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The themes of Singapore’s model Whereas Singapore’s dire political and economic conditions in the early days are reminiscent to those experienced in many third world countries today, the quick and decisive actions of its leaders throughout its development have rarely been matched elsewhere.
The unusual effectiveness of the Singapore government has won worldwide acclaim over the years. The Institute of Management Development’s World Competitiveness Yearbook 1997, ranked Singapore as the country most effective and fastest at implementing changes in government policy. Berlin based Transparency International placed Singapore in fourth place worldwide in 2003 for absence of corruption (Mortimer, 1999:191).
To explain Singapore’s economic success, it is important to understand the predominant themes that have distinguished its governance from less successful third world countries. At the heart of the Singapore model is the social contract that was articulated between the ruling PAP run government and the people of Singapore. In essence, it said that while the people were willing to accept more government control, give up some individual rights, and work hard, the government would create the environment that would deliver prosperity and a better quality of life. As Singapore historian Jim Baker notes, “the ramifications of the new social contract were felt first on the economic front” (Baker, 2000:367).
With its exit from Malaysia, the Singapore leadership was out to convince investors that Singapore was a safe and stable country to place capital. Not only did Singapore amend its laws to guarantee the preservation of the property of foreign investors, it also demonstrated a willingness to stifle barriers to commerce such as corruption and labor unrest. The autocratic dominance of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) also provided confidence that national policies would remain stable in the short run, while continued efforts would be made to plan for Singapore’s long term challenges.
Apart from effective governance, the Singapore government exercises considerable discipline in managing the countries economic affairs. While the PAP ran on a socialist platform to get elected, it was careful of which industries the government nationalized. It has generally been the case that the government did not intervene in markets it felt the private sector was doing a good job of meeting Singapore’s economical interests.
This policy was briefly outlined in a speech titled “Survival” that former foreign minister S. Rajaratnam delivered in the early 1970s. In the speech, Rajaratnam mentioned that the government supported state run corporations like Singapore Airlines and Neptune Ocean Lines because the private sector did not have the ambition or financial backing to start such vital organizations that would make trade with the developed countries possible (Rajaratnam, 1987:237). On the other hand, as Rajaratnam noted, the government was careful not to extend these policies to peripheral industries and “crowd out” what the private sector could do more efficiently.
As a small nation with nothing more to offer than hardworking people, Singapore realized that it had to build for itself financial credibility to win the trust of international partners. Unlike Hong Kong, which had relied on the backing of the Bank of England, Singapore could not borrow on the international markets in the name of a developed country’s central bank.
To avoid inflation, the risk of devaluation, or balance of payment problems, the Singapore government was careful to prioritize its economic planning and implement each plan at stages over the long run. In doing so, it held substantial amounts of official reserves even while being an underdeveloped country with its economy in great need for public spending. This discipline was held in good times and bad. While the economies of its neighbors collapsed under huge amounts of short-term debt borrowed in foreign currency when the Asian economic crisis struck in 1997, Singapore stood out of as an island of stability in a sea of disparity.
The third theme underlining Singapore’s economic success has been the importance the government has attached to the development of Singapore’s human resources and the investments it has made in its own people.
While the PAP ruthlessly smashed all independent labor unions and consolidated what remained into a union umbrella group called the National Trade Union Congress (NTUC), which it directly controlled, it did set up technical schools as well as paid foreign corporations to train unskilled workers for higher paying jobs in electronics, ship repair, and petrochemicals. For the benefit of those who still could not get industrial jobs, the government enrolled the participation of the NTUC in creating labor intensive, “un-tradable” services, mostly for the purposes of tourism and transportation.
In building up Singapore’s human resources, the government on the one hand alleviated unemployment, but to do so it established orderliness in labor-corporate relations. The result has been the creation of a business environment where investors do not fear uprisings from their employees, while at the same time they take advantage of the incentives the Singapore government provides for them for training the people they hire.
The Singapore context
Two features of the Singapore context are worth noting in this discussion of globalisation and education. The first is that as a small island with no natural resources except a strategic location, Singapore’s survival has always depended on its usefulness to major powers.
It attracted colonial interest because it provided a well-placed base for economic penetration of the region; and the colonial experience, 1819–1963, served to deepen Singapore’s integration into Britain’s economic empire. Although there was political contestation in the 1950s over culture, languages and political issues, there was also early recognition of the value of English, the colonial language as an economic resource (Gopinathan, 1974).
