Prof. Chen Huiping, associate professor from National Institute of Education, gave her academic lecture with the title of “Singapore Educational Policy and Reform” for the International Education Symposium of IICE in Room 723, Yingdong Building, Beijing Normal University on the afternoon of Dec 30, 2013. This lecture was hosted by Prof. Liu Baocun, dean of IICE, and actively attended by doctoral and Master’s students and some teachers in our institute.
The main research fields of Prof. Chen are: educational philosophy, comparative education, critical research of educational philosophy, etc.. She focused on the introduction of 3 stages about Singapore Educational Policy and Reform.
(1) Improving stage for survival. At this stage, Singapore is mainly faced with the challenges of the lack of talents and racial problems. Therefore, it adapted the meritocratic educational ideal and at the same time introduced bilingual education in 1966, with English as the first language for teaching.
(2) Improving stage for efficiency. At this stage, the majority of students failed to reconcile one language teaching with the other, leading to a 20%-30% dropout rate. Moreover, the flaw existed in educational methods, which also offered a reason for not being able to teaching students according to their aptitude.
(3) The stage of teaching students according to their aptitude, also called the stage of educational reform. Singapore insists on a vision of schools with the focus on thinking and country with the focus on study. It lays the stress, in particular, on educational reform in the era of the knowledge-economy. It recommends a diverse set of schools, evaluation and subjects for students to choose in the field of education. It will provide students with more self-control and autonomy, adding to more creativity, and encourage them to owe their own curriculum, developing their areas of expertise.
In the end, Prof. Chen was in a deep communication with the students present on the specific educational issues in Singapore.