Question:
Discuss about the Singapore’s push to become an education hub has propagated a neoliberal model of education which is threatening the sanctity of academic standards.
The demand for the higher education in Singapore is enormous. The HSBC had conducted a review on the view of the Singaporean population regarding the value of higher education in the year 2015. According to that review, almost 91% of the older population opine that the child requires at least an undergraduate degree to achieve their own life goals. Neoliberalism, as such, cannot be defined in a particular way. It may be defined as a market of self-regulation wherein a system of ideas are circulated by the intellectuals of the right wing. Neoliberalism has rendered the cultural and the moral concerns of education secondary and in some cases completely sidelined the issues.
There has been an unmistakable growth in the trends towards the convergence of the global policy that the imparting of education must be targeted at the fulfilment of the global market issues and especially towards the issues of the global economy. The educational institution in the modern day world are under a tremendous amount of pressure to keep their curricula aligned to the global economic requirements. The educational institutions, these days, are under a huge pressure in order to provide the learners with formal education that is at par with the requirements that have been put forward by the global economy. The following sections of this paper attempts a literature review of the previous researches that have been conducted on the issue of neoliberal model of education. The assignment then proceeds to summarize the findings of the research.
According to Rizvi (2017), neoliberalism refers to an account of the globalization which is staged on the naturalistic terms as a neutral description of the realities of the contemporary society. These realities are self-evident in nature. He further opines that the education needs to help in the production of the individuals who are capable of working in a creative manner with the knowledge that is acquired by them. These individuals tend to be lifelong learners who are adaptable, mobile and flexible. They also tend to be confident inter-culturally and have a global mindset. He argues that the developing countries like Singapore have started to define the purpose of the education that is provided in the country on terms that are broadly similar to the neoliberal terms. Neoliberalism has affected the ways of thinking about the methods whereby Singapore may be transformed in to an education hub of the Orient. The concept has paved the ways for Singapore to raise its share in the global market for education. According to a report by the Education Workgroup that was set up in order to consider the “Developing Singapore’s Education Industry” education is treated purely to be a commodity. This report reviews the field of education as completely an area of revenue generation instead of being the field of development of the future of the country by properly educating the youth and the kids of the country. The course of the materials of education even have changed to a huge degree. The present materials of education are more focused on the factors that may help in the generation of the revenue in the country (Loh and Hu 2014). The government of Singapore has also focusses on attracting foreign students and retaining them within the country. The idea of nurturing and promoting the education system as a revenue generating system had been under the limits earlier by the government but in the recent times, the discourse has changed and the education system has become much more like the other business fields that operate on the basis of the mechanisms of the market that respond to the economic exchange of the country. The education industry is thus observed to follow the practices and the techniques that are needed to support the generation of revenue. The neoliberal model of education may be considered to be superior to the other models of education due to the definiteness of the views of the approach towards education. Neoliberalism, according to Connell (2013), views education to be q process that brings about the social reproduction. Education according to neoliberalism should help in the training of the younger members of the society and thus according to the values and the languages that are used by their elders. Neoliberalism has affected the educator workforce too. The employment of teachers on a part-time basis as well on a temporary basis have increased. This has led to the full-time educators to be insecure regarding their jobs. The teachers should be able to interpret the goals of the curriculum and the learning experiences of the students with the help of the daily experiences in their field, their overall knowledge and the beliefs that they have about the concept of education (Neoh 2017). The teachers are, at times, required to impart education about the subject content that they feel are out of their expertise. This occurs during the conditions wherein an integrated curriculum of study is introduced in the secondary levels of the schools.
