1. A very good morning to all of you. I would like to say a big thank you to all of you for doing this amazing job of taking care of our students, not just here and now, but planting the seeds for their future success. Thank you very much for all this tremendous work.
2. While we celebrate our accomplishments in PISA, in PIRLS, in many other assessment metrics, we are also not complacent. Why are we not complacent? Because we know the challenges that are ahead of us. Take for example - Bilingualism. We spoke about this last weekend, at the Mother Tongue Languages Symposium. We know the challenge is tough for our people to uphold bilingualism. But if we lose it, we lose our identity, we lose our advantage. While many people lament this, we all know that if not for the efforts of all of you, we would not even be where we are today. We would not even be able to discuss frankly and talk about some of these things.
3. But more importantly, I think while people pat us on the back for all the good results here and now, we ourselves know that our measure of success is not about the here and now. Our measure of success is beyond the here and now. Our benchmarks of success are not what our students achieve in their first 15 years of education, it is what they are able to achieve on their own without us in the next 50 years beyond our schools. Whether they are confident and are able to contribute and continue to learn throughout life. These are the real benchmarks of success. And in today's bewildering world, we also know that our benchmarks of success are not just their academic results and accomplishments. More importantly, do they have the dispositions and the value systems that will put them in good stead in the future, where they can stand tall, be confident of who they are, without comparing themselves with other people. They have the right values, to do what is right and honourable, even when we are not watching over them. Those are the true benchmarks of success for us as an education fraternity.
4. And of course, at this point in time, we also know that technology is changing so rapidly that we have our work cut out for us. There are tremendous opportunities for us to embrace new technologies, but there are also tremendous challenges that come with it. Since the past, our education success has relied on the quality of our teachers, and it will always be so going forward. Today, we know that there are many countries that are leveraging technology to best scale their educational resources. We can take a leaf from their books and see how we can use technology to complement what we do to lighten the workload - not that we work less, but so that we can focus our time on more impactful work. And I will talk about some of these things later. Let me first take a step back and paint the context which our students will have to operate in the coming years when they leave school. I call this the three Fs.
Shaping Possibilities Together
5. First our students will be faced with a fragmenting global order where peace is no longer a given. In fact, recently, when I spoke to the alumni of Brown and Stanford Universities, I said that "peace" is a synonym for the interwar years. We cannot take peace for granted. There will be blocs that are being formed, and our people will have to learn to navigate across all these different blocs in order for us to stay relevant as a country and for us as one people to find our footing in a troubled world.
6. Second is a fragile economic order where protectionism is rising. We will again have to rise to the challenge to create new relevance for ourselves so that our students can remain competitive, relevant, and earn our keep in time to come. It is no longer just about answering yesterday's questions with yesterday's answers. It is about always encouraging our students to have the disposition to find and create new value propositions so that we can remain relevant in a fragile global economic order. As I have shared before when we faced the toughest of times battling Covid-19, we may have had the money and resources - but it did not mean that people would sell us what we needed - unless we have something that we can produce, exchange, and offer where people cannot find elsewhere, it would have been hard for us to even maintain our lifelines.
7. Last but not least, beyond a fragmenting global order and a fragile economic system, is fractious domestic politics. We are fortunate. We have not seen the worst in Singapore. But we have seen this happening in other countries where the lack of cohesion paralyses the entire society. They cannot make decisions for the long haul. They cannot make trade-offs. They cannot have a proper discussion about the challenges of the country. They cannot bring people from different persuasions to come together, work and overcome the challenges together. Those challenges can happen in other countries, as they can happen in ours. So, our bigger challenge is, how do we equip our students with the character, the dispositions, the skillsets, the value systems to survive and thrive in this fragmenting world, a fragile economy and potentially a fractious domestic situation - that can fray our social cohesion and impact how we can move forward together?
8. That is the context that we are working with. Our education system must rise to the occasion. With that, it is evident that we have a burning platform where the need to change is dire. On top of this, we know that technology is changing rapidly today. When we walk into a classroom, very often, our students may know more about the topic than us. Sometimes you may be unsure whether what they have been reading is right or wrong, or whether they are able to distil the information, to discern right from wrong, fact from fiction, and whether they are able to make value judgements.
