature or SingLit, for short. SingLit stories are not only relatable, but very impactful for a local audience who can see their own life experiences and culture mirrored in the books and stories that they read.

So, to reiterate my question, will the Ministry be open to leveraging off of the initiatives of these entities in order to create a better reading culture and accordingly, improve adult literacy skills within the community?

Mr Speaker, Sir, we certainly would like to work with the various institutions that Member Ms Usha Chandradas mentioned. Indeed, it is a multi-prong effort. It is not just encouraging people to read more, but also to read widely and to be more reflective. And we are all conscious of today's media environment, whereby there are so many different channels competing for the attention of our people and we will have to keep up our efforts to continue our encouragement to our people to keep learning, to keep reading even as they are working and have gone beyond the school years.

Really, we all have to be aware of this famous dictum: we either use it, hone it, or we lose it. And that applies to all the skillsets that we picked up from young and we just have to keep working on it; otherwise, the atrophy effect will set in, regardless of our background.

Thank you, Speaker. I thank the Minister for his response. I have two supplementary questions for the Minister. First, how does the Ministry plan to leverage the insights from the PIAAC findings, to refine the SkillsFuture programme, particularly in identifying critical skills gaps and developing targeted interventions that enhance the relevance, accessibility and effectiveness of training for both current and emerging workforce needs.

The second one, I would like to also continue on the point that the Minister spoke about skills atrophy. Related to that, I would like to ask the Minister whether he would consider lowering the age threshold for enhanced training subsidies under the SkillsFuture scheme, which is currently set at 40, whether he would bring it to 35, to enable workers to refresh their skills earlier and remain competitive in the fast evolving job market.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank Ms Foo Mee Har for her two questions. First, let me respond to the first on how we help our workers to be more focused and targeted in their selection of training courses and modules. We do it in different ways. One way that SkillsFuture Singapore does it is that we generally curate a set of courses that we think are industry relevant and we publicise this set of courses to encourage people to take up the courses. That is why there is a set of curated courses under the SkillsFuture programme.

The second thing that SkillsFuture Singapore has been doing is that every year, we will regularly identify the new skillsets in the emerging industries that will create new job opportunities for Singaporeans with better prospects. For example, in the care economy, in the green economy and the digital economy. Beyond this generic high-level cluster of skills required, we try to drill down to the specifics so that we can have curated programmes for our workers to subscribe to, so that they can improve their skillsets as necessary.

What we want to also do is have a broader culture where every one of us – individuals and employers – take ownership of this process to keep upgrading our skillsets. Our competition is not within Singapore. Our competition is how we, as a Singaporean workforce, compete with the rest of the world, the best of the world, so that we can continue to find our own niche areas to make a living for ourselves. So, this is evergreen work and we must keep doing this.

On the second issue about the age threshold of 40, let me just put in context the SkillsFuture framework of assisting our people to upgrade their skillsets. It is not a binary thing, where there is a before or after age 40, where we help or do not help people. Actually, we have a suite of schemes that help people from the time they leave school, all the way until they grow much older. It is just that we have intensified our efforts for the post-40, because our surveys, our dipsticks show that that is the most urgent part. So, even for people below the age of 40, we have other SkillsFuture programmes that allow them to access training programmes, as part of the larger SkillsFuture movement. But in the recent announcement, we have made more and we have intensified our efforts to help those above the age threshold of 40, because that is most critical and most urgent.

As to whether we will review that age threshold of 40 and bring some of the programmes even earlier, we keep that option open, depending on the market demand. But given the resources and the urgency of the problem that we have, that is why this year we have made the effort to focus on the post-40 age group. That does not mean that the pre-40s do not need to upskill. That does not mean that we have no programmes to help those in the pre-40s. Whether we need to step up the efforts, we will continue to review our programmes and make sure that we support Singaporeans accordingly.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. First of all, I would like to thank the Minister for the details and what he has shared, in terms of the approach. I just have two supplementary questions because my concern is not so much the exact scores, but the trend of what we are seeing and that the atrophy of skills is in the very basic area of adaptive skills, which is very important if we look at the environment of fast change. So, it is not so much specific skillsets and picking up specific skillsets.

From the insights in the report, is there going to be any curation, in terms of how we work with organisations? For the age group that is concerning, it is the 35-and-onwards group. Most of the people will be in the midst of their careers, not so much what age they are, but more in the midst of their careers. They are very busy, really just doing their work and so, many times, they neglect their development. While we can talk about all parties being responsible to take up development, they also have to do their work.

So, how do we look at the work itself and working with employers and all stakeholders to say, do we curate it in a way that allows people within the workforce to be able to do their continuous learning?

It is not easy, but it is something that I think we need to rethink, perhaps the approach of learning. It is not just about going to attend courses. As the Minister has rightly said, if you do not use it, even if you learn it, it is not going to be effective. And it is concerning because the trend is worrying – it is adaptive skills, it is the very basic core skills of literacy which affects ability to learn. So, I hope that the Minister can give assurance about the approach that we will take and if there is going to be any refinement in what we do.