Early planning for transforming Singapore’s economy from an entreport to an industrial economy in the late 1950s recognised the need for foreign capital, technology and markets. Singapore thus eschewed the ideology of economic nationalism that characterises many postcolonial states. This clear grasp of the need for economic openness to global economic forces still characterises planning in Singapore even though the country is now considered a developed economy with a per capita annual income of more than US$20,000. External trade is a major component of Singapore’s economy, and Singapore’s leaders are fond of making international comparisons as a way of benchmarking achievements.
Singapore is perhaps unique in the world economy in that it relies very heavily on trade and therefore has always had to have an open economy. Indeed, in 2001 Foreign Policy ranked Singapore as the world’s most ‘globalised’ nation. Yet, while Singapore has been an avid participant in the global economy, its policy makers have sought to ensure that Singapore is neither swamped by external forces Globalisation, Singapore and education 59 nor in danger of becoming a client-state. Official recognition of the value of English was counterbalanced by the insistence that all students learn a second language, Mandarin, Tamil or Malay (Gopinathan, 1974).
The Government’s insistence on strengthening Singapore’s cultural identity as an Asian state was, of course, due to the need to manage skilfully and sensitively Singapore’s ethnic and linguistic plurality, and the fact that Singapore had a Chinese-majority population in an area dominated by Malay–Muslim communities. Singapore’s leaders recognized early the value of the civilisational wisdom represented by Singapore’s ethnic groups. Recognition and affirmation of ethnic-cultural values then formed the basis for articulating the boundaries of Singapore’s socio-cultural identity (Gopinathan, 1995). Singapore’s leaders continue to emphasize that the Westminister model of democracy is not appropriate for all, and that nations must be allowed to develop their own forms of human rights, i.e., which take the cultural context for its expression into account. Singapore has also aligned itself to the view that the neo-Confucian ideology is a sensible alternative framework for socio-economic and political organisation.
Education policy initiatives: 1997–2004
The 1997 ‘Thinking Schools, Learning Nation’ initiative was preceded by the independent schools initiative in 1987, a decade earlier and at a time of economic slowdown. The latter an effort to break with conformity in the system and in governance terms to decentralise and introduce greater choice and school autonomy.
In 1997, the Government began a review of the entire system from pre-school education to university admission criteria and curriculum. For the first time university academics and other education personnel, particularly principals, were extensively involved. Though the information technology (IT) initiative came earlier than Prime Minister Goh’s landmark Thinking Schools Learning Nation (TSLN) speech in June 1997, and work on the ‘Desired Outcomes of Education’ had also begun earlier, the reforms can be collectively considered under the Thinking Schools, Learning Nation framework. Goh Chok Tong said in 1997 that ‘TSLN is not a slogan for the Ministry of Education.
It is a formula to enable Singapore to compete and stay ahead’ . The Ministry of Education defined its mission as ‘Moulding the Future of the Nation’, its vision as ‘Thinking Schools Learning Nation’ and its goal the ‘Desired Outcomes of Education’. The DOE was an attempt to define the aims of holistic education and in categorising the values, skills and attitudes that Singaporean students should attain at different stages of the education cycle. It was a strong restatement of the need to develop the whole child, and recognition of the wide range of talents, abilities, aptitudes and skills that students posses.
An ability driven curriculum was to be developed which would be more flexible and accommodating of variability in ability, aptitude and talent in pupils to help achieve DOE goals. ‘Thinking Schools’ were intended to ensure a more process centred environment while ‘Learning Nation’ aimed to promote a culture of continual learning beyond the school environment. This is evidence of the recognition that Singapore schools needed a much higher threshold for experimentation, innovation and uncertainty where output is not always guaranteed or even expected.
The ideal student for the knowledge-based economy would be one who is literate, numerate, IT-enabled, able to collate, synthesise, analyse, and apply knowledge to solve problems, capable of being creative and innovative, not risk-averse, be able to work both independently and in groups, and be lifelong learners. TSLN has four major thrusts: emphasis on critical and creative thinking, the use of information technology in education, national education (citizenship education) and administrative excellence.
