A Report On Singapore Education Leadership And Change

Changes in the education system of Singapore

Discuss about a Report on Singapore Education Leadership And Change?

The study introduces the changes in the education system of Singapore. Many times the education system of Singapore had proven to be best across the world. The students of the Singapore were the topper in the mathematics and science in the world. In the progress of 2006 in PIRLS, the country had been listed in the fourth rank. In the program of student assessment of international that happened in the year 2009, the Singapore has chosen to be the top performer in the world. The country had gained this unaccountable achievement in a very short time. The Singapore had gained its independence in the year 1959 from the rule of British. In 1965, it had separated from the Malaysia (Ho and Boyle, 2015). After getting the independence from the British rule, the country had no assets with them. They had only deepwater port. This condition had greatly affected the economic condition of the country (Darling-Hammond and Lieberman, 2012). The study also analyses the context in which the change in the education system of Singapore had been made. The government of the country had observed the problem of the high population due to a policy of free immigration. Under the rule of British colonial, the education system of the Singapore was only for the interest of the ethnic and politics. The country was lagging behind in the economic development due to the low skilled workforce. Due to a limited base of industry the country was also lagging behind in the export activity (Lee, Hung and Teh, 2015).

The first step in the development of the education system was for the development of the economic condition of the country. The first Prime Minister Mr. Lee Kuan Yew had played an important role in reforming the education system of the education (Koh, 2015). For his point of view, the focus of the change in the education system should be for the development of the economic condition of the country. The government had decided that to increase the demand for the product the people of the country should be literate. It will also increase the productivity of the country that will ultimately increase the economic condition of the country. The study analyses need and the role of the leaders in the changes of the education system. The change in the education system had occurred in three phases. In the first phase, the government of the Singapore was intended to establish primary schools for the workforce to make them high skilled (Lim, 2014). In the second phase the government and the head of the school were intended to give the new generation a standard learning. In this phase, the educational leaders provided standard textbooks and materials to the students. The focus of this phase was to provide technical and polytechnic education to the students for making them ready for the industrialization. The study also analyses that in the third phase the educational leaders had thought of creative and innovative learning in the universities. It was a lifelong learning and the Students got committed towards the nation (Dobozy, 2015). The analyst of the study also emphasizes on the strategies of the educational leader in changing the education system. An evaluation of the educational changes had also done here.

Why was the change in the education system of Singapore needed?

In the year 1959 the Singapore has received its independence from the rules of British colonial. The country had got the release from the rule of Malaysia in the year 1965. In this year, the Singapore has become solely independent. In this year, the Singapore has no asset with it. They had only deepwater root. The Singapore has started to face huge economical discrepancies compared to another country. Various difficulties are faced by the Country in the area of industrial bases. They also face huge population growth due to immigration policy that was free. The unemployment rates of Singapore were huge because of unskilled labour in the Singapore. The development of the human resources of the Singapore was the main importance of the country. As the country lacks the natural resources they had the need for developing the human resources of the country (Hughes and Panzo, 2015). The country had a huge need for introducing an education system that will literate and develop the human resource of the country. During the age under British Colonial rule, the education system of Singapore was only to meet the interest of political and ethical predominant. The education system was intended to develop the tool for linking the economical development with the development of human resources.

The first step of the government of Singapore was to strengthen the education system for developing the economical condition of the country. The Singapore has initiated the changes in the education system for educating the human resources of the country in the production of the product for increasing the assets of the country (Moos, 2014). Through increasing the assets of the country the country will ultimately increase the economical condition. For this, the first thing that the country had to do is to change the education system of the Singapore to train the workforce of the country.

 At the University of Singapore, the Prime Minister of Singapore has made a comment on the education system of Singapore. He had commented that to develop the economic condition of the country the people of the Singapore need to be educated that will increase the productivity of the country (Seemiller and Priest, 2015). The Change in the education system was needed to increase the demand of the population and increase the consuming power of the people. To produce the product that the people of the Singapore mostly needed, the workforce of the Singapore needs to technically educate. As the Universities of the Singapore were not providing technical courses, then the human resources lack the knowledge of the technical aspects of producing the product that the people of Singapore demanded. For this reason, the Singapore was lagging behind the race of industrialization. As the country was providing cheap human labour in the market of the labour market, this was affecting the economic development of the Singapore (Bossi, 2015). Despite being the multilingual country the Singapore was lacking common language as well as common schooling system. So to meet this gap between the Singapore needed a common language. They have selected the English language as the common language and made it the governmental language. After that, they realize that to cop up with the globalization of the competition of the business and other areas the country needs to increase the proficiency of the human resource in the English language. To face the combat of the needs and changes occurred in the circumstances the education system of Singapore started to build one school per month (WerbiÅ„ska, 2015). They had rapidly increased the building of school with recruiting huge teachers for educating the pupil. The teacher recruited was doubled from 10500 to 19000 in the year 1968 for delivering prompt education to the pupil of the Singapore.