9. Societal expectations on us as a teaching fraternity have also changed. In the past, people believed that teaching is just about the transmission of knowledge and the inculcation of values. But today, your job and the expectations that come with your role have expanded. Expectations such as helping our students find their social and emotional footing, overcoming issues even outside of school, managing technology and managing their more complex and complicated relationships with their peers in school and through cyberspace. Yet at the same time, we know that our resources, especially quality resources, are finite.
10. We have always asked ourselves, are we able to bring in more teachers? But that is not the question. The real question is whether we can bring in more teachers, without compromising the quality that we have. Today, we are one proud fraternity where we can recruit the best and the most committed people to be our teachers. In many studies, including those done by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the key driver of a quality education system is not the quantity of teachers, but the quality of teachers, complemented by system processes and technology that allow good teachers to do the best for their students. That is something we have to contemplate today.
New Mindsets
11. Today, we will focus the conversation on two things: how to refresh our mindsets on our approach to some of these challenges and opportunities, and how do we equip ourselves with new skillsets? I will summarise it in one simple message: I will guard the respect for the teaching profession in Singapore. The day when the teaching profession is no longer respected in Singapore, will be the day when we cannot recruit quality teachers to join us. Then no amount of good policies, structures, infrastructures will help us. Quality teachers are the key, and it is our responsibility to make sure that we develop our people, our resources, groom them, develop them, and create time and space for them to grow.
12. Many of you whom I have visited in schools, you know I say this - we need to create time for ourselves to grow. You cannot keep pouring your hearts out every day to take care of our students and yet not grow. When you grow, you deepen your professional practices. You engender respect, you are refreshed, and you can better take care of our students. We cannot keep doing the same things the same way, and you get more tired, and we have less space for you to grow.
13. I would like to move on to the first part on honing new mindsets. We will be making several moves today in support of this. But I must say that this is just the beginning of the conversation, to give us a sense of what we can decide to do in order to create space for our teachers to grow. This change in mindset and expectations will require us to go out and set our own benchmarks as a fraternity. We must go out, reach out to the many parents out there, convince them to join us in this partnership at this level of expectations.
14. We need to reset our mindset: striving for excellence does not equate to seeking perfection. Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. In today's world, we need to make a judgement on when enough is enough. Do not keep chasing the marginal returns and the diminishing returns because if you score 99, you can still chase and try to score 99.99, but the effort will be tremendous. That effort could instead have been used to acquire new dispositions, experience new things, and see new perspectives. But this is easier said than done.
15. Striving for excellence must be in our DNA, but try to make a distinction between that and seeking perfection in everything, before we even do anything. It is not possible. We aim for constant progress. We aim for a growth mindset, but we should not be held back by the fear of imperfection. So do not let perfectionism stop us from taking the first step.
16. We should not expect to do everything for everyone at all times, at the same time. This is not a movie title. We do not need to be everywhere, everything, everyone, all at the same time. We are not superhuman beings. If we do not prioritise, we do ourselves a disservice; we also do our efforts and our students a disservice. So, all things are important, some things are more important than others, and it is our leadership responsibility to distinguish what is important and what is perhaps less important. Doing a few things very well beats doing everything averagely. But sometimes, if we do not check ourselves, we get caught in this. It takes the attention away from our core focus and core work. So, I start with some of these principles, because if we do not do this, then we may end up like other countries where teachers face increased mental stress, burnout, and ultimately, they may choose to leave the profession. If we do not set the expectations properly, and the expectations continue to grow, we will have a bigger problem. This is what I call the expectations gap. Sometimes, setting the expectations right for ourselves, for our students, for our relationship with our stakeholders, all those are important. We value our educators, that is why we must never reach a point whereby our teachers feel pressured, harried, and stressed. You can only perform optimally when you are at ease and at peace with yourself.
17. So as a fraternity, we must continue to learn to prioritise and structure our work to make space for learning and growth for ourselves first before we even talk about our students. My motto is: happy teachers equal happy students. No happy teachers, no happy students. Inspired teachers, inspired students. No inspired teachers, no inspired students. Tired teachers, even more tired students. Correct?
