Education is the Singapore government's top priority, says Mike Baker
How do you achieve a school system consistently in the top three in the world for maths and science, fourth for literacy, and described by experts as leading the world in teaching quality? Moreover, how do you manage to get 80% of pupils to pass five or more O-levels when they are taught in their second language in classes of 35? The answers are found in Singapore.
I have just accompanied winners of the Teaching Awards on a study visit to Singapore. It was organised by the charity CfBT Education Trust, which has sent British teachers to several countries to see what they can learn from other school systems.
So what did they expect to find? One assistant headteacher from the Midlands expected to see "a very traditional curriculum, rows of pupils, teacher in front, students there to learn". And indeed she did. But she also saw a whole lot more: traditional methods blended with more progressive thinking, and a focus on teaching the whole child, not just on exam results. It gave the British teachers plenty to ponder.
International comparisons are fraught with difficulties; it is easy to forget that what works in one country will not flourish in another. But Singapore has many similarities to the UK. The official language of school instruction is English, there is a national curriculum, and the national examinations are O- and A-levels, administered by Cambridge Assessment.
It was soon clear to the British teachers that there are similar challenges. Singapore is a multi-ethnic, multilingual society. Pupils are obsessed with mobile phones and computer games, and are, as one Singapore school principal put it, the "strawberry generation: easily bruised and damaged".
So why does it work? First, education is the government's top priority. That is not just rhetoric: a country with no natural resources (it even has to import water) knows it lives and dies by its collective brainpower. The ministry of education is very close to schools; as all teachers and principals are civil servants, they regularly rotate through postings to the ministry.
Teachers speak approvingly of the way the ministry supports initiatives with targeted funding. Or, as one former headteacher put it, the system runs on "top-down support for bottom-up initiatives".
For example, there is a drive to boost learning outside the classroom. The government provides funds for school visits, clubs and extra-curricular activities, enabling them to make such activities compulsory. Pupils are regularly graded on these activities, and the grades count towards entry to further education.
In another reform, the ministry announced recently that all primary schools would move to single-session teaching, with the juniors taught in the morning and the infants in the afternoon. This will bring smaller classes, better pupil-teacher ratios, and allow a programme of compulsory extra-curricular activities for the juniors in the afternoon.
Like England, Singapore is undergoing a big school building programme. But there is no disruption while the builders are in, as the whole school decamps to a vacant school nearby. The government maintains spare capacity for this very purpose.
In a reform called the Integrated Programme, schools with more able pupils are encouraged to bypass exams at 16, allowing greater curriculum flexibility right through to A-levels.
One visiting headteacher from Essex was struck by the real stretch offered to more able pupils, the "clear articulation of ideas between government and schools", and the way the whole system not only "talked the talk, but also walked the walk".
Perhaps the real key to Singapore's success, though, is the rare combination of traditional teaching and discipline, and a holistic, child-based approach. In the UK, we tend to see these as mutually exclusive opposites.
Mike Baker
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Lessons from Singapore
Honey, who shrunk the bookshelf?
My Parents immigrated to South Africa in the ’50s. They brought with them their excellent UK education, including an embedded reading habit, which they passed on to their children by ensuring that each of us could read at the earliest age and giving us books to call our own.
Passing on the love of reading is my greatest gift to my children. I wish I could give it to every child in South Africa.
Why is this important? Children who can’t read are at an immediate disadvantage. Practical applications apart, reading provides a context within which we understand how the world works.
Through books — fiction and non-fiction — we reach beyond ourselves to learn about others. We are confident that we can hold our own wherever we are, because we know more than we would if we didn’t read.
I’m fairly sure that Bantu education, which ensured black South Africans were educated only to a level that prepared them for unskilled labour, did not include in its plans the development of a reading culture in black families.
The recipients of Bantu education are my peers; their children, those of my children.
The sins visited on millions of fathers and mothers by apartheid continue to be visited upon their children.
Fifteen years into a democratic South Africa, my children go out into the world with a singular advantage over the majority of their black counterparts — they have well-educated parents who encouraged them to read.
This is why the government’s literacy programmes need to be fast-tracked in schools. It’s why we should be building libraries, not closing them. It’s why it’s so important that every child has access to books that they can call their own. And it’s why the calls on Trevor Manuel to remove VAT from books must continue.
On Wednesday he will present his annual budget. In 2004, despite pleas from across the country, he rejected the VAT-off- books petition co-ordinated by journalist and activist Terry Bell, citing difficulty in defining books for tax purposes, and claiming that only higher-income households and the publishers and distributors would benefit.
After pulling my eyebrows back to their normal position, I call Bell to find out what has happened since then and hear there is a move to take up the fight again. Among those behind it is Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer. I asked her to comment :
“We have a very high level of illiteracy and semi-literacy in our country. Full literacy is the basis of education, once the ABC has been learnt.
“Schools need libraries, communities need libraries, and the prohibitive cost of books, while VAT is levied, means the schools and municipal public libraries cannot afford to buy books.
“Whatever other conditions have resulted in the incredibly low matriculation passes this past year, failure of candidates to be fully literate in terms of vocabulary and comprehension, which comes only from reading, is the result. S tudents do not read enough. C hange the dismal ‘outcomes’ by abolishing VAT.”
