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SINGAPORE – Singapore’s education sector may be well regarded, but it must continue to keep pace in the global market, Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing said on Monday (November 2).
Speaking to the media after a virtual tour of a class at the National Institute for Early Childhood Development, Chan said there are “tremendous opportunities” to brush up on how training and education is carried out in the industry and beyond. from Singapore.
He mapped four big changes in the education sector, which he said must evolve to remain competitive.
The first change is that learning can no longer be limited to the first 15 to 20 years of a person’s life, Chan said.
“It is no longer just about compulsory education, but about continuing education,” he said, adding that Singapore has to find new ways to educate adult learners, which will be an increasingly important sector for the country.
Chan said that the second trend that Covid-19 has accelerated is how learning is now not just offline, but also online.
“There are benefits to both online and offline teaching methods. The challenge for us is to make sure that we combine both methods and get the best result for our students,” he added.
Third, schools and businesses must increasingly work together, as learning must not only occur within the confines of schools and colleges.
“Today, you will find that many more of our courses, especially adult learning courses, will have to combine classroom learning with on-the-job business training,” he said.
Many technology companies such as Google and Facebook conduct training within their facilities because “that’s where cutting-edge technology comes from and the cutting-edge transformation of business ideas,” he added.
The latest change is that it is no longer enough to have experience in a single subject, said Mr. Chan.
“Of course, we have to dig deeper,” he said. But today, “we also have to equip our people with the adjacent skills” to make job seekers more attractive to the industry, he added.
“Many of our students will no longer just learn accounting in a limited way, they will also deal with business development. They may even deal with the legal and financial aspects of adjacent competencies.”
Mr. Chan said that many education and training institutions in Singapore beyond the formal school system have adapted to these changes. “Many of them have also gone beyond Singapore, using the Singapore brand to be competitive in a very crowded and congested international market,” he said.
He noted that Singapore has the “necessary ingredients” to continue to make its mark on education. These refer to the quality brand of the Republic and the trust that people have in its educational and training system.
At Monday’s briefing, Human Resources Minister Josephine Teo and Social and Family Development Minister Masagos Zulkifli shared on job opportunities in the early childhood sector, as part of a weekly work situation report .
Masagos said the sector is doing well and is still growing amid the Covid-19 crisis. Approximately 180,000 children are enrolled in preschool today and by 2023, this is expected to increase to 200,000.
The sector, which has a “very low” dropout rate, hires 21,000 preschool teachers and is still hiring, Masagos said.
“Since the demand for our teachers remains healthy, the pay increases have been good too, with an increase of about 17 percent in the last three years,” he said.
“This is an industry where, because the competency framework … is well articulated … (everyone in the industry) understands what they need to acquire, when they can acquire it, in order to move up their career,” he said Mr. Masagos.
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