The policy of multilingual education system has been started in this year for giving recognition to four languages like Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil. Ethnically diverse system of education was changed to the national education system. After some year of giving primary education to the workforce still the workforce of Singapore was considered to be undereducated in comparison of world labour market. So the government of Singapore has made the decision to educate the workforce in a higher secondary basis. In this step, the Singapore has made standard in the knowledge of the pupil (Gigliotti, 2015). They provide polytechnic training to the pupil of the Singapore and later they also provided technical training to the pupil to increase the knowledge of the pupil about the industrialization. From the year 1997 to the current year, the Singapore has made changes in the education system that can be defined in terms of multiple bits of intelligence.

The education system of Singapore was only about the meeting the interest of ethnic and political. In the year 1959 the Singapore got the release from the rule of British colonial. After got released from the British colonial there were not any assets left with the Singapore. This condition hugely affected the economic condition of the Singapore. The changes in the education system were needed because the country lacks natural resources at that time. The government of Singapore has played a vital role in changing the education system of the Singapore for upgrading the talent of the human resources in meeting the needs of industrialization of the country. It has been seen that the students of Singapore have a greater trend in making courses in Law, medicines and social science, but they are not interested in taking engineering and architecture (Asfaha, 2014). The Universities of Singapore rather was not able to provide the course in architecture and engineering; they only provided courses for medicine, social science and law. But later it is seen that these courses are not helpful in making the pupil ready for the industrialization. Education is the core for the development of the nation. If the pupils of the Singapore are provided with the courses of technical and polytechnic education, it will help them in giving more effort towards achieving the goal of the economy. Singapore was constantly changing the education system of their universities for meeting the changing landscape of the country (Thomas and Postlethwaite, 2014). The trend of the world then was to develop the technical aspects and in this area the Singaporean workforce was lagging behind.

The objective of changes in education system was to make a cohesive society in which the pupil and the workforce will prepare themselves as a successive generation who would be able to cop up with the changing demand of the people and make products demanded by the people of the society. Their government of Singapore has thought about the changes in the education system so that the new generation can thrive in the future of the globalised country (Bossi, 2015). During the year 1945 to 1960s, the country was facing division in ethnicity and unemployment rate. The pupil of the Singapore was not up to date with the changing requirement of the job profile needed by the organization so they were lagging behind in getting opportunity in the newly established industry that require new talent with new educational qualification.  It leads the Singapore in providing the new generation new technical courses that are related to industrialization (Kheng, 2015).

There was a huge political instability in the year of 1945 to 1960 in the Singapore. As the people were not that much talented of how to develop the economic condition of the country. The political leaders were unable to judge where the country is lagging behind in developing the economic condition of the country. It is very necessary to build strong leadership in politics for the development of the economic condition of the country (Furlong, Cochran-Smith and Brennan, 2013). The third world has been suggested that political leadership may be bad as well as bad for the growth of the economy. Every step depends towards developing the economic condition of the country is dependent on the type of leadership and the type of developments in the economic condition (Howard, 2015). Political leadership distinguishes three functions that are related to authority, managements and inspiration. The economic development depends on the relevance of these three functions.

It has been seen that the political leaders of the Singapore tended to run their politics in a centralized manner. They were not interested in dealing with the foreign country as they were not that much developed in technical and economical aspects. They used to run the politics in a bureaucratic manner. In this way, the economy of the Singapore was held back rather than promoting the development. This has led to the change in the education system of the Singapore that will be helpful in developing the mind of the political leaders for taking help of technical thing in the politics (Lucifora and Moriconi, 2015). The changes in the education have also initiated for making homogeneity in the society of the Singapore. Poor infrastructure of the industry was also acted as hinders in attracting the foreign investors in investing money in the Singapore. For improving the infrastructure of the Singaporean needed changes in the education system by providing courses related to industrialization (Marginson, 2011).