If you support this move, you still have a couple of days to send a tip to Trevor: www.treasury.gov.za/tipsfortrevor.asp.
http://www.thetimes.co.za/
Enterprising thinking: US vs UK
At a time when major global markets are shifting, Exec Digital looks at how each Western business approach is adapting with it.
What are the differences between the US and UK entrepreneurial approaches? The answer is clearly rooted in generalisation, however keen we are to adhere to stereotypes. But at a time when most nations are united in the collective woe of a turbulent economic climate, it is perhaps more relevant than ever to home in on ways each nation thinks about business; to pool the intellectual resources from each side of the Atlantic to put us in a position to weather the varying storms of recession.
And weather them we will, according to Ross Wilson, of business advisors Tenon. “Any recession is going to come to an end – it always does,” he says. “Those companies that continue to invest in marketing, training, and getting best value for money will still do well.”
Wilson’s years of dealings with UK entrepreneurs has created for him a generic, catch-all profile of the British tycoon. Advising so many faces has produced a montage of profiles but a singular national business identity. The principle characteristic of this identity, however, demonstrates the shortcomings of the UK education system compared to the US rather than a culture of encouraging an enterprising outlook.
“I don’t think young people in Britain have any exposure whatsoever to entrepreneurship at an early age,” he says. This point is supported by Hiscox’s recent DNA of an Entrepreneur study, which found that 61 percent of small business owners in the UK felt that the education system does not encourage individual ideas and dreams – against just 35 percent in the US.
Wilson continues: “In America, entrepreneurs establish themselves sooner because of the whole American culture. They push public speaking at a young age. They learn to communicate better, sooner – and they have great role models. Aside from Richard Branson and a couple of others, there are much fewer entrepreneurs in the UK who are recognisable names.”
ROLE MODELS
Perhaps, but there is an argument that the big business names in the UK are more understated. For role model status, John Leigh, Managing Director of Europcar UK and National Car Rental, fits the bill. A legendary figure in the industry, Leigh has manoeuvred the brand into the global arena through dedication and graft. With the former Eurodollar being acquired by Florida-based car rental giant A and C Rental Corporation, Leigh was exposed to an expansion plan born of intrinsically American values – and saw the whole enterprise begin to soar to new heights.
“At the time of the takeover the Americans were driven by a fast-track vision – perhaps unlike what you see in Europe,” says Leigh. “They saw a window of opportunity in expanding and looked to do it within a certain space of time. From a UK and Europe perspective, however, I think there is more due diligence and more time taken before completing deals.”
This rather British trait of cautiousness is an observation of American venture capitalist and entrepreneur Vinit Nijhawan, former CEO of Kinetic Computer Corporation and telecoms businesses, and an academic at Boston University. “The one place I would fault British and European entrepreneurs is they have a real fear of coming into the US; somehow they feel that breaking into America is costly and difficult and they are always hesistant to do it until they’re strong in their home markets.”
Expansion plans of American enterprise in general show no such signs of caution – the Hiscox study found that 69 percent of US entrepreneurs state they will continue to grow their businesses despite the economic downturn, compared with just 52 percent of UK firms.
So are British leaders more hesistant to take risks in this uncertain climate, or are they just prudent? Leigh continues: “Even if you have companies with plans to grow, most of that would have required some additional funding. Some companies have a cash mountain to draw on – but usually that is not the case. Especially now, you have got this anxiety of trying to grow while simultaneously trying to protect the profitability of what you’ve already got.”
EASIER ACCESS TO CAPITAL
The ‘cash mountains’ of which Leigh speaks can be said to be more prevalent in the US, where there is much easier access to capital by way of venture capital, angel funding and public financing.
Serial entrepreneur Suneet Singh Tuli has done business in both countries. He says: “The ability to raise capital, and to re-start if you fail gives entrepreneurs better opportunities in America.”
But Tuli sees a different side to the aspirations of each nationality. He continues: “My experience, having worked both in the UK and US, has been that British entrepreneurs have a much more global outlook. The US market is so large, that many companies grow to very large sizes without ever venturing out. Successful entrepreneurs in the UK thrive because they have the ability to function in many more markets.”
But over the last few years a shift in attitudes has been occurring. As Nijhawan acknowledges, US firms have begun to realise that theirs is no longer the biggest market for every commodity. “A startup today, from day one, has to be thinking about markets outside of the US,” he says. “In telecom, the reason I started looking at Europe was because America wasn’t the biggest market for innovation in the field. It lost that first to Europe and now to Asia. Even if you’re not selling globally, your next big competititor could come from overseas, so the companies that I’m involved with are all global today and, as a result, I don’t think are going to have significant impact from the US downturn.”
The consensus on both sides of the Atlantic, then, is that thinking global is a major priority – it is the manner in which this is executed that defines the approach. Each country has different stumbling blocks – hampering tax issues for the British, Americans perhaps being too aggressive with their growth strategy at a time when restraint may be more appropriate. But the reason the two countries enjoy a strong relationship is their interaction between and influence of each other to cater for the increasingly challenging global entrepreneurial arena.
Written by Ben Lobel
http://www.execdigital.co.uk/
