Private Education Markets

The difference, we used to think, between Hong Kong and Singapore, was freedom of the markets. But Hong Kong ended up regulating some sectors more than Singapore. And now, Singapore wants to do this. Or rather, it is about to do this.

I think the main problem is that everyone in Singapore seems to want to make money more than anything else. Ranked 131 out of 178 for happiness, we're still going for the loot rather than the laughter. I've heard time and time again, "Don't be naïve, nobody thinks like that; bottom line is everyone wants to make some money, and you must be like that too."

If the whole state is a private market with invisible rules behind visible rules, what's freedom like?

The Analysis That Should Not Exist (Part II)

This should probably be called 'The Analysis That Will Not Exist'. It is interesting to compare the information released by the best schools in the world about their performance in the International Baccalaureate Diploma examinations. It is even more interesting to see what information is no longer being released.

On one hand, the best IB school in the UK has released its usual simple statistical bulletin. There is no interpretation; only the facts of the case are presented, and it is clear that they have done well. The source PDF can be found here and was linked in my previous post. It is easy to see where the school has improved, and that over the years, the school has done well indeed. The Times Educational Supplement listed this school as the best independent school in the country, and it is clear why.

On the other hand, the best IB school in Singapore has released its usual report. There is some interpretation of the facts, it is clear that they have done superlatively well... but hey, the subject statistics are missing. I wonder if this has anything to do with my previous post(s). You can compare the 2008 results (PDF here) with the 2007 results (PDF here) and see how the data presentation has changed since the last time. In aggregate, it is clear that this school has improved; it is not so clear how this change has come about (although my last post has a theory which I don't think they want me to test).

One thing is for sure. I stand by my contention that the first school probably has far better results in English HL—it is hard to beat a 90% distinction rate. They have a history of it, and statistically, I believe at a 99% confidence level that I am right. It is to be expected. Maybe, they did better in History and Economics as well.

Similarly, by analysing last year's results, I expect that the second school did far better in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics HL, and that a far larger proportion of the student body 'majored' in these disciplines (i.e., took them at Higher Level rather than Standard Level). They probably did better in Business & Management too.

These are not contentions which slight either school or are designed to insult or deride the efforts of the hard-working teachers and students. Rather, they are efforts to evaluate school strengths as they vary across the world. If my theory is correct, the Singapore Science/Math effect shown by TIMSS is a product of the local educational culture and affects the results even in other kinds of testing.

I am sure that both schools will do even better over time (unlikely though it might seem, since they have already done so well). I congratulate both schools (although I don't think I have the standing for either to take notice) on a job well done, and I do indeed believe that the best is yet to be!

The Analysis That Should Not Exist (Part I)

There is an insatiable curiosity in educational researchers that leads them to defy social norms and say the darndest things about the societies in which they live and the societies in which other people live. No doubt, this is a pronounced tendency of researchers in other disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

However, education is different; like history, it is a discipline that almost every human partakes in from birth. It is a discipline whose right of practice is almost certainly very close to being a basic human right. This is not so for many other disciplines, and in fact, if it were not for education, there would not be many other disciplines.

I have said all this to explain why educational researchers tend to strike more at our core beliefs (and with less accuracy) than most other kinds of researchers. Having said this, I am going to commit myself as one of that reckless crowd and say some things about the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) and the city-state of Singapore.

Here are some basics. The IBDP is a pre-university (or senior high school) educational programme. Full details can be found at the IBO website. It is progressive, has many things going for it, and is an ideal education system (well, at least, it is one based on ideals which are clear and widely disseminated). There are some detractors, with interesting arguments linked to malignant globalism and suchlike, but the Programme is generally taken to be A Good Thing (as far as the Asia-Pacific region is concerned, at least, and well beyond).

The main curricular structure of the Programme (besides its ideals and worldwide goals) revolves around three core disciplines. These are Theory of Knowledge (TOK), the Extended Essay (EE) and Creativity, Action, Service (CAS). There are six academic groups which can be summarised briefly thus: Literature, Language, Humanities, Sciences, Mathematics, Aesthetics. Students must take a discipline from each group (although the last group can be replaced by another of the first five groups). I've written more about this in a previous post.

Singapore is known to do well in Mathematics and Sciences. This is a key finding that has been repeated many times; the Third International Mathematics & Science Survey (TIMSS) has provided evidence that this is so (and yes, it has been much proclaimed in PR pieces like this). My conclusion would be that a Singapore school that takes in average Singapore students should outperform (on average) most schools overseas in the IBDP groups 4 and 5 (Sciences and Mathematics). Perhaps more accurately, if the students from Singapore's top 5% are matched against the students from anyone else's top 5%, then the Singaporeans should outscore them in standardised testing.

This leads to a predictable situation. A majority of Singapore students taking the IBDP would take two Science subjects and one Mathematics subject; having done so, the quality of the average grade in these areas would outweigh any deficits in any other areas. Singapore students should do very well then, but only if they concentrate on scoring in the sciences and mathematics. I am not so sure they would do as well in the humanities, literatures and languages which the IBDP offers.

