14 February 2018
Dr Janil Puthucheary, Senior Minister of State for Education, and Communications and Information, has said that the Education Ministry is encouraging new models of teaching and learning in order to enable students to cope with the vast level of technological disruption and societal changes taking place in the world today.
Dr Janil Puthucheary was speaking at the Disruptions in Education (DisruptED) forum co-organised by The Straits Times and the Singapore Institute of Management.
He said, “There’s not going to be a guarantee that every experiment, every disruptive innovation that we try in the education service may work perfectly the first time. (But) we need to prepare our students for a different kind of world.”
Mr Ben Nelson, chief executive officer of the Minerva Project which offers a four-year tertiary education in which lessons are delivered via online seminars, agreed. He said that the traditional university model should be shaken up because it does not effectively train students to apply their knowledge and skills across contexts. Instead, the model should be replaced by one that truly develops critical and creative thinking.
Mr Oswald Yeo, co-founder of career development portal Glints, contributed his thoughts too, saying that Singapore schools can play a bigger role in supporting young people who have aspirations that veer off the beaten track. Mr Yeo had previously left University of California, Berkeley, in 2016, to run his start-up company with two partners.
The firm, which has 300,000 young people in its database, helps users identify skill sets needed for their ideal jobs, and find the relevant avenues such as courses and internships to hone and develop those necessary skill sets.