Education reforms, let's learn from Singapore

Singapore is a country with Malay, Mandarin (Chinese) and Tamil citizens.

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During world war 2, many students dropped out of school, causing a huge backlog of students after the war. In 1947, a ten year Education Policy was formulated. During the 1950s and 1960s, when Singapore started to develop its own economy, Singapore adapted a “survival-driven education” system to provide a skilled workforce for Singapore’s industrialisation program to lower unemployment.

With Singapore gaining independence from the British, Lee Kuan Yew became the founding Prime Minister. Lee strongly pushed for a bilingual policy, with English as the working language and the language of education and learning, with individual mother tongues to keep Singaporeans culturally rooted. To attract foreign investors, he foresaw that Singaporeans had to speak English, the language of the global economy, international diplomacy, science and technology.