Streamlining Non-Teaching Duties and Programmes in School to Manage Teachers' Workload
18. Moving forward, we are going to streamline some of the non-teaching duties, including exam duties and admin work. For example, now you would be aware that we have consolidated the GCE oral exams for English and Mother Tongue, reducing our examination admin workload by 10%, or about 700-man days. This is one small move, but everything counts. Come 2025, our oral exams will be further consolidated into a single period of three full days and two afternoons in July, down from the previous 23 afternoons spread over two months. These are small moves that we are doing. From 2027, we will no longer have separate 'N' or 'O' Level exam periods. Instead, there will be one common exam period under the Singapore Cambridge Secondary Exam Certificate, or SEC exams at the end of Term Four. This will reduce the number of exam sessions by about half, and lessen invigilation load by up to 15%, or 5,000-man days. These are just some small examples. Some of you have also piloted interesting things. Some of you have tried to use technology to reduce the workload required for invigilators. I commend you for that, and I applaud you for trying. If it works well, we will scale this to make sure that we use technology to do some of the more administrative tasks, and free up time for ourselves.
19. To reduce the need for teachers to manually collect and keep track of your students' medical certificates (MC), we will be piloting a process for parents to submit their children's MCs online via Parents' Gateway. The info flow will then go to the School Cockpit mobile to update the teachers. If the pilot works, we will scale this up, but this is just one simple example of using technology to reduce the workload of our teachers. There are many workstreams looking at this, and we hope to see many more good ideas.
20. Beyond the non-teaching duties, we also want to consolidate the learning experiences offered by our schools. Currently, primary and secondary schools offer both the Applied Learning Program (ALP) and the Learning for Life Programme (LLP). These programmes offer hands-on activities for our students to contextualise what they are taught in classrooms. But schools have also been running various other programs to promote the joy of learning and to enhance the students' holistic development, such as Code for Fun, Eco Stewardship, Interdisciplinary Project Work and Student Leadership Programs. Some of these, including the ALP and LLP, can be consolidated and integrated. Some of you have already cleverly done that, you do one thing but you meet two, if not three, objectives. Congratulations to those pioneers. Henceforth, we will give schools the autonomy to review and streamline these programs. From 2026, we will allow schools to decide whether to continue offering both the ALP and the LLP, or only one of the two, or you can combine them with other programmes so that you can free up manpower currently deployed to run the second programme for other priorities, including teachers' development.
21. We will continue to explore ways to streamline our curriculum and work to enable the teachers to focus more on the students' development and their value dispositions, beyond the transmission of content knowledge. Even for content knowledge, we will have to constantly review and ask ourselves which are the new things that we want to teach, but more importantly, which are the older things that we can let go. Never put anything in, no matter how good the idea is, until we take something out because our bucket is full.
Recalibrating Expectations for What Educators Should and Should Not Do
22. But streamlining work is only half the equation. To prioritise effectively, we also need to set aside time and space to focus our efforts on what really matters. To do this, we need to set boundaries and recalibrate expectations on what educators should and should not do, what you need and need not do, and what you are expected or not expected to do today, I will set some baselines, but this is not the end. I want this to be the start of a conversation within our fraternity first, and subsequently with the rest of the society.
23. First, communications. Educators should not be expected to respond to work-related messages outside of school hours, except for emergencies and exigencies. What are school hours? Within a normal workday, if it is not an emergency, beyond 17:00, you do not have to respond to questions on uniform or spelling lists. Can I declare this: I never check my son's spelling list. It is not that I am an irresponsible parent. It is not even that I am a chill parent. It is just that I want him to remember it is his spelling list, it is not my spelling list. It is his job to figure out and remember this, and this is part of his learning. It is not that we care less. In fact, it is because I care for him, I want him to grow, I want him to develop. I do not want him to develop a crutch mentality.
24. On the other hand, I can vouch for this: Northlight, one of our high-needs schools, has so many stories where the child was abandoned by the family or got kicked out of the home at 12 midnight. My teachers at Northlight will go there and pick up the child, because it is a high-needs school. It is an emergency; the health and welfare of the child is at risk. That is how far our teachers are prepared to go to take care of our students, we need to make a distinction between what is important and what is not - and we go all out and do that. What is not important, we can take our time and manage it differently.
25. Next, educators should use official channels, such as your official email and office number when contacting parents. I do not expect you to share your personal mobile numbers with parents. I do not want to make it a habit that you get buzzed at different times of the day. To be fair, most parents are respectful and use the channels appropriately. But we have to protect our educators from a very small minority that can take up an inordinate amount of time and effort. All this is to establish the boundaries to allow our educators to focus on conducting classes and student activities, and to ensure that our educators have protected time after school hours to take care of your families, rest and recharge.