Any change will not bring any positive outcome until it adopts the current needs of the circumstances. The Singapore has changed their education system according to the needs of the circumstances. The changes in the education system were according to the focus of strengthening the economic condition of the country. This part emphasizes in the way of assessing the idea of how these changes fit in the present years of uplifting the education system (Teng,  Wang and Chiam, 2014). After the independence of Singapore the country, the government of Singapore has taken the step forward towards changing the education system to strengthen the economic condition of the country. Singapore is considered to be one of the great successful stories in for transforming the country from a developing country to a developed having a modern economy in the industrialization (WerbiÅ„ska, 2015). They had transformed this change in only one generation. The education system of Singapore remained consistent as the top in the education ranking of the world.

From the beginning to till now the Singaporean was central in building their education system towards developing the economy and the growth of their nation. The focus of the changes was to encourage the human capital to strive for the growth of the economy of the nation. The major competitive advantage of the government of the Singapore was that they were able to match the supply of human capital with the demand for the education and skill needed for the education (FitzPatrick, 2015). One of the main reason for which the change of the education system in Singapore has been fitted is the element like clear vision and belief in the clarification in the centrality of the education for the pupil and the nation. Persistency in the leadership of the political leaders and the alignment of the various policies and practice help the education system of the Singapore. The focus of the education system was to build the capacity of the teacher and the leadership in delivering reformation at the school level. Ambitious standards and continuous culture for improving the future orientation of the education system benchmark the practices of the education system against the world’s best practices (Clark, 2015). 

From the beginning, Singapore has shown constant commitment in that was unfailing in equity and meritocracy. One of the cornerstones of the philosophy of the government under the Lee Kuan Yew was the meritocracy. He has a belief that change in the education system will be one of the best ways of making society with multi-ethnicity. The Education of Singapore under the colonial of British was elitist and was separated by religion (Postlethwaite and Thomas, 2014). The prime minister of Singapore during that age thought that change in the education system is the best way to replacing the pitfalls of the ethnicity in which the talent of the human capital would prevail. At the time of independence it had been seen that a large gap remains between the Chinese populations and, on the other hand, there was a gap between the Malaya and Tamil population. This gap had given threats to the political stability and the economic development of the country. In the first phase of the education, the country led to the primary education of the pupil. It happened in the year 1970s. The rapid expansion of school had occurred in this phase (Fägerlind and Saha, 2014).

 In the year 1950 70% of the gross domestic product was earned by the Singapore from the port and other activities of the warehouse. But later it was thought that it was not enough for sustaining in the in the competition of the world and develop the economic condition of the world. The economy at that time was suffering from high population and unemployment. In this phase, the government thought about the industrialization and providing the human resource primary education. This phase leads to establishing a domestic market for exporting product to the foreign country. The focus of this phase was to provide basic education as soon as possible. For the increasing competition of the foreign country due to low-skilled worker led the Singapore to take the initiative of efficiency-driven phase. The focus of the country in this phase was to make the country skill intensive (Lim, 2014). In this phase, the Singapore was intended to make technically affect human resource in achieving the new goal of the economy. In this phase performance of the examination of O-level had been increased from 60% failure to above 90% pass in the year 1984. Singapore had become the top in mathematics and science in the world on TIMSS in the year 1995. The third phase of the Singapore in the education system was the ability based phase. In this phase, the economy of the world has been shifted to global knowledge of the economy. The focus of Singapore in this phase was to make a creative and innovative flourish in every aspect of the society (Moore and Kearsley, 2011).

Political leadership has been proved to have an equal challenge in establishing stability for sound macro and social, economic policy. Education has been proved to be the key to the improvement of the social and economical condition. Political leaders worked hard in improving education for all. Gender was not an issue rather people of the Singapore was requested to obsolete the thinking of gender differences (Goodwin, 2014). It was considered that the policy of education was not smooth sailing during the year of 1990 as the policy formulated. Over the decades, the leaders of the Singapore has put great emphasis on developing the education system of the Singapore for improving the economic level of the country. The leaders also put a great emphasis on the education of the citizenship and increasing the morale value. While African government was developing the inequalities in the education system, the Singaporean leaders also got interested in removing the ethnic inequalities from the country. The government of Singapore has taken the very proactive role in making the study of the country ready for the industrialization (Poon, Musti-Ra and Wettasinghe, 2013).

