Educators around the world struggle as they try to do too much in too little time. In Singapore, education leaders have recognized that difficulty and are working to ease the strain.
Curriculum reforms in Singapore focus on reducing the content teachers are expected to cover, said Wai Hoong Ang, senior fellow at the National Institute of Education. "We thought the schools were doing too much content. Now they have more time for better education," she said. The Singapore education system aims to develop the whole child—morally, intellectually, physically, socially, and aesthetically.
Wai Hoong Ang
In the interest of exploring the differences and similarities of education systems around the world, Ang and educators from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, and New Zealand came together to discuss trends in their countries at a session hosted by California ASCD with support from an ASCD influence grant.
The panelists focused on aspects of education in each country that are a source of pride, major reforms that are under way, and teaching with globalization in mind. Ronald Brandt, author and education research associate as well as executive editor emeritus of ASCD's Educational Leadership magazine, provided the U.S. perspective and moderated the panel.
Ronald Brandt
Assessment and Accountability
Education reforms in New Zealand have zeroed in on assessment, said Jill Larson, principal of Auckland Normal Intermediate School. Prior to the reforms, the assessment system had no rigor or accountability and varied in each school. In effect, Larson said, "You could do what you wanted."
Jill Larson
Under the new system, a school staff studies what is taught to a group of students in one academic year and how those students progress, then makes comparisons to the next year's class. Although the emphasis on assessment comes from the federal government, the results are "particularly relevant for our school," Larson said.
Larson cautioned, however, that there is a bit of a backlash. "Many New Zealanders say that assessment is actually the tail that is wagging the dog—that we've gone too far; we are assessing too much."
In Australia, there is a commitment to ensure teachers' accountability, said Jenny Lewis, principal of Noumea Primary School in New South Wales, but "we don't have a test regime" like U.S. schools have. As a profession, principals in Australia want to assure parents, children, teachers, and the government that they're doing a good job. Principals "do not want to look a parent in the eye and say that we've failed the children," Lewis said. "So there is a commitment to present important data about student improvement."
Jenny Lewis
Lewis criticized the high-stakes tests in the United States. "The testing programs that you have to deal with would not be allowed in Australia. Any politician that attempted to do so would be gone." If a politician tries to undermine "the trust of the school or the trust of the principal or the trust of the teacher, our leaders in our universities will stand up and say so, and the media will take note," she said.
Overcoming Disadvantages
Many panelists mentioned the difficulties of improving the achievement levels of students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Mexico, in particular, has struggled with high illiteracy rates, said Carlos Ornelas, a professor at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitania-Xochimilco in Mexico City. "It's a very poor country," he said, and because of the economic challenges, many students drop out of school. In an effort to combat these problems, Mexico has compensatory programs that provide supplies for the students and bonuses for teachers who work in those extremely poor areas.
Carlos Ornelas
In the United States, educators are striving to live up to the goal of providing a free and equal education for all, Brandt noted. In the last 50 years, U.S. education leaders have attempted to "correct the inequities" of unequal treatment in the areas of race, gender, and disabilities and raise the achievement of students from low-income homes, he said.
In Australia, there is a renewed focus on helping indigenous students achieve. "Whatever data we look at, we will see that our indigenous students are still behind," Lewis noted. To combat the problem, every professional association and every school in Australia is signing an official commitment "that every indigenous child will have as much opportunity as any other child," she said.
Overall, Lewis noted, Australia has had success with early intervention programs in literacy and numeracy and has shared those strategies with educators from around the world.
Different Approaches
In Singapore, the educational system recognizes differing levels, or streams, of learners—the "express learners," the slower learners, and those who learn even slower, Ang said. "We accept the fact that our children have different abilities."
The slow learners receive five years of secondary education instead of four. The even slower learners get four years of secondary education and then move right into post-secondary technical education. As the students mature, they have the flexibility to change from one stream to another, Ang said. "A person who is at the lowest and slowest stream can eventually go to university," she noted.
To foster high achievement, the government in Singapore offers a monetary bonus when a school performs better than similar ones, Ang said. The government offers 10 bonuses a year for schools that meet the criteria for "value-added" performance, and the school, the teachers, and the students share the bonus.
Because of a concentrated focus on academics, students from Hong Kong and other Asian countries tend to perform well in U.S. schools, said Edmond Hau-fai Law, a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Law pointed to the strong separation between recreation and academics in Hong Kong schools. "You spend time on play—good. But then, after that, you have to spend time on studies."
Edmond Hau-fai Law
Exploring Multiple Cultures
Law also noted that Hong Kong is a city of immigrants, so its education system must take into account the varied backgrounds of its students. "People from the Chinese mainland come into our city, which is very sensitive and receptive to the Western ideas, morals, and values," he said, noting that he emigrated from China in the 1950s.
Brandt noted that the United States also has had "a steady stream of people coming into our country since it began. And we've had to find some way to develop a common culture. The public schools have played a huge role in that."
Australia, too, is a multicultural country, Lewis noted. "We have always honored and studied international perspectives. Languages, culture, and religion are all parts of our curriculum studies."
Because Singapore is a multireligious, multiethnic society, it has four official languages—English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil, Ang noted. "The cornerstone of our education system is a bilingual system. Our children will start learning two languages right from grade 1," she said.
Hong Kong has a policy that allows students to be biliterate and trilingual, Law said. "Besides our mother tongue—my mother tongue is Cantonese—we are able to speak Mandarin as well as English."
School Variety and Choice
Differences in school governance are common in many of these countries. Canada, for instance, has many types of school choice, said Charles F. Webber, associate dean in the Graduate Division of Educational Research at the University of Calgary. "Catholic schools, public schools, charter schools, the private area magnet schools, the virtual schools, we have them all. They are incredibly interesting experiments."
Charles Webber
In Canada, each province has control over its education system. "We do not have a national education office, so we have large variances across the different provinces and territories in Canada."
In Hong Kong, Law said, "We really are proud of a diverse system, which allows different religious and spiritual populations to run the schools with public money." About 60 percent of the schools in Hong Kong have religious and spiritual affiliations, and about 40 percent are secular, he noted.
Motivating and Retaining Educators
Several panelists noted problems with teacher or principal shortages. In Australia, the federal government and the professional associations are designing programs to encourage teachers to take on the extra opportunity of leadership—whether as a teacher leader or as the principal of a school. "We've done such a good job of encouraging people to stay in the classroom that people don't want those leadership jobs," she said.
Singapore was facing a looming teacher shortage, because "many of our teachers are quite old," Ang said. However, the economic crisis helped to solve the problem because there are now fewer jobs in the financial sector to draw potential teachers away. "Also," Ang noted, "we have raised teacher pay. The entry payment for teachers is as high as in the medical profession."