Examples of specific changes in the curriculum implemented since 1997 are the teaching of thinking skills through infusion and Globalisation, Singapore and education 61 direct teaching, the introduction of interdisciplinary project work, the introduction of a school cluster system to decentralise administration and promote even greater autonomy. Leadership training was recast to emphasise the need to manage schools as learning organisations and the need for commitment and values; also introduced was the provision of an entitlement of 100 hours a year in-service training to keep teachers up to date and skilled. Some changes to assessment were also introduced and project work is now included in universities’ admission criteria, and university curricula have been changed to make undergraduate education broader.
New programmes have also been introduced in the polytechnics and universities to produce manpower for the new industries.
Harnessing the global economy: the institutional regulation of labour and financial markets in Singapore
Other than creating appropriate institutions for promoting economic development (e.g. the EDB and JTC), the state employed other institutional measures to enhance Singapore’s attractiveness to global capital. It did so in consultation with major TNCs. According to representatives of major TNCs interviewed by Dent (2003: 260), the transnational business community enjoys a ‘symbiotic and consultative relationship’ with the Singapore state. While these major TNCs ‘do not directly shape the government’s economic policies’, they do offer feedback and comments that can be ‘forthright, honest and brutal but non-political’. In this way, global executives are often invited by the state to ‘sit around the strategic table to supplement the government’s own thinking’. If these institutional measures and policy strategies make sense in the prevailing global economic conditions (and they often do), these executives will offer fine-tuning advice and ultimately endorsement. For example, Dent (2003) has examined how the EDB’s International Advisory Council (IAC), first established in January 1995 and composed of fourteen top TNC executives, does not exert any discernible independent leverage over Singapore’s economic policymakers, but rather offers minor suggestions on the state’s pre-designed policy blueprints and strategies. In this sense, the state enjoys a significant degree of ‘embedded autonomy’ from domestic and international economic actors that allows the state to act decisively in accordance with changing global competitive dynamics.
Personal note: I have been studying the economic model of governance of Singapore recently and have taken a great interest in it, I have just put together a few resources that I feel are very relevant for Pakistan and it's people to take some lessons from. Not everything here is relevant to us, but we should have enough courage to adopt and implement some ideas, while molding others to fit our own special case.
Sources
https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/hs2015-201...ducation-policy-a-thesis-revisited-pdbsbq.pdf
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.505.5716&rep=rep1&type=pdf
https://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/geoywc/publication/2005 Routledge Chapter.pdf
The unusual effectiveness of the Singapore government has won worldwide acclaim over the years. The Institute of Management Development’s World Competitiveness Yearbook 1997, ranked Singapore as the country most effective and fastest at implementing changes in government policy. Berlin based Transparency International placed Singapore in fourth place worldwide in 2003 for absence of corruption (Mortimer, 1999:191).
To explain Singapore’s economic success, it is important to understand the predominant themes that have distinguished its governance from less successful third world countries. At the heart of the Singapore model is the social contract that was articulated between the ruling PAP run government and the people of Singapore. In essence, it said that while the people were willing to accept more government control, give up some individual rights, and work hard, the government would create the environment that would deliver prosperity and a better quality of life. As Singapore historian Jim Baker notes, “the ramifications of the new social contract were felt first on the economic front” (Baker, 2000:367).
With its exit from Malaysia, the Singapore leadership was out to convince investors that Singapore was a safe and stable country to place capital. Not only did Singapore amend its laws to guarantee the preservation of the property of foreign investors, it also demonstrated a willingness to stifle barriers to commerce such as corruption and labor unrest. The autocratic dominance of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) also provided confidence that national policies would remain stable in the short run, while continued efforts would be made to plan for Singapore’s long term challenges.
Apart from effective governance, the Singapore government exercises considerable discipline in managing the countries economic affairs. While the PAP ran on a socialist platform to get elected, it was careful of which industries the government nationalized. It has generally been the case that the government did not intervene in markets it felt the private sector was doing a good job of meeting Singapore’s economical interests.
This policy was briefly outlined in a speech titled “Survival” that former foreign minister S. Rajaratnam delivered in the early 1970s. In the speech, Rajaratnam mentioned that the government supported state run corporations like Singapore Airlines and Neptune Ocean Lines because the private sector did not have the ambition or financial backing to start such vital organizations that would make trade with the developed countries possible (Rajaratnam, 1987:237). On the other hand, as Rajaratnam noted, the government was careful not to extend these policies to peripheral industries and “crowd out” what the private sector could do more efficiently.
