Recently, I boarded a local public bus service to go to the National University of Singapore (NUS). Until today, I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at what I saw plastered on the back of the seats in the bus.

On th back of each of the seats were plastered advertisements for teachers. They were adverts from Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE). In bold letters it said, “NO CHILD SHOULD BE LEFT BEHIND” (NCSBLB). I stared at it for awhile between puking and laughing. Surely, it must be inspired by George Bush’s discredited, high stakes examinations focused, “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) policy. It must rank as high as the MOE teacher recruitment advertisement at Raffles Place which I had written about.

Is it a coincidence that the people in MOE had approved the NCSBLB advert? Is MOE drawing inspiration from the US? Or is it the other way around? Or the educational authorities in both countries are equally confused? Surely, since our leaders are talking about preparing its people for the new economy of this century, they need to send out a very different message. NCSBLB is no different from NCLB. Or is that telling of the attitudes of those in MOE?

PS: See the PR shot below released by MOE of its staff all decked in black (and leather?)

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?

Recently, I came across an advertisement in a newspaper in Singapore. The advertisement was for an accelerated learning program targeted at students in Singapore schools who have to face high pressure, high stakes examinations. The advertisement got me to think about its message. The advertisement described examinations as “just a game”. I thought that this description alone is a telling indictment of Singapore’s much vaunted education system.

The advertiser was not lying when he came up with that phrase. Everyone knows that in Singapore, the only thing that matters in school are the examinations. Principals, teachers, parents and students are really only concerned with the examinations. All else plays a very distant second fiddle. Even the Singapore government tacitly acknowledges it by encouraging local self-help organizations like Mendaki, SINDA and CDAC to make after school tuition for school-going children core programs of these organizations.

Private tuition is the state’s next best, worse kept secret in the educational field. It is a fact that a whole army of private tutors “assist” the schools to help students to ace their examinations, although most schools in Singapore will never acknowledge the assistance provided by this guerrilla army of tutors hidden amongst Singapore’s homes. All these shows the place that examinations have in “educating” the child in Singapore.

Yet as the advertisement seemed to suggest. There is perhaps very little real learning taking place in Singapore schools. What they really do is to play the “examinations” game, a larger than life version of Trivial Pursuit. Teachers and private tutors drill students to ace the examinations. Teachers and tutors in Singapore generally teach to the examinations. This is what happens when there high stakes examinations. American teachers are beginning to do that too with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy initiated by the current Bush Administration which has come under strong criticism by American educators for creating such effects. Which imply once you master how to do some rote-learning and memorize mainly mechanical operations in your head, you are likely to well. No deep understanding of content is required. Just enough to ace the examinations and we know much of the examinations will only require rote-learning and memorization of mechanical operations.

Even with the thinking skills initiatives introduced into the schools in some subject areas, Singapore’s pragmatic teachers have found a way to teach in “thinking” in a very mechanical way, and usually it is taught only in the context of how to tackle the examination questions that supposedly tests the higher order thinking skills of the students. In Singapore schools, seldom are the higher order thinking skills proffered by teachers during the teaching of the content of the subject despite the teach thinking skills initiatives being around for years. What is often done is to teach the text-book and then drill the students on examination-type questions. Clearly, knowing to play the game is key here in Singapore’s examinations-heavy system. Once you know the rules of the game, then you can play the game successfully. That advertiser definitely hit it on the nail with his advertisement.