05 February 2018
Dr Janil Puthucheary, Senior Minister of State in the Ministry of Communications and Information and the Ministry of Education, has said that Singapore will remain staunchly pro-science, and supportive of the pursuit of scientific excellence.
He was speaking at the Grand Ceremony of the International Science Youth Forum 2018 recently held at Hwa Chong Institution.
“We are, across secondary schools and all the institutes of higher learning, making a very determined push to take these fundamental building blocks of knowledge, or cognitive skills, of academic learning, and, to be polite about it, encourage both students and educators to think about how these skills must be applied to real-world problems, industry challenges and social challenges,” Dr Janil said in his speech.
The Government of Singapore will remain strongly focused on moving forward in scientific endeavours. A record $19 billion has been budgeted for science and technology research over the next half decade. The amount, part of the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2020 plan, works out to about $4 billion annually, equivalent to around 1 per cent of Singapore’s gross domestic product.