According to Gray and Block (2012), the market principles have made a huge impact on the education systems, which were ordered and structured differently in the earlier times. Furlong (2013), further argues that the education sector is viewed to be a mechanism that is used to produce the human capital in order to compete and serve the global economy. Ball (2012) argues that the effect of neoliberalism on the education system at times assumes the role of the control systems that operate on a managerial level. The practice of neoliberalism in the schools led to the reforms in the educational systems which in turn led to the increase in the competition that exists among the schools due to the increased specialization of the schools and more and more schools gaining autonomy. The increase in the competition for the students and the funding of the schools have resulted in an increasingly explicit marketization of the academic achievements of the school and the practices that are intrinsic to the discourse characteristics of neoliberalism. The neoliberal interests in Taiwan, as demonstrated by Thomas and Yang (2013), aided the rise of the obsession that was forced alongside the top-down evaluation methods. This had aggravated the competition between the educational institutions thereby leading to the reforms in the curricula and the pedagogy that are driven by the requisitions of the market. In South Korea, as noted by Piller and Cho (2013), the neoliberal structures of the system of education have also perpetuated the practice and the ideology of the competitiveness. Sattler (2012) had conducted an analysis on the reforms introduced in the past two decades in the Ontario government in the field of education. This reanalysis had revealed an increment in the emphasis of neoliberalism on the marketization, accountability and competition in the fields of education. According to Hargreaves and Shirley (2012), the way forward is directed by an educational system that has been able to reject the charters and the chains of the reform of the educational system that is driven by the market (Lam et al 2013).
According to a former minister for education of Singapore, the economic needs of the country proves to be a driving agent for education in the country. The Singaporean government had enacted law known as the Compulsory Education Act in the year 2003 so as to equip the citizens with the knowledge and skills that were needed for the citizens who were part of an economy that is based on knowledge. The neoliberal educational system of Singapore is driven by the concept of making profit and demands the competitiveness on the part of the citizens of the country. The economic survival of the country depends on the preparedness of its citizens to take part in the global competition. They should possess the skills necessary so as to help the Singapore Inc. to gain profits in the global economic market. The neoliberal movement in the field of education have joined the forces with the Singaporean practice of benchmarking the schools based on the test results of the students of the concerned schools. All the students of the primary schools have to take the Primary School Leaving Examination or the PSLE, conducted nationally to secure a placement in the secondary schools. The annual scores of the PSLE provided the necessary criteria that could be used by the general masses to rate the schools and compare them against each other. The Ministry of Education had ended its practice of publishing the names of the top PLSE scorers in the year 2012. The Ministry of Education had been providing the list of the students who have been performing well in both the nonacademic as well as the academic fields (Moe.gov.sg 2017). The schools are compared on the basis of the socio-economic status of the families of the students, the ratio of the ethnicity of the population of the school and the educational attainment of the parents of those that study in the school. In response to the worldwide neoliberal trends of economy, Singapore has introduced the integrated system of the curriculum in its educational fields. The education ministry of the country had also recognized the reason as to why the schooling perspectives need to relocate their focus. The schooling systems were found to be more focused on the needs of the students. The government of the country had put across their views that the students must be made to be more equipped with the skills, knowledge and the abilities so that they could handle the demands that are posed by the new age economies. Initiatives were taken to foster the active learning of the students. The students were encouraged to participate in the programs that fostered the process of life-long learning and the development of character.
The practice of the teachers in Singapore are influenced by a number of factors that include their concepts of integration, the problems that they face due to transfer from the discipline-based curricula to the integrated curricula and the attitude that they maintain towards the development of the curriculum. The practices of the teachers are influenced by the perspectives and the beliefs that the teachers and the educators have about the general education as well as the ideas that they have about the curriculum. The beliefs about the actions that are looked forward from the teachers are equally important. The teachers should be well aware of their roles in the society and the abilities that they possess. The venture into the integrated curricula, which had been promoted by the Singaporean Ministry of Education in order to promote the neoliberalist theory of education, has help the educators to adopt a more progressive practice designing of the curriculum.
The Singaporean Ministry of education aims to provide its young citizens with a very strong education and helps them to develop the needed skills, values and the character that they would find necessary to perform in the daily challenges that they might face in their lives. The education system in Singapore can be observed to be very diverse as well as flexible. This allows the students to have a greater number of choices which may help them to satisfy the different types of interests that they have in the different fields of study wherein they engage themselves. The freedom to choose their own field of study will encourage the students to gain better ownership of the language. The Singaporean education system attempts to provide the students with an education that is more broad-based. This type of education also helps the student to development in an all-round manner both inside and outside the class room. These significant approaches aim to help the students of the country to nurture the different skills that they possess for the future when they might need to use these skills (Moe.gov.sg 2017). The Singaporean Ministry of Education has attempted an identification of the different competencies that has gained importance in the 21st century. This has led to the conclusion that the educators and the parents have to put in joint efforts in order to help the students to flourish and override the competencies that have developed in the global work fields. The educators of the country aim to provide every single Singaporean student to possess a great sense of self-awareness, a balanced moral compass and the other necessary knowledge and skills that are required to overcome the challenges that the student may face in the future (Moe.gov.sg 2017). In the present days, Singapore is one of the most rapidly developing states with respect to education. The country is also observed to be one of the top performers in the field of education (Bbc.com 2017).
