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Learn for Life – Ready for the Future: Refreshing Our Curriculum and Skillsfuture for Educators

Last Updated: 04 Mar 2020

News Press Releases

  To prepare our students for an increasingly complex, interconnected and tech-driven world, the Ministry of Education (MOE) will build on existing efforts to help them be agile and future-ready, regardless of their backgrounds and starting points in life. To do so, we will embark on the next phase in our 'Learn for Life'1 movement through two additional thrusts – 'Refreshing our Curriculum' and 'SkillsFuture for Educators' – to enhance students' learning and support educators in nurturing future-ready learners.

Refreshing Our Curriculum

2. Today, rapid technological advancements are changing the way we live, work and play. Southeast Asia is also becoming one of the fastest growing regions in the world, with significant implications for our economic strategy. To help our students adapt to these changes, we will refresh our curriculum to ensure that the knowledge, skills, and values taught remain current and relevant.

Character and Citizenship Education 2021 (CCE 2021)

3. Firstly, MOE will be rolling out an enhanced CCE curriculum in 2021 to anchor our students on a strong foundation of moral values, good character and resilience. We will also encourage them to play a more active role as citizens of Singapore.

4. MOE will make the learning of CCE more authentic, relevant, and purposeful for students by further integrating CCE into lessons and activities, so that CCE becomes part of school life, both in and out of the classroom. We will do so by providing more opportunities for students to learn CCE through key Student Development Experiences2 and redefining the experiences of Co-Curricular Activities (CCA), to support students' interests and talents.

5. With the prevalence of social media and ubiquity of smart devices, our students are also facing new pressures while growing up. To help them cope with these pressures and build emotional resilience, we will enhance mental health and cyber wellness education across primary and secondary levels under CCE 2021. We will also continue supporting schools in fostering a peer support culture, where students look out for one another.

6. Our Mother Tongue Languages (MTL) play a crucial role in the transmission of values and culture. Given this natural synergy between MTL and moral values, we will emphasise the teaching of moral values during CCE (MTL)3 lessons in primary schools, through stories, songs, fables and proverbs.

7. For secondary school students, teachers will facilitate the regular discussion of contemporary issues4 during CCE lessons, to broaden students' perspectives and identify ways in which they can contribute to their community and nation. To this end, we will train a select group of specialised CCE teachers who will role model the effective facilitation of CCE lessons and mentor other teachers.

8. Schools will continue to partner parents and the community to help our students develop holistically and equip them with the necessary skills to handle changes and deal with challenges as they mature into young adults.

9. More details on CCE 2021 are available in the infosheet on Key Changes under CCE 2021.

Strengthening Digital Literacy

10. Secondly, MOE will enhance the curriculum to help students strengthen digital literacy through the launch of a National Digital Literacy Programme for our schools and Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs). This better enables our students, at different stages of their education journey, to acquire the digital skills required to navigate the digital age through four components in the 'Find, Think, Apply and Create' framework.

At the primary level,

  1. There will be greater emphasis on cyber wellness education as part of CCE 2021; and

  2. Students will get to learn computational thinking and experience simple coding through the 'Code for Fun' programme.


At the secondary and pre-university levels,

  1. We will progressively roll out the use of personal learning devices (PLDs) to all secondary schools from June 2020, starting with their Secondary One cohort. Every secondary student will own their own school-prescribed PLD by 2028, which they will use in tandem with the Singapore Student Learning Space (SLS)5 and other educational technology to personalise and enhance their learning. This will better enable students to acquire digital skills and apply these skills as they navigate an increasingly digitalised world.

  2. More schools will offer O-Level and A-Level Computing subjects;

  3. We will deepen computational thinking through the Mathematics curriculum; and

  4. We will roll out a revised Lower Secondary Science syllabus in 2021 that helps students develop a better understanding of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other advancements in technology.


