17 December 2016
The global Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranked Singapore students as the highest achievers for reading, mathematics and science.
The PISA study found that Singapore students were consistently strong in applying their knowledge and skills to novel real-life situations that they might not have encountered previously. The Ministry of Education attributed the good performance to recent shifts in Singapore’s education system towards applied learning.
The PISA study also found that a Singaporean student’s socio-economic status had a strong positive correlation with test performance.
There is a need, therefore, to level the playing field and improve social equity to ensure that students from lower income families and/or whose parents have lower educational levels are also able to perform on par with students from more elite backgrounds.
Singapore now has schools like Northlight and Assumption Pathway to cater to weak students. More recently, Crest Secondary School and Spectra Secondary School were set up to specifically cater to students who are suited for a more hands-on style of education.
Investments in education are slowly being weighted in favour of students of lower socio-economic status to improve equity in education.