26. Today, I want to start this conversation. I have just started with the tip of the iceberg on what we should set as the baseline expectations to enable our educators to focus on and prioritise student-centric work. We have to have this conversation among ourselves first before we go out and talk to society because I do not want us to compete to "serve" better. I went to one school. They decided that they needed to see each parent one at a time. I was shocked, I said, "why do you want to do this? We should prioritise our time to focus on meeting those families with students with high needs. If we decide to meet everyone regardless of their needs, then we are also not doing justice to our time, or to the students." The answer that came back from the poor teacher was, "Sir, we cannot stop doing this because if I did, and other schools continue to do it, they will not want to come to my school." This cannot be the case. We need to have a standard that we all agree to. This is not an arms race and not a race to the bottom. I know we have a duty of care, but the duty of care must not overwhelm the duty to grow.
27. Where do we draw the line between duty of care and the duty to grow? When the Risk Assessment Management System (RAMS) forms come in, should the spirit of the RAMS form be greater than the letter of the RAMS form? It requires a bit of a mindset shift. We know where to draw the line. It is not about doing less, it is about doing things differently.
28. This is how we need to care for our children, not just for their safety, but for their development and growth. MOE will make sure that we evolve together with you and how we can better care for our children. Over time, your needs have also evolved. Many of you have shared that like other professions, you also like to be exposed to a wider range of experiences so that you can become better educators in the classroom. We will support you. So, the TWA+ program is one example of porosity. Today, we have more and more people going out for TWA+, and coming back with refreshed experiences and refreshed networks that contribute to the school. Later, we will give you a progress update and I hope that many more teachers will make time, and as leaders, to also make time for our teachers to be exposed and to grow.
Enhancing the Leadership Pipeline for SPED Schools
29. Now, I want to talk a bit about the SPED schools. All my teachers and leaders in the SPED schools must have the same kind of development opportunities and career progression. Well-planned out, well-thought out, well-structured, just like how we do for mainstream schools. There are many ideas, and I have spoken about this in Parliament recently, when Mr Patrick Tay, Chairman of GPC (Education) asked a question. We need to move away from each one of us doing everything alone, which is important and necessary, but not sufficient. We need to come together as a sector to deepen our SPED professional competencies.
30. One upcoming move is that we will add to the SPED schools' efforts and introduce a leadership development program to identify, develop, and retain potential leaders from the SPED teaching fraternity. This is a leadership program where promising and committed SPED leaders will join as a sector, and we will expose them to the leadership development opportunities across the entire education sector, and even beyond the education service. We also want them to be exposed to experiences and learning beyond the SPED school that they are serving. We do this for our mainstream schools, and we should do this for our SPED schools. I want to see greater porosity between our mainstream teachers, leaders and our SPED school teachers and leaders.
31. Today, the education sector is not a binary thing. It is not as if there is one sector in MOE mainstream schools, and another sector in the SPED schools. We should view it as a porosity. Many of you have told me that you see more and more students with SEN in your school, and I think we can learn from one another to be open to that porosity. This is something that we will want to do and do better at. So, in addition to school-based assignments, participants will have opportunities to be exposed to different schools or SPED-related organisations and take up sector-wide assignments. We will share more details in time to come.
32. We will also want various SPED schools to connect better with each other to hone their teaching knowledge and learning skills. Thus, we will strengthen the network of sharing by including Communities of Practice for SPED schools, particularly in building knowledge on disabilities in the sector. We also hope the Communities of Practice can be a bridge for professional exchange between mainstream and SPED teams. For our SPED schools, you can be assured, that just as we value our mainstream educators, we value our SPED educators, allied professionals and the wider communities that are serving in the SPED schools. We want to make sure that they also have the same development opportunities and support as all the mainstream schools. Over time, my vision and hope is that we will see ourselves as one unified education sector, SPED and mainstream together. Let's break down that divide that there are two separate sectors. At the end of the year, at the appointment ceremony for principals, we will also do it differently by having our SPED Principals there with us as one fraternity. We will make sure to grow together, and not just at an individual level, but at a sector level.
