The Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) will be launching its new transformative education policy titled ‘Educating for Creativity and Equality: An Agenda for Transformation’ this Saturday afternoon (12 July) at its headquarters in Link@AMK.
In a press release that was sent out by the SDP earlier today (10 July), the party said it will continue to light up the path and show the way in formulating Singapore’s education policy, adding that the current system, which is heavy on rote-learning and exam-taking, is rather out-dated as Singapore is progressing into an era of innovation where critical thinking is of paramount.
As such, it noted that the People’s Action Party (PAP) cannot continue to highlight the high achievement of the students via the PISA assessment as the index reveals nothing about how prepared the students are to deal with the realities of the present age upon graduation.
Moving on, the SDP also pointed out a few examples of how the PAP has been following its lead in formulating the nation’s education policy since the late 90s.
In 1994, the SDP stated: “A major problem of streaming is the effect of self-fulfilling prophecy…It is not difficult for children in lower streams to feel less valued.”
A quarter-of-a-century later, Education Minister Ong Ye Kung echoed: “Entering a stream that is ‘lower’ can carry a certain stigma… It becomes self-fulfilling.”
In 2014, the SDP called for pre-school education to be nationalised: “Currently, the main providers of preschool education are private playgroups and kindergartens. The government does not provide preschool education at the national level.”
In 2017, the Ministry of Education (MOE) announced that it would institute government-run kindergartens.
Even the SDP’s head Dr Chee Soon Juan took to Facebook to address the reality of the matter. In his Facebook post, he said, “We can continue to delude ourselves by believing PAP’s rhetoric that its education policy is number one in this and that.”
“Or we can come to see the reality for what it truly is: That the PAP continues to wield education in Singapore as a political tool by stifling critical and independent thinking and adopt an enlightened and transformative policy that the SDP is proposing,” he added.
