Singapore Curriculum Philosophy

What is the Singapore Curriculum Philosophy?

Education in Singapore seeks to achieve our Desired Outcomes of Education so that our students are future-ready, have a strong sense of national identity, and are equipped with the competencies to navigate, participate and contribute in a globalised world. It aspires to bring out the best in our students so that they are empowered to live life to the fullest, contribute to, and care for their community and nation. It enables them to develop their interests to pursue their passions and fulfil their aspirations. 

To realise the aims of education in Singapore, our curriculum is designed to develop the character, mind and body of our students. It serves to nurture their values and to develop their knowledge, skills and dispositions. Our curriculum provides learning experiences for our students to actively interact and bond with others in both physical and digital spaces. In doing so, they become aware that they are part of society. Through this, they learn to embrace diversity and collaborate with people from different backgrounds.

The Singapore Curriculum Philosophy presents our teaching fraternity’s core beliefs about learning that place every student at the heart of our educational decisions. These beliefs guide the design and implementation of our curriculum. They underpin our practices and guide our teaching actions so that every student is an engaged learner. The Singapore Curriculum Philosophy describes our roles, and those of our students’, in the process of teaching and learning. 

What we believe about teaching and learning

We believe in holistic education centred on values, social and emotional well-being and character development.

We believe that every child wants to and can learn. When children find meaning in learning, they are motivated and challenged, and take ownership of their learning. 

We value every child as an individual. Our children have diverse learning needs and bring with them a wide range of experiences, beliefs, knowledge, and skills. For learning to be effective, we adapt our teaching pace, approaches and assessment practices to be developmentally appropriate.

We believe that learning takes place in caring and safe environments. We cultivate positive teacher-student and peer relationships so that there is a culture of care and mutual respect in our classrooms, where children learn to appreciate diversity. They are encouraged to take risks, learn from their mistakes and from one another, and be confident in expressing their views. 

Learning takes place individually and collaboratively, as children construct and co-construct meaning from knowledge and experiences with one another. We use technology to enable greater personalisation and differentiation of learning to take place, and we engage experts and utilise resources in the wider community, where relevant, to enrich learning in authentic ways. We guide learners to activate prior knowledge, assimilate and accommodate new knowledge through exploration, and interaction with others. This allows them to build a strong foundation of knowledge by connecting new ideas and experiences with what they already know, thus facilitating the understanding of concepts and the application of what they have learnt to different contexts.  

We believe in developing thinking skills, and dispositions in our learners. To do this, we guide them to construct, interpret, and evaluate knowledge from different perspectives. We help learners understand that by thinking about their own thinking, they can monitor, assess and improve their learning.  

Assessment is integral to the teaching and learning process and helps children become self-directed learners. As such, we design assessments with clarity of purpose to gather evidence of our learners’ progress, provide timely and targeted feedback to them to move their learning forward, and improve our teaching practices, harnessing technology where useful.