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Two “leading” countries in education, Singapore and Finland had a head-to-head of sorts with regards to how they perceive and take care of their teachers. At the Global Education Competitiveness Summit, a representative of the responsible departments for education in the two countries presented their approach to maintaining the well-being of teachers.
A snapshot of Finland
Low Khah Gek, the Director of the Curriculum, Planning and Development Division (CPDD) of the Ministry of Education represented Singapore’s approach while Timo Lankinen, the Director General of the Finnish National Board of Education represented Finland.
It is interesting to note the differences in approach to teacher welfare and teacher selection. According to Low, in Singapore only the top third of the graduating classes are selected to be teachers. She also mentioned the pre-service and in-service training training that teachers in Singapore are expected to undergo, mentioning the hours of training. She also described the career track of those in the education service adding that the jobs of administrators is the “pinnacle of education service” because of their influence over instruction and the school environment. She also talked about the performance bonuses of between one and three months pay that teachers can get.
In contrast, in the Finnish system, Mr Lankinen says that in Finland they only have a “very limited” performance pay. For him what is more pressing is “how to maintain good working conditions in school” as Finland’s leaders feel that such good conditions are essential to luring talented people into the classrooms and retaining them there.
In response to a question about America’s current pre-occupation with NCLB and testing, he said that Finland only tests representative samples of students, primarily as a way to gauge trends in school performance and teachers routinely assess students’ progress in class in order to improve instruction. According to him, to the Finns, “having well-trained and educated teachers” is more important to raising student achievement. He says in Finland, “people dream to be teachers.”
I cannot help feel that in Singapore the approach is to see teacher welfare as just a case of paying them and they will keep quiet about the working conditions. Bear in mind also the civil service code in Singapore of not criticizing the service in public. The Singapore approach is very impersonal. It is all about numbers. Tests are the norm in Singapore schools because the only measure of student achievement are written tests. They didn’t mention what Singapore’s representative means by performance bonus for good instruction. It usually means how well the students do on high stakes examinations. Singapore also harps on numbers in terms of hours of teachers training. It is numbers and numbers and more numbers. From this love affair with numbers you can see that Singapore’s approach is very administrative and seldom from the teaching point of view. It is therefore no surprise that someone high up in the administration says that the job of administrators is the pinnacle of the service.
Maybe another statistic is worth mentioning. According to a Straits Times report, teachers form the highest proportion of patients at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in Singapore. Of course, this wasn’t mention at the summit.
So which approach do you think is more enlightened?
| Filed Under: Assessment , Directions in education , Teacher training , training Tagged with CPDD, Finland, Finnish, Finnish National Board of Education, Global Education Competitiveness Summit, high stakes examinations, MOE, NCLB, Singapore, Straits Times, students, teachers |
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I’ll like to know if there’s a link to this Straits Times articles about teacher admission rates into IMH that is quoted in the article. I can’t find it online at all. Thanks.
Thanks for the interest. I have never found an online version of it. It was published at least three years ago. I used to have a clipping of it but it is gone now. BTW, it doesn’t mean that teachers form a large proportion of crazy people but it does mean that many teachers are suffering from other problems like anxiety, stress etc. Despite this, a local union always seems to insist that teachers are “coping”.
Those the statisitics refer to are the ones who end up being admitted. It does not include the ones who are currently seeking psychological help or are unaware of their problem. In a recent comment by PM Lee, he insists that education in SG is successful, citing how employable the students are. I think it’s like saying the paper company is successful because they sell a lot of products. As we now know, if you destroy the environment through massive deforestation to make the paper, it’s not SUSTAINABLE. At the rate of turnover (which MOE insists is 2%), not to mention those who kill themselves and end up crazy, I think it’s not sustainable in the long run. It’s just very short sighted. I feel they are more interested in appearing in the papers than educating anyone.
Thanks for the comments, Ben. I think our education system did its job well with regards to the problems of the immediate post-independence period. The students may be employable but if that’s all being fed into the employment ranks, do employers have much of a choice? They will take whatever they can. Then they will complain loudly that the schools are not even good at producing people who can do good work at the work place. The founder of Creative Technologies has once quite candidly given in the Straits Times an example of the local engineers inability to come up with creative solutions in comparison to their American counterparts.
Well the turnover rate is low because we have already stratified the students into abilities. The not so good are channeled to the ITEs and so on. But the stratification of these students is based largely on a very narrow band of intelligence. Those who display logical-mathematical and linguistic intelligences are deemed smart. MOE doesn’t care about those with other intelligences.
As I have also written in another post, it is interesting that SOTA and the Sports SChool was set up by other ministries not MOE. MOE is only interested in narrow definition of intelligence. They have a hand in the NUS High School and I suspect the Assumption Pathway School. The first is for obvious reasons. The second I suspect is to get the “troublesome kids” out of the main schools so the rest can learn.
Just look at other figures like the number of students now being referred to IMH. There is an alarming increase. Is this a successful system?
Hi,
Thanks for your article. It would be great if we could learn from Finland about its emphasis on conducive working conditions.
Cheers,
Wen Shih
Thanks, Wen Shih.
Yes, I agree and our people in MOE have been visiting them. But there seemed to be a stubborn refusal to learn from Finland. Perhaps our “success” have got to our heads. It becomes difficult to claim that we are an educational leader when we say we ourselves are following Finland.
Will our neighbors who have been regarding in such high esteem want to follow our model? Will our plans to be an educational hub and earn all the money that comes with it, for example, iPSLE for schools in the neighboring region, be torpedoed if we follow Finland. Will we also reduce our class sizes which the MOE have claimed all these while to be irrelevant but still used it for the Gifted Programme? Will the MOE be willing to give up the examination-centered approach and admit that they are a poor way to assess learning?
Thanks again.
Amran
Hi Amran,
thanks for the article. there is nothing online about IMH and its high teacher-patient proportion even though i’ve heard on many occasions how it is true.
Would u be ableto suggest or provide any resources on the above issue?
Thanks again!
Hi Su
Thanks for the query. Unfortunately, as I have indicated above, I cannot do so now. Perhaps the only source is to go the Straits Times own archives.