As a small nation with nothing more to offer than hardworking people, Singapore realized that it had to build for itself financial credibility to win the trust of international partners. Unlike Hong Kong, which had relied on the backing of the Bank of England, Singapore could not borrow on the international markets in the name of a developed country’s central bank.
To avoid inflation, the risk of devaluation, or balance of payment problems, the Singapore government was careful to prioritize its economic planning and implement each plan at stages over the long run. In doing so, it held substantial amounts of official reserves even while being an underdeveloped country with its economy in great need for public spending. This discipline was held in good times and bad. While the economies of its neighbors collapsed under huge amounts of short-term debt borrowed in foreign currency when the Asian economic crisis struck in 1997, Singapore stood out of as an island of stability in a sea of disparity.
The third theme underlining Singapore’s economic success has been the importance the government has attached to the development of Singapore’s human resources and the investments it has made in its own people.
While the PAP ruthlessly smashed all independent labor unions and consolidated what remained into a union umbrella group called the National Trade Union Congress (NTUC), which it directly controlled, it did set up technical schools as well as paid foreign corporations to train unskilled workers for higher paying jobs in electronics, ship repair, and petrochemicals. For the benefit of those who still could not get industrial jobs, the government enrolled the participation of the NTUC in creating labor intensive, “un-tradable” services, mostly for the purposes of tourism and transportation.
In building up Singapore’s human resources, the government on the one hand alleviated unemployment, but to do so it established orderliness in labor-corporate relations. The result has been the creation of a business environment where investors do not fear uprisings from their employees, while at the same time they take advantage of the incentives the Singapore government provides for them for training the people they hire.
The Singapore context
Two features of the Singapore context are worth noting in this discussion of globalisation and education. The first is that as a small island with no natural resources except a strategic location, Singapore’s survival has always depended on its usefulness to major powers.
It attracted colonial interest because it provided a well-placed base for economic penetration of the region; and the colonial experience, 1819–1963, served to deepen Singapore’s integration into Britain’s economic empire. Although there was political contestation in the 1950s over culture, languages and political issues, there was also early recognition of the value of English, the colonial language as an economic resource (Gopinathan, 1974).
Early planning for transforming Singapore’s economy from an entreport to an industrial economy in the late 1950s recognised the need for foreign capital, technology and markets. Singapore thus eschewed the ideology of economic nationalism that characterises many postcolonial states. This clear grasp of the need for economic openness to global economic forces still characterises planning in Singapore even though the country is now considered a developed economy with a per capita annual income of more than US$20,000. External trade is a major component of Singapore’s economy, and Singapore’s leaders are fond of making international comparisons as a way of benchmarking achievements.
Singapore is perhaps unique in the world economy in that it relies very heavily on trade and therefore has always had to have an open economy. Indeed, in 2001 Foreign Policy ranked Singapore as the world’s most ‘globalised’ nation. Yet, while Singapore has been an avid participant in the global economy, its policy makers have sought to ensure that Singapore is neither swamped by external forces Globalisation, Singapore and education 59 nor in danger of becoming a client-state. Official recognition of the value of English was counterbalanced by the insistence that all students learn a second language, Mandarin, Tamil or Malay (Gopinathan, 1974).
The Government’s insistence on strengthening Singapore’s cultural identity as an Asian state was, of course, due to the need to manage skilfully and sensitively Singapore’s ethnic and linguistic plurality, and the fact that Singapore had a Chinese-majority population in an area dominated by Malay–Muslim communities. Singapore’s leaders recognized early the value of the civilisational wisdom represented by Singapore’s ethnic groups. Recognition and affirmation of ethnic-cultural values then formed the basis for articulating the boundaries of Singapore’s socio-cultural identity (Gopinathan, 1995). Singapore’s leaders continue to emphasize that the Westminister model of democracy is not appropriate for all, and that nations must be allowed to develop their own forms of human rights, i.e., which take the cultural context for its expression into account. Singapore has also aligned itself to the view that the neo-Confucian ideology is a sensible alternative framework for socio-economic and political organisation.
Education policy initiatives: 1997–2004
The 1997 ‘Thinking Schools, Learning Nation’ initiative was preceded by the independent schools initiative in 1987, a decade earlier and at a time of economic slowdown. The latter an effort to break with conformity in the system and in governance terms to decentralise and introduce greater choice and school autonomy.