The leaders of the Singapore had gone through three below mentioned phases to make changes in the education system of the Singapore:

Survival driven phase:

The implementation of large-scale expansion was in primary education was the centralized duty for the ministry of the education of the Singapore. This phase was implemented in the year 1959. The focus of the leaders in this phase was to drive the student in taking primary education. The intention was to embrace the primary education in meeting the surging demand for the education. In this phase, the target of the leaders was achieved fast through the rapid expansion in building primary education sectors in the country (Harris et al. 2014). The government provides resources to a free book and fund to the students who were not able to afford the spending of education.

Efficiency-driven Phase:

In this phase, the focus of the leaders has been shifted. The economic strategy of the Singapore has been moved from the third league to the second league of the economy that was labour intensive. The leaders of the Singapore education have introduced a new education system in the year 1979 on January.  The leaders of the Singapore has moved from the first phase to the second phase in order to make multiple pathways for reducing dropout rate and improving the quality of the labour so that they can meet the goal of new  economic condition (Ng, 2014). The leaders in this phase have created multiple pathways through creating three types of school. Academic high schools were established for making the students ready for colleges. School for polytechnic education were established for giving the students technical training. This also may lead to colleges. The leaders of the Singapore had also established technical schools for providing occupational and technical training for the students of lowest fifth. Institutes for curriculum development have been given instruction for making the high quality book and material for the students in a different way. The attractiveness of the vocational education has been increased vastly in this phase. The Polytechnic place has also been expanded by the leader to increase the pool of the scientist and engineers (Wolf and Le Vasan, 2014).

Aspiration driven Phase:

During the year of 1997 the leaders of the education in the Singapore has felt that the labor of their country was lagging behind in the knowledge of the global economy. The competitive framework has been redefined by the leaders to apply new marketable ideas. They have felt that the knowledge of global economy can be increased by shifting the education system towards creativity and innovation. The intention of the education leaders in this phase was not only to educate the new generation but also make them committed towards the nation (Yeo and Lee, 2014). They have created thinking school and the vision of this thinking school were to create passion for lifelong learning among the new generation.

According to the NICK theory of leadership transactional leaders are the one who has the following features:

Tells the person about what to do

Leaders of Singapore suggest the teachers of Singapore about how to change the education system of Singapore.

They use reward and punishment for achieving compliance.

For motivating the teacher and the students the leaders applied various reward and punishment strategy.

According to the NICK theory Transformational leaders has the following features:

They create inspirational vision for the future.

The vision of the educational leaders of Singapore was to develop the economic condition of the country by developing students.

They tend to inspire the people in buying and delivering the vision.

The leaders of Singapore inspired the government in investing for the development of education system.

They have the quality of managing the delivery of vision.

The leaders of Singapore always intended to engage others in the development process of education system.

According to the NICK theory the leader are focused on changing the education system of the Singapore for developing the economic condition of the country. The only intension of the leaders was to monitor the outcome of the students. For changing the education system they had adopted various strategies that are described below.

Invest consistently: The leader of Singapore has adopted the strategy for securing the fund for the improvement of the school. They have maintained a fixed salary for the teacher but in case of funding the initiatives for the change of the education system the leaders had made discretionary budget.

Synching the policies and practice: From the mid of 1950 the education leaders of the Singapore give their efforts in improving the mission of the nation. Media campaigns over the television were the consistent effort of the leaders in getting the support of the parent. Education policy was adopted for connecting 70% of the school over the internet (Ellis and Armstrong, 2014).

Commit inclusivity: The leader has adopted this strategy for making a correlation between the inclusivity and the competitiveness of the economy. The leader ensures equitable access to the high education to explore the economic growth of the economic condition. Internet-based education connects dispersed students geographically.

Integration of the contents, objectives and the practices of teaching: The education leaders of the Singapore provide the practices of the classroom in such way that it integrates the contents, objective and practices of the education. To support innovation, the leaders have initiated thinking schools. The school provides that less teaching and learning more (Garrett, 2015).

Link result with the goal of the policy: It has been seen that the Singapore has become the top in the mathematics and the science by the change in the education system. Improvement in the three phases of changes in the education system had been measured by the proper evaluation system of the school system.

