History of Singaporean Education: Independence and Bilingualism in Schools Report

Singapore’s independence was announced by the first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew who was a national figure and the founder of the People’s Action Party. He was among the party that negotiated the independence of Singapore from the British in 1956 -1958. He made achievements as a national leader by influencing Singapore, through his restrictive rule, to become a center of international trade. He also led Singapore into the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 although the country withdrew from the federation in 1965 for Malay fear of domination of China. The historic presence of China has played an important economic role in Singapore. The historic record of presence of Chinese in Singapore dates back to around 14^th Century and after much influx of the Chinese nationals in Singapore, there was formation of Chinese schools and temples. The population of Chinese latter exceeded that of Malays. The population of Singapore as at 2000 consisted of 76.8% of Chinese (Global Oneness, n.d.). The government of Singapore made it compulsory for all primary schools to have the second language as a requirement in 1960, and this was extended to secondary schools in 1966. English was seen as a tool to empower Singapore to have a niche in the international market in addition to enhancing social cohesion and integration. Singapore wanted to gain advantage of internationalizing their trade through letting their children learn English (Dixon, 1991), but again did not adopt the Latin model of bilinguism where two Latin oriented languages like English and Spanish or German and Italian would be learnt, because this would risk loosing their mother tongue and hence their culture. Singapore had, in 1995, an education reform plan that would see their economy become more reliable in science & technology and hence the country would be competitive on the international platform. This was after they had separated with Malaysia to gain sovereignty. In addition to offering free primary education, the four streams of education, namely English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil would be treated equally. According to Chiang (1998), further issues embedded in the education reform was the putting more emphasis on mathematics, science and other technical subjects, in addition to elevating Malay as the National Language. Efforts of construction of schools saw 83 new schools constructed by 1965. More enrolment was recorded (522, 611) in 1968 as compared to the figure recorded for 1958 (315, 000). Two sessions (morning and evening classes) were introduced following the number of students, who could not fully be accommodated by the schools. The free education was adjusted to 10 years by the ministry of education according to Chiang, (1998). Following the governments campaign, the people changed their attitudes towards secondary education. The number of enrolment to secondary school increased to 114, 736 in 1965 from 48, 723 in 1959 and further to 161, 371 in 1972.

The government increased budgetary allocation to the education and primary education received 59% of the budget allocation, whereas 27% and 14% of the budget allocation went to secondary school and higher education respectively. Budgetary allocations for education have had an increasing tendency from $112, 806,000 in 1965-which represented 28.8% of the total national budget to $ 135, 051,000 in 1967 representing 22.8 % of the total national budget. The number of teachers swore up with the setting in of challenges following increased enrolment. For example, the number swore to 19,216 in 1968 from 16, 989 in 1965.

Singapore has used a number of currencies. The “Orchid” notes were the first banknotes to be printed in the current currency, the Singapore dollar, in 1967. This currency was introduced by the Board of Commissioners of Currency after the independence of the country was achieved. Before the introduction of this currency, Singapore had used the Malaysian dollar along with the federation formed by thirteen Malayan states. However, a conflict between federal government established by United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the state government formed by the People’s Action Party (PAP) led to the termination of Singapore’s part in the federation.

How education plays an important role in companies

Reliance of professionalism is important both to deliver high outputs and quality output at the work place. Using professionally qualified employees minimizes training time, and also the workers are able to carry out their duties more confidently and professionally, and this leads to increased productivity and quality goods and services. According to the Global Competitiveness Report, reliance on quality higher education and training was important in ensuring that economies moved from simple production process and product value chains to more advanced economies. Educated workers who are able to adapt to the rapidly changing environment are required in the current global economy. Vocational training is important to ensure that workers’ skills were upgraded to the changing needs reflected in the economy (World Economic Forum, 2009). Reliance of academic and job training for efficient management since the understanding of lean production methods and efficiency in production is very important. Companies sometimes are required to invest in employee training so as to make sure that workers get the necessary skills. Although these may be lowly paid, it may result to more labor costs for the company. Again, the time taken for training sometimes need be considered while investing in untrained employees because it may constitute production time also.

Singapore ranked second in the 2008, 2009 Executive Opinion Survey by the World Economic Forum in the Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010. According to this report, Singapore ranked 8^th in the reliance of professional management. The country scored 6.0 points to indicate most professional managers were chosen on merit and qualification. Singapore scoped the first position among nations whose worker productivity was related to pay, indicating that productivity of the worker was determinant to the amount of pay.