Honing Skillsets
33. The next thing, our teaching workforce has become more diversified. Today, about one in ten of our teaching workforce are mid-career officers. I think we can have more to enrich our teaching fraternity. I aim for our teaching fraternity to not just consist of people who have been green-harvested, but people from different sectors too. Today, many of our young prefer to move in and out of sectors, which include those in teaching, and we must design our structure and processes in a way that will welcome back teachers who might have left due to a need for different arrangements for different seasons of life. We also want to welcome other people with industry knowledge to share what the world out there is like and complement what we know in our schools and leverage on our parent networks better. But to do this, we will have to evolve our recruitment processes, our development processes, and also our deployment systems to better cater to mid-career people. If you have friends who are thinking of joining us, I encourage you to bring them in and enrich our teaching fraternity.
34. One of the often-talked about issues is about Flexi-Work Arrangements. We fully understand that there are many educators in our fraternity that are in different seasons of life who may require slightly different arrangements. MOE understands and will work with you to see how we can make such adjustments in order to best retain the experiences of our people in the sector. We can have Flexi-Work Arrangements, but the ethos of the education profession must never be compromised. Everyone who steps into our school and call himself or herself as a teacher must share the same ethos. There cannot be different ethos just because someone is on Flexi-work arrangements. MOE is prepared as an organisation, as a fraternity, to support our fellow colleagues through different paces of life at different seasons of their lives, but all we ask is for everyone to maintain a shared ethos. When a child goes up to a teacher, the child will not look at a teacher and have differing expectations based on their work arrangements.
35. We hope that those who benefit from these arrangements will reciprocate by upholding the ethos that make us one fraternity with only one type of teacher in our school - someone caring and committed.
36. For the next part, I will elaborate on the skillsets that are required for our next lap. We need to acquire some of these skillsets, no matter how busy we are. To inculcate our children to learn for life, it has to start with us. Last year, I challenged every one of us to learn one new thing every year. That still remains, but today, I want to speak on a few sets of things that we need to do to really hone our skillsets. MOE will continue to support our educators in acquiring these new skillsets, so that we can improve our competencies and capacities, and also create time for ourselves to grow and provide better to our people and our nation. Let me ask you this, beyond care and commitment, if you have to look for one skillset in a new person to complement your team, what would that be?
Mastering the Use of Technology, as a Multiplier for the Teaching Profession
37. We need a diversity of skillsets in the education fraternity. There are some baseline core values that we must have, but we cannot keep getting more and more of the same. We also need some diversity. Today, I want to focus on a bit of some of the skillsets, which include a growth mindset. Traditionally, what is the challenge for our public school system? Traditionally, I would say we have a trilemma. In our public schools, we want to achieve three things, but very often we can't get all three. The three things are quality, scale and affordability. In most conventional systems, you cannot get three. You get quality, you have scale, it will be very expensive. You have quality, affordability, it will not be very scalable. You have scale, you have affordability, chances are the quality is not very high. The question is, how can we break this trilemma? This is the age-old trilemma of education. Today, with technology and science, we have the best chance to do this.
38. Many of you have heard me say this before: can we one day achieve the holy grail whereby we can mass customise to meet the individual needs of the students? Mass customise so that you can achieve quality, scale and affordability? With EdTech, AI, data science and the science of learning, we can do that. If you take a leaf from the gaming industry, they are actually mass customising. Everybody plays according to their level, and then you keep playing until you reach the next level. Today, we can have a chance to do that. Question is, if we want to do that, are we equipped, or are we equipping ourselves with the skillsets to do that? I want to give a shout out to Sean, a chemistry and math teacher from Hillgrove Secondary School, who created a customised AI board on Pair – government AI machinery – that can quickly generate curriculum-specific Kahoot quizzes on any kind of subject. Ordinarily, you would take about an hour to create a Kahoot quiz. This one gets it done in 10 minutes, and you spend the rest of the time just checking to make sure that things are correct.
Managing the Social-Emotional Challenges That Teachers and Students Face
39. Another important part is helping our students and our younger colleagues manage their social emotional challenges. These are also new skillsets that we need. We know that this is even more difficult than the skill to transmit knowledge. It can be emotionally very challenging and draining, but a strong emotional foundation is the bedrock of lifelong learning. Our people will face many of these challenges. Our teachers are increasingly called upon to help our students overcome this before we can even start teaching. This is where we need to equip ourselves with this new skill. So, we will enhance the support to nurture the social emotional competencies through pre-service training, in-service peer support and conversations with mentors. This will also complement MOE's current suite of provisions to support our teachers' social-emotional well-being. These include curated digital resources, workshops and counseling services by the MOE iCARE Unit, the Well-being@Gov Programme, and the Wellness Ambassadors Scheme. We will leverage on these collective capabilities of our partners to help ourselves grow and to help our children grow.