Conclusion
Thus from the above discussion it may be concluded that the neoliberal model of education needs to be popularized in order to help the students to achieve more success in their future fields of work. The educational authorities should promote the neoliberal literacy in the programs that are aimed at the training that is provided to the teachers during their training. The existing teachers should be allowed a certain amount of time to get accustomed to the neoliberal mode of education that has gained popularity in the global market for education. The teachers should help in the introduction of the progressive pedagogies among the students. The teachers are also required to help the students to cope up with these strategies that need to be employed for enacting the pedagogies in the current ambience of neoliberal education. There needs to be a rise in the awareness of the neoliberal model of practice and thought in the training models that are used to educate or train the teachers. The teachers must develop the ability to implement the alternative pedagogies in a strategic manner. The government and the other concerned committees must take care of the fact that there is a well-built networking system at the educational institutions that may serve to support the students as well as the teachers at the times when they may need help regarding the matters concerning the education. The neoliberal model of education needs the teachers to collaborate together and discuss the problems that they might be facing while teaching a certain subject or a certain curriculum.
References
Ball, Stephen J. “Performativity, commodification and commitment: An I-spy guide to the neoliberal university.” British Journal of Educational Studies 60, no. 1 (2012): 17-28.
Bbc.com. 2017. “Asia Tops Global School Rankings”. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-32608772.
Connell, Raewyn. “The neoliberal cascade and education: An essay on the market agenda and its consequences.” Critical studies in education 54, no. 2 (2013): 99-112.
Furlong, John. “Globalisation, neoliberalism, and the reform of teacher education in England.” In The educational forum, vol. 77, no. 1, pp. 28-50. Taylor & Francis Group, 2013.
Gray, John, and David Block. “The marketisation of language teacher education and neoliberalism.” Neoliberalism and applied linguistics (2012): 114-143.
Hargreaves, Andy, and Dennis L. Shirley. The global fourth way: The quest for educational excellence. Corwin Press, 2012.
Lam, Chi Chung, Theresa Alviar-Martin, Susan A. Adler, and Jasmine B-Y. Sim. “Curriculum integration in Singapore: Teachers’ perspectives and practice.” Teaching and Teacher Education 31 (2013): 23-34.
Loh, Jason, and Guangwei Hu. “Subdued by the system: Neoliberalism and the beginning teacher.” Teaching and Teacher Education 41 (2014): 13-21.
Moe.gov.sg. 2017. “21St Century Competencies”. Moe.Gov.Sg. https://www.moe.gov.sg/education/education-system/21st-century-competencies.
Moe.gov.sg. 2017. “Education System”. Moe.Gov.Sg. https://www.moe.gov.sg/education/education-system.
Moe.gov.sg. 2017. “Ministry Of Education, Singapore: Maintenance Page”. Moe.Gov.Sg. https://www.moe.gov.sg/media/parliamentary-replies/2013/01/not-naming-the-top-scorers-for-2012-psle.php.
Neoh, Jia Ying. “Neoliberal education? Comparing Character and Citizenship Education in Singapore and Civics and Citizenship Education in Australia.” JSSE-Journal of Social Science Education 16, no. 3 (2017).
Piller, Ingrid, and Jinhyun Cho. “Neoliberalism as language policy.” Language in Society 42, no. 1 (2013): 23-44.
Rizvi. 2017. Unesdoc.Unesco.Org. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002473/247328E.pdf.
Sattler, Peggy. “Education Governance Reform in Ontario: Neoliberalism in Context.” Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy (2012).
Thomas, Michael K., and Wan-Lin Yang. “Neoliberalism, globalization, and creative educational destruction in Taiwan.” Educational Technology Research and
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