18 July 2019

Education Minister Ong Ye Kung recently announced at a work-learn carnival at Nanyang Polytechnic that existing work-study programmes at Singapore’s universities and polytechnics will be expanded.

The Nanyang Technological University will offer six new work-study degrees in areas such as engineering, data science and business analytics in the new academic year for 2019.

Currently, the local universities offer 16 work-study degree programmes.

The polytechnics will roll out another 15 new Earn and Learn programmes (ELP), while the Institute of Technical Education is adding more work-learn technical diploma programmes, which are also a form of ELP, to its current slate of 14.

Students will be selected yearly for the programme after interviews with the universities and employers, and need to maintain an academic grade point average to continue in the programme.

15 July 2019

A new “through-train” programme will be implemented in Singapore’s polytechnics to allow students to get a place in a local university, and also be assured of a job.

Under this scheme, students will also graduate from university up to a year earlier than their peers. This is the first such programme in Singapore that gives full-time diploma students a guaranteed route to a degree.

As an example of an implementation of this programme, Temasek Polytechnic has tied up with the Singapore University of Social Sciences and the Singapore Institute of Technology to offer this new pathway in April next year for 40 students in the building services and mechatronics sectors.

Students in TP’s mechatronics diploma will go on to study SIT’s bachelor of engineering in mechanical design and manufacturing engineering, while those in TP’s integrated facility management or green building and sustainability course may move on to SUSS’ bachelor of science in facilities management.

These students will take three or more university modules in their third year of polytechnic, go on an internship with their sponsoring companies, and graduate with a diploma.

During their undergraduate years, they will study and work concurrently for the company, and after graduation will return as full-time employees.

09 July 2019

Starting from the year 2021, the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) will attempt to assess creative thinking ability and global competency in students.

The organisation headquartered in Paris has defined global competence as “the capacity to examine global and inter-cultural issues, to take multiple perspectives, to engage in open, appropriate and effective interactions with people from different cultures and to act for collective well-being and sustainable development”.

Students will be assessed on these skills as follows:

In the first part, students will read about a case study, and respond to questions that evaluate their capacity to understand the complexity of the case, the multiple perspectives of the diverse actors involved, and suggest solutions.

This will be followed by a questionnaire to gauge their openness towards people from other cultures, respect for cultural otherness, global-mindedness and responsibility.

Teachers and school heads will also be given a questionnaire which aims to provide a comparative picture of how education systems are integrating global, international and inter-cultural perspectives through the curriculum and other activities.

Pisa believes that it is important to nurture the capacity of students to look at the world through different lenses and perspectives, appreciate different ways of thinking and different cultures.

Education has always been the way to pass down knowledge, skills, values and culture to enable subsequent generations to thrive. Educators, as well as parents, need to foster a fuller range of skills, including creative thinking and global competency, to enable young people to adapt and thrive in this rapidly changing world.

03 July 2019

In this year’s Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Top 50 Under 50 league rankings, Nanyang Technological University has been ranked the world’s best young university for the sixth straight year.

NTU’s biggest improvements were in the areas of academic reputation, research citations per faculty and employer reputation.

QS research director Ben Sowter said NTU has “catapulted its way to the top tier of global higher education”, adding: “NTU has been bolstered by strong support from the Singaporean Government, who are reaping the rewards of recognising the value of concerted research investment and international faculty recruitment.”

Last month, NTU was ranked joint-11th with the National University of Singapore in the QS World University Rankings.

30 June 2019

The recently published Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings showed that the efforts of the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University in furthering research and education excellence are gradually being recognised.

NTU received higher scores than NUS in faculty-to-student ratio and citations per faculty, an indicator of institutional research impact. However, NUS is more well-known among academics and employers than NTU, staying at 11th in the world for academic reputation with a score of 99.8, based on responses from over 94,000 academics.

An NTU spokesman said that along with the appointment of Professor Subra Suresh as president in January last year, the new leadership team has overseen the hiring of top talent in the past one and a half years.

For instance, the Presidential Post-doctoral Fellowship programme, started last year, attracted applications from nearly 900 young people from top global institutions for 12 positions this year.

An NUS spokesman said: “We are honoured that many academics and employers around the world continue to regard NUS as among the best in Asia and globally… The remarkable global standing of our local universities attests to the quality of Singapore’s higher education system.”

29 June 2019

The Teaching and Learning International Survey (Talis) conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has found that working conditions for Singapore teachers have improved, with local educators putting in fewer hours each week now than they did five years ago.

Singapore teachers now work two hours fewer than the 48 per week they reported in the year 2013.

In addition, the survey found that teachers are spending less time on administrative work and marking, which also gives them more time to teach. Teachers here spent most of their time on actual teaching, reporting 18 hours per week, up by an hour from 2013.

The OECD study polled over 200,000 teachers worldwide. The study found that Singapore teachers are the seventh-most hardworking in the world. Japan’s teachers came up top with 56 hours per week.

The five-yearly OECD survey aims to help countries review teacher education and professional development, their instructional beliefs and practices.

27 June 2019

The Ministry of Education has released the results of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (Talis) 2018, a five-yearly study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development which involved secondary school teachers and principals around the world.

In Singapore, about 3,300 teachers and 167 principals from all 157 secondary schools and 12 private schools selected at random took part in the online questionnaire from September to October 2017.

The OECD survey found that teachers in Singapore generally have positive beliefs about equity and diversity in the classroom. For instance, 99 per cent of principals said most of their teachers feel that schools should encourage students from different socio-economic backgrounds to work together, and that respecting other cultures is something students should learn as early as possible.

In addition, the survey found that Singapore has a high proportion of teachers working in schools where policies and practices on cultural diversity are implemented. For example, almost all Singapore teachers said that their schools organise multicultural events.

As much as 95 per cent of Singapore teachers also said that their schools teach students how to deal with ethnic and cultural discrimination.

24 June 2019

In the latest Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) annual World University Ranking, Nanyang Technological University shares the top spot in Asia together with the National University of Singapore.

NUS is also placed 11th in the world.

The QS rankings employ six performance indicators to assess a university’s strengths in research, teaching, employability and internationalisation.

NTU received higher scores than NUS in faculty-to-student ratio and citations per faculty.

NUS fared very well in the area of employer reputation, which is based on feedback from more than 44,000 employers about the quality of an institution’s graduates.

NUS, NTU and SMU scored full marks for international faculty ratio, which measures the proportion of non-local faculty at an institution.

NTU and NUS said the QS rankings show their efforts in research and education are being recognised.