Partnering Our Parents
40. The next important skillset is working with our stakeholders, and more precisely, working with our parents. In 2019, we released the first edition of the Guidelines for the School-Home Partnership, or GSHP, on how parents and educators could work together to support our children to succeed in life. The landscape has since changed. We spoke with many parents and educators, including the COMPASS and PSG members who are here with us today, and they agreed that above all, we hope that our children will be happy, confident and kind. Now, this can only happen when parents and educators work well with each other to create a supportive environment for our children.
41. This year, MOE and COMPASS have refreshed the GSHP, together with both parents and educators, accounting for their evolving needs and aspirations. The refreshed GSHP will provide clearer guidance on how schools and parents can work together positively, constructively and respectfully. First, we need to communicate with kind words and actions as partners in education. Educators share that they appreciate having more trust from parents so that they can have the time and space to do their work. Parents have shared that they would appreciate it if educators could understand that they are also trying their best as parents. So, this boils down to a desire to be heard and be understood. So, let us start by communicating with one another with kindness.
42. Second, we hope that parents and educators can work together and role-model the values our students and children need for life. Children learn from our example; not by what we tell them, but by what they see. We can start small by having the confidence to try something new, such as learning a new tech tool, or choosing to find joy in everyday experiences. Third, we want to support our children in building real connections with others by cultivating strong relationships and developing healthy habits in this digital age. Electronic devices have become a big part of our lives. The question is no longer whether our children should have access to the online world or to use any platforms at all, but how we can support them to navigate this space in a safe, discerning and responsible manner. We know that in every school, you have your own profiles of students, stakeholders and their unique needs. So, the refreshed guidelines are meant to serve as a guide, and schools have the autonomy to further unpack the guidelines within your school context, in consultation with your teachers and parents. We will continue to support schools post-Workplan Seminar to enact the refreshed guidelines. Please look out for this, as we will have more information coming to you in the later part of this year.
43. As part of the National Mental Health and Well-Being Strategy, MOE has worked with MSF and HPB to develop a toolbox of bite-sized strategies called Parenting for Wellness. This toolbox complements the GSHP and will support parents to build strong child relationships, strengthen their children's mental wellbeing and resilience, and parent effectively in the digital age, including keeping our children safe online. Educators may also use this toolbox for parents to share practical tips and strategies with parents, such as ways to create a safe and nurturing home environment to share feelings. There will be conversation cards designed to cultivate empathy by facilitating deeper conversations between parents and their children on common scenarios encountered within the family. For example, they could explore strategies to overcome challenges such as managing academic anxiety and the setting of screen time limits. Our Parent Support Groups, Social Service Agencies and Family Coaches may also use these resources to support parents. A Parenting for Wellness online site will also be launched on the HPB website in January 2025 to provide parents with personalised knowledge and skills by recommending relevant content based on their responses to parenting questionnaires. Parents appreciate our educators and respect the boundaries, and we work well with most parents. However, as I said, there is a very small fraction of parents who are misaligned in their expectations of our educators. These parents are also important partners, but it is also important that we manage these misaligned expectations by taking a firm stand in what we stand for.
44. We must learn to say no politely, and this can be difficult as some may engage in abusive behavior, or try to have it in their own ways, sometimes threatening us, not just you, ministers included. But let me be clear, boorish and bullying behaviours are not acceptable. I will not allow anyone to bully my teachers. Schools partner parents to develop our students holistically. We set the positive tone, we role model for them. Our educators must feel supported in carrying out this important mission. We value our educators and their wellbeing. This is why we will have a new Engagement Charter that will make this very clear. MOE will take firm actions against individuals who engage in unreasonable behaviors that are threatening, insulting or abusive towards our staff. We will need our parents and larger community support to work in partnership with us, call out bad behaviors whenever it is observed. But this is a journey that we must start internally in our fraternity. We must have a clear understanding across the whole fraternity on our shared standards, so that we will not be picked apart, and people start to compare and contrast.
