Tomorrow today; 2010 - unesdoc - Unesco

Image: NIE, SingaporeThe purpose-built NIE campus spreads across 16 hectares with six blocks serving a full-time enrolment of close to 7,000 student-teacherswithin and across schools to ensure that innovations are rigorous,evidence-based, grounded in the authentic pedagogical problematicsof classrooms and schools, and broadly supported by staff.Systemic institutional alignment and tightlycoupled governanceOne of the most distinctive features of the educational system inSingapore, and a key to its strength, coherence and capacity forsystemic innovation, is the tightly coupled institutional nature of thesystem. This is reflected in three key institutional arrangements. Thefirst is the very close coupling at the pedagogical level of the curriculum,assessment and classroom instruction, principally secured andmaintained by the national high-stakes assessment system at the endof primary school (year 6), the end of secondary school (year 10)and the end of post-secondary education (year 12). In Singapore, asin other similar systems, teachers ‘teach to the test’. In Singapore,however, the ‘test’ is also strongly aligned as a matter of policy tothe national curriculum, resulting in an unusually high degree ofpedagogical alignment across the system.Secondly, there is strong alignment between pedagogical policy,practice and research, secured by the relatively centralized natureof policy making and programme implementation in Singaporewith respect to curriculum, assessment and instruction, and by theextremely generous support by the Ministry of a national educationresearch agenda at NIE, which is both institutionally autonomousfrom the government and also highly responsive to national educationpolicy priorities.Thirdly, with respect to system policy and teacher trainingand professional development, there is an unusually high degreeof institutional articulation (commonly known as the tripartiterelationship) between the Ministry, NIE and schools, securedby specific governance arrangements between NIE and theMinistry, for example, and by funding and reporting accountabilities.A culture of continuous innovationand improvementFinally, in keeping with the Singaporean government’swider aims, the educational system inSingapore at all levels is strongly committed tocontinual innovation and improvement. Supportedby a broad national agenda and policy settings (innovationand enterprise), Ministry officials, NIE staffand school leaders constantly monitor changes in thelocal and international educational landscape, travelextensively to visit schools and systems in other topperforming countries, review and revise curriculumand assessment frameworks on a regular basis, funda national research agenda into classroom pedagogyand how to improve it, support action researchinitiatives at the classroom and school levels, andencourage students to be self-confident, agentic,enterprising and, with good reason, optimistic aboutSingapore’s future.In general terms, it is mistaken to assume thatsystems can simply import successful innovations fromother systems – educational systems, and the actorswithin them, are embedded in and shaped by a rangeof institutional and cultural imperatives and norms.Singapore works the way it does – and as well as itdoes – because of the way it has (for complex historical,cultural and political reasons) institutionalized aspecific pattern of pedagogical practice, alignment andgovernance. Essentially, Singapore has figured out howto design, manage, sustain and continually improve asuccessful system of education. Consequently, we thinkit can demonstrate to the rest of the world what a wellfunded, publicly supported, well managed, ambitioussystem of education is able to do if it sets its mind to it.[ 105 ]