Good afternoon everyone,
1. Let me first thank everyone for supporting our work and efforts to bring out the best in our children. Without the support of our Parent Support Groups (PSG) in the various schools, we would not have come so far. We certainly can go even further if we have this continued partnership.
2. In this fast-moving world, the lifespan of skills has shortened considerably. In my previous interactions with many of you, you have also highlighted your concerns and fears on preparing our students adequately for the future. Some of your questions include the type of skillsets that we need to equip our students with, and the types of jobs available in the industries. One of the unspoken concerns is how do we equip ourselves to equip our children. As parents, despite sending our children for various classes, we are often too shy to attend classes ourselves. Many of the parents have told me that they too need help, as the questions we pose to our children are also questions we pose to ourselves.
3. Today, we can come together and try to answer the following questions:
- What do you think would be the first question a potential employer would ask our children?
- What do you think would be the top three most sought-after jobs in ten years' time?
- What do you see as the number one skillset that our children must be equipped with in 10 years' time?
4. Indeed, it is not easy to answer these three questions, but it will help to shape how we approach our education system and our partnerships. Coming from the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), I have seen firsthand how fast jobs and skills can become obsolete. It is not just the fear we have for our children. We, as employees, similarly worry about our future.
5. On the other hand, when I speak with entrepreneurs, they always lament that our education system does not produce students with all the required skillsets. So, I sat these entrepreneurs down, and invited them to share with us all the skills that they would like their future workers to be equipped with. The Ministry of Education will look to produce students with these attributes and skills, but these companies will then have to ensure a good job for our students in 10 years' time when they graduate. None of them took up my offer. This is because the lifespan and product range of a company, even for a Fortune 500 company, would change in 10 years' time. This is why it is not about whether we can forecast future demands, but how we can close the loop between frontier industry practices and needs with what we are doing in schools today.
6. Having heard your feedback, we are going to start a new series of conversations, dialogues, and discussions that are accessible to parents from all schools, and not just members of the PSGs. In fact, we would like to host as many webinars as we possibly can to allow people at the frontiers of industry practice to come forward and share the types of skillsets, perspectives and emerging jobs in the world with our parents. Our parents, together with our teachers, would then be able to share this knowledge with our students.
7. We also encourage our teachers to step out of the school compound to experience different work attachments and see the world from a different perspective so that they are able to further enrich their teaching of our students. This is why we are pushing for school-industry partnerships, where we want every school to have a unique Applied Learning Programme if possible, in partnership with different industries. We hope every school would have access to experts in the industry to understand the attributes and skillsets that they are looking for. This will allow our parents and educators to broaden their perspectives beyond the school setting.
8. I have a simple hope -- that we will move from the "school being our world" to the "world being our school".
9. This is why today we are going to launch "A World Beyond School", which is a series of dialogues and conversations to equip educators and parents with the latest knowledge of what is happening beyond schools in the workplace to prepare our children for the future. Some of you have asked me, how many sessions are we having this year? So far about 15 sessions have been planned. As more industries come onboard, and more of you volunteer your perspectives, we will have an even more varied programme for everyone. I know a lot of you have skills, talents and networks that you can share. What you are contributing to the respective schools can be further shared and proliferated across different schools for everyone's benefit. If we do this as a team sport, we will certainly be able to have much more material and content to enrich our parents' and educators' learning, and we can certainly do even more for our students.
10. As we broaden the definitions of success for MOE schools, I hope this broadening takes place in two dimensions. The first dimension is to broaden the definition of success beyond academics, to skillsets and perspectives that will be useful to our students in the future. The second dimension is to define success not just by our achievements, but by our contributions. This is fundamental to the success of Singapore going forward. If all of us only define our success by our personal achievements, rather than our collective contributions, we may end up as a high achieving but individual-centric country. For us to be a warm-hearted and inclusive society, we need to broaden our definition of success beyond personal achievements to collective contribution.
11. On that note, I thank you once again for your service to our education system, and commitment to bring out the best in each and every child. I hope that together, in partnership with each and every one of you, we will move from the school as our world, to the world as our school.