45. We thank our COMPASS, our PSG and our union reps who have given us important feedback and suggestions on how we should not just develop this Engagement Charter, but also how to operationalise and execute this. There is lot of work to be done and we will have more discussions and case studies on how we can handle this together.
Partnering Industries and Our Educators
46. Industries will be another important group for our partners. For example, Saint Gabriel Secondary School with Boeing. The school started its ALP in Flight and Aerospace in 2015 to develop students' interest in the aviation industry and to encourage lifelong learning in STEAM. This year, the Partnerships Engagement Office facilitated the school's collaboration with Boeing to help students further contextualise their learning through real world examples. Besides a visit to Boeing's AeroCampus booth during the 2024 Airshow, students also got a chance to participate in the Boeing Crew Pairing Challenge. Boeing created a problem statement for the students to solve based on existing challenges in their own operations, finding the most optimised, efficient solution in crew pairing for flights. Students can also apply critical and creative thinking to work around constraints, apply mathematical concepts to solve the problem and market their solutions. The shortlisted team presented their ideas to the judging panel comprising representatives from both Boeing and Saint Gabriel's VP.
47. This is one of many examples that shows that this collaboration would not have happened if we had only depended on our own knowledge and strength. This is an example of how we can leverage on the whole community and industry's strengths to enrich what we are doing. Never believe we need to do everything, everywhere, all at once. There are people out there who can complement our capabilities, and we should learn how to leverage on those capabilities. In order to do that, we need to broaden our networks.
48. Here is another example to inspire and encourage us. Madam Raudah Abdul Rahim, Subject Head at Canberra Secondary School went on TWA+ with a freight forwarding company, The National Forwarder. She experienced firsthand the challenges faced by logistics companies. She gained practical insights into how exposed our economy is to global forces. She learnt about the importance of 21CC skills when working with others. At the end of her attachment, she brought back her insights, and inspired her students to not only be more interested in the subjects and content they were learning but also provided a fresh new perspective of what the world is like out there. When she did ECG, she also provided new perspectives. Since the inception of TWA+ in 2022, a total of 226 schools and 590 teachers have participated in work attachments with over 2170 teachers taking part in learning journeys to external organisations beyond MOE. I thank you all for taking this step. I thank all the principals here for making time for the teachers to grow and learn. I also want to thank PEO, AST and our ECGB colleagues for facilitating many of these challenges. Thank you very much, and please keep doing this, because these are valuable opportunities to grow our teachers. Many of you have applied many of these things and brought it back to schools, and we are happy that you are using this to manifest our vision to leverage on the whole society's capabilites to do better for education. It will not just be MOE, but it will be all of us together.
Conclusion
49. Today, we have talked about the challenges and the opportunities, and the new skillsets and new mindsets. I want to conclude with this. What is our definition of success? I believe that we would have succeeded if each and every child that leaves our education system can say these four words: I can, I will. These four words with a slight tweak also apply to us as a teaching fraternity. Today, all the challenges, opportunities, skillsets we need to refresh and mindsets we need to acquire may sound rather daunting.
50. But I want all of you to remember this: we can, we will. We can because MOE will be here to support you, to enable you, to empower you. All I ask is that you be bold. You be bold in your leadership to take that step that many of you have already taken, to take that first step, to go try and explore. Go forth, explore, try, and if it works, we scale across the rest. If it does not work, we move on and you do not have to worry because we will be behind you. If you need resources, time and space to try, let us know, we will support you. I want each and every one of you to know this: try anything that you believe is in the best interest of your students and teachers. Amidst all these difficult changes, we cannot keep doing things the same way, we will have to find new approaches to balance our load, balance our expectations, and manage the new relationship.
51. This is why today's seminar is going to be a bit different. After this session, we will dive deep into the details on how to reset those expectations, how to refresh our mindsets, how to balance our duty of care with a duty to grow, and how we can equip ourselves with the new skillsets to do all the above. But ultimately, the most important thing is the leadership responsibility to prioritise what is important in your context, rather than important in general. You have the authority and the responsibility to decide what is most important in your context. My job, and that of my team in MOE HQ, is to make sure that we support you, because we trust you. We trust you to do what is right for your students and your teachers.
52. My final words – remember, make space and time to grow our teachers. Happy teachers, happy students, tired teachers, tired students. We must never arrive at that. We will walk this journey with you by your side, all the way. Thank you very much for your service to our nation.