Learning from Singapore tells the inside story of the country's journey in transforming its education system from a struggling one to one that is hailed internationally as effective and successful. It is a story not of the glory of international test results, but of the hard work and tenacity of a few generations of policy makers, practitioners and teacher trainers. Despite its success, Singapore continues to reform its education system, and is willing to deal with difficult issues and challenges of change. Citing Singapore's transformation, author Pak Tee Ng highlights how context and culture affect education policy formulation and implementation. Showing how difficult education reform can be when a system needs to negotiate between competing philosophies, significant trade-offs, or paradoxical positions, this book explores the successes and struggles of the Singapore system and examines its future direction and areas of tension. The book also explores how national education systems can be strengthened by embracing the creative tensions generated by paradoxes such as the co-existence of timely change and timeless constants, centralisation and decentralisation, meritocracy and compassion, and teaching less and learning more. Learning from Singapore brings to the world the learning from Singapore-what Singapore has learned from half a century of educational change-and encourages every education system to bring hope to and secure a future for the next generation.

Learning from Singapore tells the inside story of the country's journey in transforming its education system from a struggling one to one that is hailed internationally as effective and successful. It is a story not of the glory of international test results, but of the hard work and tenacity of a few generations of policy makers, practitioners and teacher trainers. Despite its success, Singapore continues to reform its education system, and is willing to deal with difficult issues and challenges of change. Citing Singapore's transformation, author Pak Tee Ng highlights how context and culture affect education policy formulation and implementation. Showing how difficult education reform can be when a system needs to negotiate between competing philosophies, significant trade-offs, or paradoxical positions, this book explores the successes and struggles of the Singapore system and examines its future direction and areas of tension. The book also explores how national education systems can be strengthened by embracing the creative tensions generated by paradoxes such as the co-existence of timely change and timeless constants, centralisation and decentralisation, meritocracy and compassion, and teaching less and learning more. Learning from Singapore brings to the world the learning from Singapore-what Singapore has learned from half a century of educational change-and encourages every education system to bring hope to and secure a future for the next generation.

This book provides readers with insights into how Singapore school leaders are actively engaged in the transformation of the Singapore education system. It brings to attention crucial elucidations of the increasing demand and complexity placed on school leaders through the use of case studies. Each chapter in the book focuses on a particular issue which has become important or has gained renewed importance in the Singapore education system. The chapters first provide a background to the theme under examination and a theoretical basis for discussion. They then narrate the case that shows how school leaders interpret and implement policy initiatives in their respective schools or lead change in that area. The case studies span over a wide range of domains such as instructional leadership, assessment leadership, stakeholder engagement, professional learning communities, and school branding. The data collected from these case studies came primarily from interviews of educators in their respective school contexts, in addition to other sources of data such as artifacts. Each case study highlights descriptions, interpretations, and perspectives across school contexts, which is consistent with the proposition that school leadership is very much shaped by context. At the end of each chapter, there are guiding questions to help readers critically analyse and reflect on the main learning points of the case.