Why is Singapore’s school system so successful, and is it a model for the West?
Over the past ten years, there are countries which belong to the top worldwide league tables that assess the skills of children in reading, mathematics and science. These countries which are part of the league are Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Finland.
Classroom instruction in Singapore is mainly high scripted teaching with highly structured lessons and consistent to all levels and fields. Teaching technique is comprehensive, practical and something that is good enough to do the job it was designed to do, representing a scope of befitting an educational traditional, both Eastern and Western.
Instructional strategies in Singapore basically centers on syllabus, the circulation of accurate and systematic knowledge, and make the students ready to end the semester and national high support tests.
Teachers also depend on textbooks, worksheets, worked examples and many exercises. They also give importance to comprehension of particular method and the capacity to precisely introduce problems specifically in mathematics. Teachers play a very important role inside the classroom and normally preventlong discussion.
It has caused curiosity that teachers in Singapore only use minimal “high leverage” or uncommon helpful instructional strategies that modern educational study considers as difficult to the improvement of educational literature and “learning how to learn”.
D. Hogan