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Editorial
EDUCATION
The previous section
covered the TechSkills
Accelerator (TeSA), which
trains the workforce to be
adequately equipped in the
ICT sector. Expanding on
that, the Ministry of
Communications and
Information announced a
new ICT Manpower
Development Programme
with more than S$120
million budgeted over the
course of three years.
The Smart Nation vision sees a future vastly different
from today’s, permeated with technologies that will require
new knowledge and skills. This is why a focus has
to be placed not just on training the workforce, but also
students for the advancements ahead. At the second
BETT Asia Leadership Summit held in Singapore last
year, Adrian Lim, Director of Education, Sectoral Innovation
Group, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore
(IDA), said the next big step in education could be
the use of analytics to make education better and more
effective.
Reporting on this summit, an article on eGov Innovation
mentions that the Singapore government was starting to
make the move toward this vision of a data-driven education
strategy. “Singapore is always future looking,” Lim
said, adding that in the field of education, the country was
exploring personalised learning with the use of analytics
from K-12 to higher learning. The goal is data-driven, customised
instructions for both teachers and students.
Data in this context is not only used for the assessment of
student skills but also to enable schools to make data-driven
decisions for student learning, especially personalising
education to cater to individual needs. This is
in addition to the introduction of programmes to enhance
the employability of graduates by introducing the latest
technology very early on in the curriculum.
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