A Concrete Path to Change

EveryChild.SG’s 10-Year Plan to Transform Primary Education, summarized below, tackles these questions head-on. We can’t claim to have all the answers, but this plan represents our best, good-faith attempt to lay out a practical path to achieve the changes that we have been calling for, starting ASAP.

Let’s build the education system that our children so urgently deserve.

The tuition industry currently has about 18,000 full-time equivalent teachers. We need about 9,000 full-time equivalent teachers to be trained or attracted back to reduce all class sizes by 2036. This is an ambitious goal, but – we believe – achievable.

Many ex-MOE teachers have joined the tuition industry for smaller class sizes and better pay. We are calling for a new scheme to attract ex-MOE teachers to return to schools by offering a commitment that they will only ever be deployed to teach in smaller classes (maximum of 25 students), plus competitive salaries and reduced admin load.

This, together with a gradual ramp-up of intake at NIE, should give us sufficient teachers to allow ALL primary class sizes to be capped at 20 (for P1-P2) or 25 (for P3-P6) by 2036 (Year 10).

• If they choose to take the PSLE (or PSLE and DSA), they join the current secondary school allocation process, and lose the chance for an automatic through-train to the assigned partner secondary school.
• If they choose not to take PSLE (or PSLE and DSA), their results from P5-P6 (without PSLE) would be used to guide how they will be initially allocated to Subject-based banding (SBB) in the partner secondary school.

Gradually, this choice could be expanded to nearly all schools in the system. A handful of secondary schools could agree with MOE to remain selective for academics, sports, or arts. Another handful could become specialised technical or vocational schools for students who thrive in this setting. Both selective and specialised secondary schools could establish their own admissions criteria (which could resemble the current PSLE or DSA) and not participate in the through-train.

However, to reduce unnecessary pressure and stress in the system, the through-train should serve 80-90% of students. This would allow the vast majority of children to learn at their own pace, in a developmentally-appropriate way, as they do in other high-performing education systems globally – without the need for intense academic pressure, ‘do or die’ exams before the upper secondary level, or excessive tuition.

It is true that some children will continue to compete for a place in selective secondary schools – and, as in the current system, some will see their hopes disappointed. However, the new system would allow for a much higher degree of parent choice and discretion than the current one. Parents who place more weight on holistic development, have concerns about the negative mental health impacts of high-stakes exams, or simply want to “let kids be kids,” would be able to do so – unlike now, where they are forced to make their child compete on PSLE to secure even a slot in a “decent” secondary school.

Under this new system, by 2036 (Year 10), the centrally administered PSLE and DSA could be phased out.

Crucially, admissions based on parents’ alumni status, volunteering or donations should be phased out for ALL primary schools. We seem to have forgotten that schools are taxpayer-funded, public institutions. It is unfair to privilege children whose parents attended ‘elite’ schools in the past (alumni-based admissions), as well as children whose parents are well-off enough to take time off from work to volunteer for a school BEFORE their child is admitted. (We would never dream of allocating other public resources, e.g. hospital beds or HDB flats, in such ways.)

Parents should, of course, be welcomed to volunteer their time and expertise in schools AFTER their child has been enrolled, as is the case in other countries.

Updated Syllabus

Last but definitely not least, if MOE’s 21st Century Competencies (21CC) are really the outcome we hope to see from primary school education, then the syllabus and overall teaching approach will also have to be updated to match. That means less time spent on rote-learning and taking written tests, and more time on group work, project work, theme-based learning, etc.

Again, there is no need to reinvent the wheel – MOE should pick a primary school syllabus from the more up-to-date options being used internationally (e.g. IB PYP or IPC). The chosen syllabus should be tried out in the classrooms piloting size caps and gradually expanded to ALL primary schools at all levels (in tandem with smaller class sizes).

By the time the updated syllabus is fully in place (2036), the PSLE exam content would bear little resemblance to how students are taught or tested in class. By 2036 (Year 10), the centrally administered PSLE and DSA could be phased out.

Still have more questions about how we can achieve all this? Read our full 10-Year Plan to Transform Primary Education for more implementation details and questions.