In 1997, the Government began a review of the entire system from pre-school education to university admission criteria and curriculum. For the first time university academics and other education personnel, particularly principals, were extensively involved. Though the information technology (IT) initiative came earlier than Prime Minister Goh’s landmark Thinking Schools Learning Nation (TSLN) speech in June 1997, and work on the ‘Desired Outcomes of Education’ had also begun earlier, the reforms can be collectively considered under the Thinking Schools, Learning Nation framework. Goh Chok Tong said in 1997 that ‘TSLN is not a slogan for the Ministry of Education.
It is a formula to enable Singapore to compete and stay ahead’ . The Ministry of Education defined its mission as ‘Moulding the Future of the Nation’, its vision as ‘Thinking Schools Learning Nation’ and its goal the ‘Desired Outcomes of Education’. The DOE was an attempt to define the aims of holistic education and in categorising the values, skills and attitudes that Singaporean students should attain at different stages of the education cycle. It was a strong restatement of the need to develop the whole child, and recognition of the wide range of talents, abilities, aptitudes and skills that students posses.
An ability driven curriculum was to be developed which would be more flexible and accommodating of variability in ability, aptitude and talent in pupils to help achieve DOE goals. ‘Thinking Schools’ were intended to ensure a more process centred environment while ‘Learning Nation’ aimed to promote a culture of continual learning beyond the school environment. This is evidence of the recognition that Singapore schools needed a much higher threshold for experimentation, innovation and uncertainty where output is not always guaranteed or even expected.
The ideal student for the knowledge-based economy would be one who is literate, numerate, IT-enabled, able to collate, synthesise, analyse, and apply knowledge to solve problems, capable of being creative and innovative, not risk-averse, be able to work both independently and in groups, and be lifelong learners. TSLN has four major thrusts: emphasis on critical and creative thinking, the use of information technology in education, national education (citizenship education) and administrative excellence.
Examples of specific changes in the curriculum implemented since 1997 are the teaching of thinking skills through infusion and Globalisation, Singapore and education 61 direct teaching, the introduction of interdisciplinary project work, the introduction of a school cluster system to decentralise administration and promote even greater autonomy. Leadership training was recast to emphasise the need to manage schools as learning organisations and the need for commitment and values; also introduced was the provision of an entitlement of 100 hours a year in-service training to keep teachers up to date and skilled. Some changes to assessment were also introduced and project work is now included in universities’ admission criteria, and university curricula have been changed to make undergraduate education broader.
New programmes have also been introduced in the polytechnics and universities to produce manpower for the new industries.
Harnessing the global economy: the institutional regulation of labour and financial markets in Singapore
Other than creating appropriate institutions for promoting economic development (e.g. the EDB and JTC), the state employed other institutional measures to enhance Singapore’s attractiveness to global capital. It did so in consultation with major TNCs. According to representatives of major TNCs interviewed by Dent (2003: 260), the transnational business community enjoys a ‘symbiotic and consultative relationship’ with the Singapore state. While these major TNCs ‘do not directly shape the government’s economic policies’, they do offer feedback and comments that can be ‘forthright, honest and brutal but non-political’. In this way, global executives are often invited by the state to ‘sit around the strategic table to supplement the government’s own thinking’. If these institutional measures and policy strategies make sense in the prevailing global economic conditions (and they often do), these executives will offer fine-tuning advice and ultimately endorsement. For example, Dent (2003) has examined how the EDB’s International Advisory Council (IAC), first established in January 1995 and composed of fourteen top TNC executives, does not exert any discernible independent leverage over Singapore’s economic policymakers, but rather offers minor suggestions on the state’s pre-designed policy blueprints and strategies. In this sense, the state enjoys a significant degree of ‘embedded autonomy’ from domestic and international economic actors that allows the state to act decisively in accordance with changing global competitive dynamics.
Personal note: I have been studying the economic model of governance of Singapore recently and have taken a great interest in it, I have just put together a few resources that I feel are very relevant for Pakistan and it's people to take some lessons from. Not everything here is relevant to us, but we should have enough courage to adopt and implement some ideas, while molding others to fit our own special case.
Sources
https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/hs2015-201...ducation-policy-a-thesis-revisited-pdbsbq.pdf
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.505.5716&rep=rep1&type=pdf
https://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/geoywc/publication/2005 Routledge Chapter.pdf
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