Mr Speaker, Sir, let me put in context what the results measure and what the results have shown. In the first PIACC cycle, they measured two things: numeracy and literacy. In the more recent PIACC cycle, they measured three things: numeracy, literacy and problem-solving skills. Of the three, our adults' numeracy atrophy problem was not that much of a problem – it stayed stable for numeracy. For literacy, just like the worldwide trend, we have seen a dip. It is of concern to us because literacy is the basis upon which we acquire and process information. So, that is the second point.

For adaptive problem-solving, we have no basis for comparison because the first cycle did not measure this. This was the first time that they measured problem-solving. For that, we are at the OECD average. But within that, just as we have expected, we see a difference between the younger age group which performed very well, versus the older age group that did not perform so well. But our average for the whole workforce is at the OECD average.

Of course, one can take the argument that with more cohorts coming in, our flow of the cohorts will slowly overturn the stock effect. But to us, that is not satisfactory because that will take us too long for us to want to be competing at the top end of the global league.

So, what are we doing? Indeed, we need to step up our SkillsFuture programme, but the SkillsFuture programme does not address literacy per se. The SkillsFuture programme addresses the kind of skillsets necessary for that.

We need to couple the SkillsFuture effort, where we target our efforts to improve the skillsets of our people that are job-specific, with a more general culture that Ms Usha Chandradas mentioned; that we need to encourage our people to read, to maintain their literacy proficiency in order to process and manage information, especially in today's bewildering world, where the problem is not a deficit of information; the problem is a deluge of information which becomes bewildering.

How do we help our people to do the three "Ds", which I always emphasise in MOE? To "distil" the information; to "discern" with values; and to "discover", meaning to create new value propositions. These are the new competencies that we have to encourage our adults to have, starting from school, where we keep emphasising the abilities for our students to distil, discern and to discover.

Having said that, what else are we going to do? We need to spend much more effort and pay more attention to what we call the adult-learning andragogy. We have spent a lot of effort over the previous decades and years on how to build up the science of learning for our school children. More recently, we have also invested in the National Institute of Early Childhood Development (NIEC) to look at the pedagogies and the methods to help our younger cohorts, the preschool cohorts, to build the necessary foundations for their education. So, we have done this for the school and the preschool, in terms of pedagogical developments.

Now we need to have the third limb. And this is why I have tasked the Institute of Adult Learning to set up the equivalent of what we have, in the National Institute of Education and NIEC, to look at the adult pedagogies, how we can use technology to mass customise the learning for our adults. Because the same content delivered to a 25-year-old, a 35-year-old, a 45-year-old, will need to be different. And in fact, the most interesting institution that we have today is the Singapore University of Social Science, because many of their classes have what we call inter-generational students from different backgrounds and it requires different pedagogies or adult andragogy for us to effectively teach and allow and help our adult students to master the content. That is what we will do.

I thank the Minister for his reply. Like others who read the news, and as an educator myself, I was, of course, alarmed to read about the study. However, I am a little less convinced than the Minister that the solution necessarily is about doubling down on adult reskilling and upskilling. And let me explain.

Literacy, I believe, is truly a foundational skill, as the Minister and also Ms Jessica Tan mentioned. And so, reskilling and upskilling necessarily builds on this foundation. I wonder, therefore, in the interest of retaining knowledge and learning, whether there should be programmes right at the earlier levels of the formal schooling level that will foster interest in knowledge and learning acquisition. So, that is the first part of my supplementary question.

My second is, I wonder whether some of this has to do with a mindset that is common in our educational culture to study for the test. Often, we hear about how after the test, we "return" things to the teacher. I wonder if the high stakes testing culture that we have fostered here may be responsible for this and I wonder if the Minister can share a bit about his thoughts on that.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I will just make the following points in response to Member Assoc Prof Jamus Lim's comments. First, we certainly agree, it is not an either/or thing. Of course, the foundation is important, just as the need for us to upskill and reskill continuously is important. This is why MOE in the recent years has been using this phrase and has been implementing programmes that we refer to as "the joy of learning" – that people want to learn because they enjoy learning, not just for tests.

And if Assoc Prof Jamus Lim had read my recent interview with The Straits Times, he would also understand that we are using this catchphrase now, which is: "learn more, test less". If you look at our education system, the recent changes that we have made, we have allowed students to, indeed, learn more, but we do not need to necessarily test everything that the student learns, so that there is an innate desire to want to learn, not just for the exams, but to learn for life. This is a habit that we want to inculcate in our children: the joy of learning that you can learn widely, but you do not always have to just focus on the test. The test is but a means for us to let the individual know where you are strong or weak at, so that on that basis, you can be put in a learning environment that best suits you, to help you to continue to grow.