At the Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs),

  1. We will enhance baseline digital competencies, including computational thinking and data competencies (e.g. quantitative reasoning), across all the Autonomous Universities (AUs), polytechnics and ITE by AY2021. This also includes efforts to strengthen the cyber wellness curriculum to enhance teaching of digital well-being and ethics.

  2. We will also deepen the coverage of digital competencies in relevant courses. All polytechnic and ITE students will be taught AI-related topics. Those in sectors that are ripe for AI adoption, such as the finance, manufacturing, logistics and cybersecurity sectors, will be equipped with higher proficiency in AI competencies.

11. More details on the enhancements to strengthen digital literacy are available in the infosheet on Strengthening Digital Literacy.

Knowing Asia

12. Thirdly, MOE will provide students with a deeper understanding and appreciation of Asia, in particular the ASEAN region, to allow them to engage effectively with our neighbours and participate actively in the region's economic development.

13. MOE will roll out an enhanced Humanities curriculum, with a deeper focus on ASEAN, at the secondary and pre-university levels from 2021 to 2023. ASEAN will be featured more prominently in Social Studies (Secondary), Geography, History and Economics, with these subjects highlighting the importance of the region, its growth potential and its interconnections with the rest of the world. To facilitate deeper and more self-directed learning among students, digital learning resources for Humanities subjects at the primary, secondary and pre-university levels will also be made available on the SLS.

14. MOE will also provide schools with planning and curriculum resources to help them design rich overseas learning experiences in ASEAN countries. This includes a 10-hour exposure component where students will learn about the culture and language of the country as part of pre-trip preparations. For a start, schools will be provided age-appropriate digital resources for the learning of Thai and Vietnamese. More schools will also offer Conversational Chinese and Malay programmes for interested students to learn additional languages, beyond English and their MTLs.

15. Our IHLs will similarly increase overseas exposure opportunities for students. Currently, about one in two IHL students participate in such programmes. We aim to expand this and achieve a '70-70' target for cohorts entering IHLs in the next few years, where 70 per cent of local IHL students will participate in overseas exposure programmes, and 70 per cent of this group of students will have exposure to ASEAN, China or India.

16. More details on the Knowing Asia enhancements are available in the infosheet on Knowing Asia.

Skillsfuture for Educators

17. Our teachers are critical in ensuring the effective implementation of the curriculum and in facilitating our students' learning. To guide teachers in acquiring the necessary competencies and encourage them to deepen their mastery of skills, MOE will introduce an enhanced Professional Development (PD) Roadmap for teachers – "SkillsFuture for Educators" (SFEd). We will focus on enhancing teachers' PD in six prioritised Areas of Practice: Assessment Literacy, Differentiated Instruction, Inquiry-Based Learning, E-Pedagogy, CCE, and support for Students with Special Educational Needs.

18. SFEd will support teachers in strengthening their classroom practices to better meet their students' interests and needs. MOE and the National Institute of Education (NIE) will facilitate a coherent PD experience for teachers from pre-service training to in-service training. More details are available in the infosheet on SFEd.


Footnotes

  1. Currently, there are four thrusts in our ‘Learn for Life’ movement: ‘Joy of Learning’, ‘One Secondary Education, Many Subject Bands’, ‘Education as an Uplifting Force’ and ‘Learning Languages for Life’.

  2. Key Student Development Experiences includes experiences such as CCA, cohort camps, Values in Action, and cohort Learning Journeys.

  3. CCE in primary schools currently comprises lessons taught in the MTLs, known as CCE (MTL), and Form Teacher Guidance Period (FTGP) taught in the English language.

  4. Contemporary issues include topics on bullying, online media, and race and religion.

  5. The SLS is an online learning platform for all students and teachers in the national school system that provides curriculum resources for students and tools for teachers. Since the launch of SLS in mid-2018, teachers and students’ use of SLS has grown steadily. The introduction of NDLP is expected to contribute to an increase in usage of the SLS.