There was an interesting news report yesterday in the Straits Times (22 July 2009), entitled “Retool for a world after the recession”. The report was essentially the result of an interview with the Education Solutions Executive for IBM’s Global Education and Industry, Ms Patricia Sullivan.

In the report, she argues for a need for a change in mind sets especially in education. With the increasing emphasis on KBEs and the need for workers with “21st century skills”, the education system has to change to meet these demands. The education system must produce students who are “flexible, adaptable and proficient with information technology”. She warned that:

If an education system is not aligned with economic objectives and strategies of a region, country or state, then it’s going to lose its validity and certainly its value.”

I have stated on numerous occasions in this blog about the need for Singapore to change its education system and move away from the traditional emphasis on written high stakes examinations because such an approach does not help Singapore to produce the workers that it needs. In fact, I have also suggested that this current emphasis on traditional written examinations and accompanying reliance on indicators like TIMSS, is misleading and can lead us to being lulled into a false sense of complacency about the prowess of our content-emphasized education system.

The emphasis in a new education system will be on the learning of skills rather than content. It will be on real world learning rather than on participating in a giant Trivial Pursuit or “guess what is on the teacher’s mind” game.

Ms Sullivan believes it will not be about grades and the teacher’s role will be one of intervening only when the students go off track. In the interview, she challenged Singapore by saying:

The world is truly going to become a global education market…you want to export your education services and import students, and the only way that’s going to be possible is by finding new ways of delivering education in non-traditional, non-classroom approaches.”

This ties in also with what I have been writing about the way Singapore pushes itself as an educational hub in the region. Singapore is still taking advantage of its reputation as an education hub based on an already outmoded approach to what education is all about. I have described how many “educational consultants” from Singapore have simply adopted a “cut-and-paste” approach in their dealings with schools in the region. Little thought is given about what kind of education is relevant for this day and age. A “simple” transfer of the examinations-oriented system is usually their solution and modus operandi, never mind its relevance. This mind set is not only found among private educational consultants but also in the people in the civil service who deal with educational matters.

I have written about how in Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE), the emphasis is still on written examinations as the focus of learning and assessment. While there are some schools doing away with the traditional GCE O levels, the assumption is that only the top schools should do that because the students will do well in them anyway. What they don’t stop to consider is whether the O levels is good indicator of learning for all students in the first place. Those students not normally regarded as bright in Singapore may simply have other types of intelligences and habits of mind that the MOE simply doesn’t want to focus on but which Ms Sullivan is saying may be even more important today and in the future.

The MOE also persists with streaming despite all criticism. According to the Straits Times report Ms Sullivan was reported to be of the view that:

…more change is needed as the standardisation and structure of society along with continued streaming at a relatively early age may not translate well into the future. She sees technology enabling students to individualise their learning and progress at their own pace instead of being part of a cohort who methodically go through the same learning process.”

What she is essentially criticizing is also the very basic approach of our school system which is no different from that of factory assembly line system.

We see also the old paradigm in the thinking of Singapore’s attempt to be the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) syndicate of the East. Singapore has set up the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board (SEAB) . The SEAB is part of Singapore’s plan to be an educational hub. However, what it promotes is nothing visionary in the area of assessment. It sells the iPSLE to neighboring countries.

This is definitely not as Ms Sullivan that is “delivering education in non-traditional, non-classroom approaches.”

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?

There is an interesting article in the Straits Times today, 1 July 2009, by Dr Lee Wei Ling, the Director of the National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore. She was giving her views on “herd mentality” and “free will”.

In her article, she gave the current measure of taking temperature to screen for the H1N1 flu virus as an example of a herd mentality. Her argument is that despite evidence to show that it has not worked well citing Japan as an example where such measures were taken and yet it has the second highest number of confirmed cases in Asia despite its efforts at temperature screening. She reminded us that even without a temperature, a person can be carrier of the virus and such people would think they are healthy when in fact they can be dangerous transmitters of the flu.

In the educational field, the clamor for international examinations like the IGCSE, iPSLE or IB has never been louder. This is especially true in the Southeast Asian region where Singapore’s neighbors have been envious of Singapore’s reputation for an excellent education system. Many have seen Singapore’s reputation as due to its known reliance on examinations from international examinations syndicate like UCLES or the CIE. Many schools among Singapore’s neighbors now want similar examinations because of the prestige that such examinations can give to them. They feel that if they have international examinations, then they can be become “good” too.

In this rush to get themselves accredited to international examinations, few actually ask if such high stakes examinations can do what they should be doing, which is, whether it can assess students learning well. The assumption is that these established international examination syndicates know what they are doing as they have been in the business for a long time. But do their clients stop to think what IS BEING assessed in such international examinations? What kind of learning is being assessed? Is the area of learning being assessed just a narrow spectrum of skills and abilities, and intelligence?

Many educational experts have decried the dependence on such examinations to assess learning. This is because there is so much learning to be assessed and the different kinds of learning cannot be assessed in a one-size-fits-all way, that is through largely written examinations. Yet schools are rushing to get into the high stakes international examinations bandwagon.

Like the temperature-taking measures for the H1N1 virus, high stakes examinations are a very ineffective way of measuring what it is supposed to measure. It doesn’t take into account too many aspects of assessment in learning. Worse, it is also like the same example cited by Lee, it is also dangerous. It is dangerous because those who do well in such examinations will think they are intelligent and those who don’t will think that they are not when in reality many of the former are just examinations-smart and the latter are not.

It is also dangerous because it doesn’t assess people for the skills and knowledge that is required for adult life. The economy for example gets conned into accepting people who are examinations-smart as good and suitable workers. The loud complaints of employers about the quality of workers they get from schools and universities tell us the real story.

Dr Lee also had this conclusion about “free will”. She said:

“…the option to make a decision unconstrained by any circumstance. In many situations we cannot expect total free will. But where decision-making is constrained by mere social convention, we do have the choice to ignore conventions. More importantly, when decision-making is influenced by herd mentality, we should consciously avoid following the herd and make decisions based on logic.

If we fail to do so, we risk making the wrong decisions, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.”

I feel her conclusion should also be useful warning for all schools in the region about adopting the herd mentality with regards to the adoption of international examinations. The adoption of international examinations is not a silver bullet or panacea. It can actually be a trojan virus in disguise and undermine much that education really stands for. Instead of education, this virus will change the programming to give you examination-preparedness instead.