Focus on the practices that are changing: The education leaders of the Singapore became successful in demonstrating that success of their students had come from the use of technology not directly from the technology.

The Singapore realized that that for improving the quality of teaching in the school and better performance of school there is a great need for effective leaders. Poor quality of leadership may consider being the main factor for the increasing attrition rate of the teachers in most of the country. The approach of leadership in Singapore had been modeled as a large corporation. The key to the leadership was not only providing training programs but also identifying and developing the talent of the human capital (Ho, 2014). The education leaders had made a difference in education approaches in which the teachers were allowed to apply to give training to the students, and then only they can apply for the post of the schools. In Singapore, the young teachers continuously assessed for the potential of leadership within them. The young teachers were given opportunities in showing their ability and learning. Through serving the committees, the young teachers used to get the chance to become the head of their department in a comparably low age. To assist the followers, the leaders sometimes send them to the ministry for some period. After sending the teachers to the ministry, the experience of the teachers were evaluated, and the teachers are having the potential of leadership used to select through the interview. If the teacher passes the interview, then he used to send to the NIE for six months with paid salary (Mok, 2011). This is a comprehensive process, and this includes an international trip for study for making an innovative approach in the project of school.

The prime minister of that time had emphasized on the growth of the economic condition of the country. He had made a thrust on making the country attractive to the foreigner in investing in their country. The focus of the prime minister was to draw the manpower as the best in the world class. The standards of the economic policy of the country were uncompromising which was possible through universal access in the public education system (Hill and Lian, 2013).

The leaders have engaged the official in the Ministry in Singapore to visit the school at a frequent rate to monitor what is going on and how. The NIE also used to visit the management of the school to assess how much improvement has been achieved by the school teachers in improving the quality of the students. The innovative idea of the education leaders of thinking schools and learning school has led the national education costing to SGP fifty million (Meng, 2014). The leaders give the responsibility of research design to the researchers and not to the government. The efforts of six years of the education leaders were focused on understanding the extent of pedagogical practices in the classroom of the Singapore.

In the early age, the Singapore had a shortage of effective teacher, and they were not always able to attract the best quality people in providing teaching to the pupils. During the aged of the 1990s the educational leader of the Singapore had assisted the management of the school in recruiting the best quality of teacher who would be able to meet the demand of the ambitious students. The leaders also initiated a system that was focused on recruiting talent and train them for serious as well as continuous support (Lee, 2013). The education leaders of Singapore were engaged in making less structured policy that was much focused on maintaining the quality of the professional of the education.

The education leaders have engaged the designers of the education of Singapore in designing the education system in such a way that it reflects lots of lessons of the other parts of the world. The education leaders have led the teacher and the students in making global awareness and skills of cross culture for making them future ready.

The education system of Singapore has considered having the best education system in the world. According to the trends in the TIMSS, the students of the Singapore were the top across the world. From the year 1995 to the year 2006, the student has repeatedly proven as the best in the mathematics and the science. The change in the education system had made the students of the Singapore get the fourth rank in the PIRLS. In this way, the students of Singapore had also chosen to be the top performing students in the program of international student assembler that was happened in the year 2009 (Brown et al. 2012). The change in the education system had made an unaccountable success in a very short span of time.

The actual outcome of the change in the education system was the student gets six years in the primary education, for years in secondary education and two years of their college. In the earlier age, the students were getting an education in only the courses of medicine, social science and art department. The outcome of the change in the education system was the universities had started to provide courses in engineering and architecture for making the students ready for the industrialization. During the survival phase of 1959 to 1978 primary education was introduced to make a skilled workforce. After 1965, the education of the Singapore was proven to be the prime tool for the development of the economic condition of the country (Kok, 2013). To provide basic education to the workforce, many schools were established at a rapid rate and huge recruitment for the teacher of the primary education has been done. As a multilingual country, they initiated a system of providing various foreign languages like Chinese, English. The English language in this phase had chosen to be the language of the government. The expected outcome of this phase was to make the government of the country ready for dealing with the foreign country. Universal primary education had been achieved in the year 1965 and level of the lower secondary had been achieved by the year 1970s. The expected outcome was to make high-skilled workforce for the industrialization. But it has been seen that the workforce was lagging behind in their skills in comparison to Asian countries (Ng, 2014).