Government Expenditure in Education

With the review of how education may help in the production process and in turn the economy as a whole, it would be easier to say that the amount of spending of any government in education is very necessary. The government of Singapore increased budget allocation for the Ministry of Education by a 5.5% increment (or $454.94 million) to reach a projected value of $8.70 billion for the FY2009. The operating expenditure allocation was taken up by 7.1% over the FY2008 revised expenditure. This was due to increased school funding, recruitment of more adjunct teachers and education officers. In addition, there were increased research grants for universities and the IHLs in the FY2009. Lower grant requirement for the development of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School as well as lower cash flow requirement for existing PRIME projects and provision of Indoor Sports Halls to Schools led to the decrement of projected development expenditure of $686.56 million-representing a decrease of 9.7% from the revised FY2008.

According to the FY2009 projections, 3.6% representing $311.28 of the projected total expenditure would go to ITE (Institute of Technical Education Program) while polytechnics would take 12.3% of the amount, representing 12.3% of the total projected expenditure. The Special Education, Independent Schools, Government-Aided and the General Education Program would take 50% of the projected total expenditure, representing $4.35 billion. The general trend expected in the FY2009 was a decrease in the number of those joining university, those joining high school education and those joining the primary school. The government availed $2.12 billion dollars to universities so as to be able to acquire training for high quality graduate manpower to support the economic needs of Singapore and for their research needs. The number of enrolment to polytechnics where they would gain such skills of industrial and technical importance was projected to be higher in the FY2009. The government availed 4.2% of the total provision, which represented $44.88 million, for the purposes of acquisition of teaching IT and F$E and to be used for redeveloping and upgrading the campus facilities for the polytechnics.

The students who have completed secondary education and joining the ITE program would benefit with $311.28 million representing an increase of 6.5% from the FY2008. The government also increased the operating grant for the ITE program from $283.71 million to $301.18 million and availed $10.10 million for the capital grant.

Different types of schools received different amounts of funds. In the FY2009 projections, Government-Aided, Special Education, and Independent Schools were funded. Independent Schools would receive a total of 232,578,900 while Special Education and Government -Aided schools (combined with Junior Colleges) received a total of 102,914,700 and 870,874,800 from the total expenditure estimates for the whole program. Because the number of pupils in these schools would be expected to differ, the funding for every pupil in these schools would be different. Primary school population would be expected to be 269,000 and secondary school 199,285, while for pre-university would be expected to be 25,691 (Ministry of Education, 2009).

The following is the government expenditure on education (in million SGD) from 2003/2004:

Source: Ministry of Education: Education Statistics Digest

Government Developmental Expenditure on Education and percentage From 1994/1995 to 2005/2006

Totals and % of tot expenditure

• 1994/1995- 832715=5.58%
• 1995/96- 761438=5.1%
• 1996/97-774797=5.2%
• 1997/98-1101979=7.4%
• 1998/99-1685695=11.3%
• 1999/00-1600614=10.7%
• 2000/01-1590611=10.7%
• 2001/02-1472991=9.9%
• 2002/03-1773560=11.9%
• 2003/04-1217643=8.2%
• 2004/05-1239397=8.3%
• 2005/06-866978=5.8%

Total=14918418

GDP as from 1994 and percentage of education expenditure on current market prices GDP from that year

• 1996-35,552-4.7%
• 1997-37,498-4.8%
• 1998-35,115-3.19
• 1999-35,371-2.1%
• 2000-39, 683-2.5%
• 2001-37,088-2.33%
• 2002-37,874-2.6%
• 2003-39,463-2.23%
• 2004-44,487-3.7%
• 2005-47,192-3.8%
• 2006-50,244-5.8%

Constant GDP does not account for inflation and is calculated in terms of that year’s prices whereas nominal GDP is as per the price of the whole of the year. The two may therefore differ because of the impact of inflation in the country during the years analyzed.

Primary Expenditure as a percentage of total education expenditure (1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s till 2005)

The developmental expenditures for education and the Percentages of the Government Development Education Expenditure of the expenditures in the respective years are as follows;

Reference List

Chiang, M. 1998. ‘From Economic Debacle to Economic Miracle’: The History and Development of Technical Education in Singapore. Singapore: Times Edition.

CRN India.com. Singapore Dollar. Web.

Dixon, C. 1991. South East Asia in the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Global Oneness. (n.d.) ‘A wisdom archive on Chinese in Singapore-during WWII.’ Web.

Gopinathan, S. 1999. ‘Preparing for the Next Rung: economic restructuring and educational reform in Singapore’. Journal of Education and Work, (12) 3: 295- 308.

Ministry of Education. 2009. Singapore Ministry of Education. Education Statistics Digest. Web.

Sharpe, L. and Gopinathan, S. 2002. ‘After effectiveness: new directions in the Singapore school system?’ Journal of Education Policy, 17 (2):151-166.

World Economic Forum. Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010.

World Economic Forum. Executive Opinion Survey 2008.