A momentous change was announced by Ministry of Education recently as it decides to do away with streaming, and replace it with subject-based banding system, by 2024. Students will take subjects based on their strengths, and there will be three levels they can take classes at – G1, G2, and G3. Instead of the current ‘O’ Levels and ‘N’ Levels examinations, there will be one common examination taken by all secondary students, effectively removing streams, and their labels. With this change, the ministry hopes to encourage schools to group their students in other ways, not just based on their academic levels.
Potential effects of abolishing streaming
This news invited both praise and critical comments. It is a critical juncture of change in Singapore’s education system after 40 years of streaming. Streaming students into different levels at a young age was supposed to improve the efficiency of teaching students who are of similar learning abilities. The unintended outcome was the stigmatisation of the lower-streams that disempowered many students who could have achieved more without the social labelling that carried a negative connotation. With the new system, stigmatisation may be slowly phased out. Students who excel in certain subjects, and are weaker at others, can learn at the differentiated levels without being pigeonholed into a collective stream.
However, the effects of this policy change remain to be seen as there are many factors to consider in the roll out. A new common examination for all students may or may not see the standard of qualification dropping. Further, some commented that it may not totally eradicate stigmatisation, but reduce it, as the subject bands are still mapped to the three streams and society may replace the stigma with the subject combinations taken. Overall, people laud this move, and societal attitudes need to shift along with the policy for the intended outcome to work out.
The need for paradigm shift in education
If we look at education on the broader level, there are some assumptions about the way people learn and how people should be educated. The video below highlights some of these assumptions and why Ken Robinson believes that there needs to be a paradigm shift for education.
His argument is that education was designed primarily based on the interests of industrialisation. Students are grouped by cohorts based on age and study mostly the same curriculum to take standardised tests. This way of education was more suitable for producing workers in the industrial age, but not for encouraging divergent thinking as today’s context requires.
In this light, the removal of streaming in Singapore’s education system is a critical step towards realising the full potential of what education can harness in our societies.
Questions for further personal evaluation:
- What do you think about the new change of removing streaming in secondary schools?
- What would an ideal education system look like to you?
Useful vocabulary:
- ‘propaganda’: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view
- ‘eradication’: the complete destruction of something
- ‘inoculate’: produce immunity against
Here are more related articles for further reading:
- World Economic Forum: The labour market is forecasted to change dramatically over the next 10 years, but we do not know how it will be. What is for certain is the need for constant skills renewal and new structures of education.
“This new paradigm would address ongoing skills development and fuel continuous employment, both for current and future students. New, synergistic consumption models supported by new revenue models for educational institutions are developed. A mutually beneficial hub of learning and innovation is created, based on a new relationship between education institutions, employers and individuals, with a long-term commitment to ensuring continuous employability.
The boundaries between educational institutions and employers are much more fluid. They work together to create a sustainable, innovative and entrepreneurial digital economy ecosystem in which everyone can participate, at any point in life – youth, displaced workers, the underemployed and the unemployed.
The concept of skilling, reskilling and lifelong learning is not new. What is new is that the pace of disruption is faster than ever; educational and career pathways are less defined; and the need for perpetual learning is the new normal. In this model, universities play the role of orchestrators in the talent ecosystem – which includes community colleges, vocational institutions, online course providers, boot camps, project-based work and entrepreneurial challenges. Together, they create new relationships with employers and industry in their local areas to provide relevant skilled talent for everything from one project, to short-term or long-term employment.”
- The Straits Times: Former Nominated Member of Parliament draws lessons from Britain’s education reform which removed streaming.
“Singapore in 2015 seems to find itself in a similar juncture as Britain in 1958, as far as discussion on education goes. It was noticed in 1958 in Britain that the students at grammar schools were increasingly middle class; it was feared that society would be divided into well-educated, well-off elites lording over a working class trapped generation after generation in the secondary modern schools. The British press called them the “eggheads and the serfs”; Singapore, on the other hand, has its “scholars and farmers”.
LESSONS FROM WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
If Singapore is truly at this “what next” juncture, what the British government did in the following decades would be instructive not for what it did right, but what it did wrong – it threw the baby out with the bathwater.
In 1958, the Labour government dismantled the tripartite system, and announced that there would be “grammar school education for all”.
Streaming and the Eleven-Plus examination were abandoned. Over time, as streaming had been abolished, the GCE O levels were found to be too hard for a large proportion of students, and the CSEs too easy, and so the O levels were scrapped and merged with the CSEs to form a new qualification called the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), which was pitched in between the two.
Much later on in 1992, and in another analogous situation to present-day Singapore, the desire of the populace for more easily attained degrees, for those who did not meet the requisite academic standards, was met by converting polytechnics into “new universities”.”
Picture credits:https://pixabay.com/photos/street-people-children-school-boy-2805643/