In the second phase, the country was intended to have the higher skilled workforce for the development of the economic condition of the nation. The students were provided with high quality books and materials. They were provided with Polytechnic and technical education in an expectation with competing with the race of industrialization (Low et al. 2012). The linkage with the development of the economy was tight. The top government drove it. The ministry of the country had worked with many agencies that handled the promotion of the groups of the specific industry to identify the need of critical manpower. They were also intended to demonstrate the human capital need for the future. The effort has been given to increase the proficiency in the English language. The expected outcome of the Singapore was to match the demand of the human capital with the supply of the human capital (Ng, 2015). The Singaporean was expected to be the hub of the global science to bring all aspects of the finance ministry, community development, and economic development. In the year 1992 the government had made an investment in ITE for providing the students vocational and polytechnic training.

After a few decades in the year, the government of the Singapore had realized that the education should be given to the student as a lifelong learning. In this step, the expected outcome of the government was to make the student committed toward the nation. From the year1997, a great emphasis has been given to not only the students but also the teacher for making innovation and creativity in the education system (Klemencic and Fried, 2015). The outcome here was that the workforce of got ready for facing the challenges of the competitive global economy of the world.

In the 1950s, the Singapore had remained mainly an entrepot. Most of their gross domestic products comes from the activities of entrepot. The country had a very limited base of the industry. The government of Singapore was very efficient and flexible. They had made a strategic plan that had worked very well in developing the economic growth of the country through developing the talent of the workforce. After their independence, the country had a very limited number of resources (Hean, 2015). The focus of executing integrated policy for the development of the economic condition of the country worked well with a vision of generating multi-racial and multi-ethnic society. At the time of independence Singapore had a multiple religious groups with them and they have no common language. After the independence, the government of the Singapore had become more focused on expanding the base of the industry. The task of expanding the activities of manufacturing product for the trading activities was not so simple for the lack of skilled workforce (Hazelkorn, 2015). In the year 1968 the government of Singapore had converted their strategy of industrialization to a more export-oriented activities of manufacturing. While the Singapore was under the colonial of British rule, the education was only to meet the interest of political and ethnic. After independence, the link between the education and the development of the economy and the education of the small state or city was greatly emphasized (Gopinathan and Mardiana, 2013).

The government had taken the conventional path of developing new kinds of skills and attitude to work to accommodate new strategy of economic development. Economics of education had played a great role in socialization and in the process of building the nation. It had helped in identifying the identity of the Singapore. As a multilingual country, the Singapore had no common language (Stewart, 2012). So in 1960 the government of Singapore had developed the concept of bilingualism. From this year, the learning of the second language has become compulsory in the primary school. The English language had been selected as the language of government and the second language in the primary school. It had helped the students in gaining a full knowledge of the English language. The English language had been seen as a utilitarian tool for making the country as a marketplace (Looi et al. 2011).  The multilingual policy had also helped the Singapore in recognizing various another language like Chinese and Tamil.

In the year 1979 a modification had been made on the phase of survival driven. The streamlined approach has proven to be better as compared to the previous phase. In this phase, the student got an education that helped them in achieving the optimum level at the own pace. After the recession of the 1980s, the Singapore had seen that the students of the Singapore are still considered as undereducated as compared with other Asian countries (Asfaha, 2014). In this phase, the Singapore had started to provide the students technical learning. They also provided the student’s education for architecture that had helped them for making the student ready for industrialization. After the 1980s, they established various polytechnic and technical schools for the students. It had helped them in making the students be the topper in the mathematics and science. The foundation of curriculum institution had worked well in providing quality books in a different pathway. The Institute had also provided various supporting materials. It had created the multi pathway in the education system of the Singapore. It also had reduced the dropout rate by 6%. The quality books and the materials also helped the teachers having less experience in gaining experience on how to provide quality teaching to the students (WerbiÅ„ska, 2015).

From 1997 to till this date the Singapore government is providing education and ability driven phase. This phase helped in emphasizing on the distinctive talent of the students. The multiple intelligence theory resolves the problem of identifying multiple bits of intelligence of the students like linguistic intelligence, mathematical intelligence, musical intelligence and spatial intelligence. The strategy in this phase created an innovative and creative school in which the main function was to make creativity and innovation (Lucifora and Moriconi, 2015). By getting lifelong learning in the Thinking school, the students of Singapore had become committed to the nation.

