Bold plan to move focus away from exams

 Bold plan to move focus away from exams

Education Minister Heng Swee Keat was expected to announce changes to the Primary School Leaving Examination. Instead, he revealed a bold plan to move the focus away from exams to nurturing all-round students.

He said that to thrive in a complex and ever-changing global environment, academic grades alone will not be enough.

Students will also need to be able to adapt and be self-confident.

He announced that by 2017, all secondary schools will offer an applied learning programme to help students use what they learn to solve real-life problems.

There will also be a learning-for-life programme, in which students will discover their strengths and interests by participating in arts, sports or volunteer activities, and develop soft skills which will help them connect to others. Yet, he was also quick to point out that it will be difficult to implement all these changes. "It is not just about programmes," he said, "but about mindsets..."

Most parents still believe all that matters is aceing exams. The angst voiced during last month's Primary1 registration, as they jostled for places in branded schools, gives proof of that. This will again be evident in three months, when parents pick a secondary school for their 12-year-olds after the release of the Primary School Leaving Examination results.

The information booklet for this admission exercise includes details of co-curricular activities and niche programmes run by various secondary schools. Many are planned to stretch students beyond book smarts. Outram Secondary School, for instance, has for years been running a business and entrepreneurship programme to nurture students' entrepreneurial spirit.

Hai Sing Catholic has a robotics programme, which has allowed students to experience the joy of discovery.

Mr Heng highlighted several examples in which students found unique talents because of the exposure schools gave them. He pointed to award-winning film-maker Royston Tan, who discovered his skills in Zhonghua Secondary, after his principal, Mrs Ng-Gan Lay Choo, gave him lessons on film editing to help him with his O-level art project.

That made it possible for Mr Tan to go from the Normal (Technical) stream to Temasek Polytechnic, where he took up a course in visual communication.

But principals will be the first to admit that few parents list their schools as a top choice because of niche programmes.

In most cases, parents zero in on the academic cut-off point when picking a secondary school for their child.

One way to change this mindset is to make sure admission processes go beyond grades, and take into account qualities which are harder to measure but equally important, such as leadership, organisational skills and resilience. The Ministry of Education is already taking steps in the right direction by announcing that it will tweak the Direct School Admission scheme, which admits pupils into secondary schools before the PSLE. Currently, they get in for exceptional academic ability, or for sport or artistic skills.

MOE has said it will broaden the scheme to include pupils with special qualities such as resilience and character. Details on these tweaks will be announced later, Mr Heng said yesterday. But MOE must ensure they are significant enough to also change the exam-first mindset of parents.

And why stop at secondary school admission? MOE should also consider making the non-academic achievements and skills of students count for more when getting into post-secondary and tertiary institutions.

There is already a discretionary admission scheme for universities, in which a student's achievements beyond A-level or polytechnic grades are recognised. But just up to 10 per cent of each intake is admitted under this scheme. MOE could expand this. As Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean once said: "Unless we change what counts, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to change the orientation and focus of our education system."

sandra@sph.com.sg


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