For the economic development of the country, there should be homogeneity and uniform development. The difference in the economic development resulted from differences in technology, daily improvement. The Students of the Singapore had been proven to be the topper in the world many times. They also have proven to be the topper in science among the world. The Singapore has changed their economic condition in a very short span of time. However, the Singapore has gained these improvements in the economic condition through various step. In these various steps the Singapore face lot of problem in achieving the development of the economic condition of the country. Some things did not work well in this various phases (FitzPatrick, 2015). In the first phase of 1959 the Singapore government was concerned with establishing a primary school for the workforce and the pupil. During the age under British colonial, the education system of Singapore was only for the interest of ethnic and political.

For mitigating the problem of ethnicity the government of Singapore established many primary schools. The focus was for making new skilled workforce for the industrialization. As a multilingual country, the Singapore initiated bilingual policy in which the student were to learn a second language in their syllabus. The English language was considered to the language of the government. This policy did not work well in this phase. To make a flexible relation with another country, the workforce needed to be proficient in the English language. But in this phase the importance in the proficiency of the English language had not been given. So the workforce lagged behind in conversing with the foreign investors (Harris et al. 2014). Though the education department was investing a huge amount of money in the primary education, the education quality was not good and also was not according to the standards. It has been seen that there was a high rate of dropout in the teacher and students.

 However, if the government could give emphasis on increasing proficiency in the English language, it would be better in coordinating with foreign investors. If the government integrated polarized goal, it would be better for the development of the students. The education department should focus on the individual development of the students.

The drawbacks of the first phase led the government of the Singapore to take the initiative of the second phase in which the education department had provided the student Polytechnic and technical education. As in the first phase, the country was seeing that it was providing low skilled workforce. The focus in this phase was to make the new generation ready for meeting the challenge of the economy of another country. Though in this phase the Institute of curriculum activity was providing standard textbooks and materials for the students, sometimes it has been seen that the books were full of mistakes and having low standards (Ho and Boyle, 2015). Though technical and polytechnic education had been initiated for the students for making the students ready for the industrialization, there were not enough teachers having the high skill for this courses.

However, if the education department could give a full attention in making the textbooks and material for the students, it could reduce the chance of mistake in the textbook. The will, as well as skills of the political leaders, should have been used for dealing with issues of the nation. A diverse method for teaching students according to the characteristics of the students could have been taken by the education department (Clark, 2015).

The second phase was very much improved in making high skilled students. However due to some drawbacks the education department had moved to the third phase in which the emphasis had been given to a multiplicity of talent. This was a successful phase in developing the students for building the growth of the economy. Lifelong learning helped the students of the Singapore to be committed towards the nation (Ellis and Armstrong, 2014). However by integrating the curriculum of interdisciplinary the country could have a better result of gaining knowledge of the different discipline.

Conclusion:

The above study has been concluded some factor of the changes in the education system of the Singapore. The study concludes that after the independence of the Singapore from the rule of British colonial it had left with no resources. It had only deep water root. The economic development of the country was too low because of limited industrial bases. The government of the country had realized that education will be the only way for making the low skilled labor to high skilled labor. Education had provided a strong fundamental for sustaining the competition of the economy of the world. It had been realized by the prime minister of the country without any natural resources, the development of the economic condition will depend on the sound education system of the country. The case study of the change in the education system of Singapore demonstrates that strong leadership was the key to the successful change in the education system. It has been concluded in the study that the people of the Singapore had enjoyed the great level of independence in the economy of the country. They had also enjoyed good standard in the living.

Education was the key to sustaining in the competition of the economy of the world. During the economic recession, the Singaporean had seen that the workforce was lagging behind the skills in comparison to the Asian countries. The people of the Singapore had continued to quest about the excellence of the education to place the country as more marketable and to have a good return in the economy. It has been concluded in the study that the change in the education system had occurred in three phases. In the first phase, the government of the Singapore intended to establish primary schools for making high skilled workforce. But the education system in the phase was not so standard. So the educational leader moved to the second phase in which the universities provided technical education to the students for making the students ready for the industry In the second phase the failure rate of O level examination had been decreased from 60% to 90%. The study also concluded that in the third phase the universities of the Singapore initiated the theory of multiple intelligence. The students become committed towards the nation. It is concluded that the student of Singapore had chosen to the topper in the Mathematics and science.

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