Again, this prediction is made based on very general statistics. However, it is possible to pit the best independent IB school in the UK against the best independent IB school in Singapore. The head-to-head analysis looked interesting, so I carried it out. Guess what I found...

Apocalypse When?

It's amazing what kind of documents I find cluttering my hard drive. I was searching for documents on education when I came across this stubby little piece which doesn't seem connected to anything else. I'm not even sure how complete it is, or what its provenance is. But some of the ideas in it are quite interesting.

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Apocalypse

Towards the end of the 20th, and in the early years of the 21st century, a confluence of mathematics, the natural sciences and the social sciences began streaming towards a post-modern form of apocalypse. Of course, being post-modern, the apocalypse (‘unveiling’ in classical Greek) took the form of a growing intimation that the end of history was at end, and that after this glorious moment of our times would come chaos and then the fall of night.

The architects of this world view were a curious mixture of mostly French and American intellectuals, who though hailing from related intellectual traditions, tended towards opposite trends in terms of optimism and pessimism – the French were typically negative about finding meaning in the various disciplines, while the Americans were typically positive about finding the ultimate underpinnings of the universe.

These proponents of potential disaster and the end of things thus included thinkers such as the French topologist Rene Thom (catastrophe theory), American social philosopher Francis Fukuyama (‘the End of History’), [long list of contributors in fields as diverse as metaphysics, biology, semantics… ] Their conclusions included both the utopian idea that the world would slowly converge towards the adoption of universal standards of political and financial governance (thus putting an end to social change and hence ‘history’), and the dystopian idea that the exploding complexity of the human world would in the end make it impossible to stave off some form of anthropogenic calamity – microbiological, ecological, or radiological in nature.

The fact that two so very different ‘endings’ could be postulated, and yet still not exclude each other, was a pointer towards one main theme. The theme which heralded the start of the new millennium was ‘complexity’. From the newly rejuvenated biological disciplines came the realization that the mathematical concept of sudden escalation into chaos could be used to describe populations of living things. It was a short step to link this to the old maxim, “Change is the only constant.”

From catastrophe and cessation to chaos and complexity was perhaps a journey only the intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals could appreciate. But what did the rise of an increasingly global economy and the ascendance of multipolarity in all spheres of human achievement mean to the man in the street? It meant change, and with it, confusion.

While the intellectuals were having their fun and games, unlikely opposition arose in the form of Al-Qaeda and the 2002 airborne destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City. It became clear that Fukuyama’s romantic ‘end of history’ was to be delayed by the resurgence of tribal enmities, and that the new millennium would turn out to be more fractious than hitherto expected.

Even before this tragic incident, it was by no means certain that any form of global homogeneity would develop. The collapse of financial markets throughout booming Asia in 2001 sent a strong signal that too rapid a rush towards a truly global economy would require a lot more than unfettered multilateral trade.

Politics, economics… even the sciences were not immune. Luddites in Europe fought against genetically modified crops while Americans panicked over misplaced ex-Soviet nuclear devices. If anything, the new millennium looked set to be an even more bewildering kaleidoscope of viewpoints and ideas than the previous one.

Yet, there were voices of sanity. Managing change became a hot topic as the social sciences decided that the unpredictable and inevitable could be surmounted by cultural flexibility and organic structures. In the field of education, experts like Gardner, Fullan [another long list] pointed out that humans were adaptable creatures, and that given an appropriate education, would survive and thrive even in a world like this.

Asia found its voice in the most unlikely of places. Singapore’s then-Prime Minister Goh said at the 7th International Conference on Thinking: “We have to prepare ourselves for a bracing future - a future of intense competition and shifting competitive advantages, a future where technologies and concepts are replaced at an increasing pace, and a future of changing values. Education and training are central to how nations will fare in this future. Strong nations and strong communities will distinguish themselves from the rest by how well their people learn and adapt to change.”

Japan’s ex-Prime Minster Nakasone weighed in with, “The era will be a composite of globalism and nationalism. Our task at this turning point is, therefore, to think about education, culture and science with this future in mind." And in Singapore, long-used to being at the mercy of the larger world, people began to find answers to UN Ambassador Mahbubani’s question, “Can Asians think?”

It has always been a tenet of the Singapore Education System (SES) that human resources, being the only major resource of the country, should be developed to their highest economic potential. As the SES evolved, the measure of economic potential also changed – and this was reflected in the desired outcomes of education. In the initial years, national survival meant mass technical and scientific education, with an emphasis on literally nation-building skills such as engineering. As Singapore became a more established nation in the late 1970s and 1980s, special programmes to harness talent began to appear: junior colleges, humanities scholarships, a gifted education programme.

But this emphasis on hothousing the academic side of the intellect began to shift in the 1990s. The question of “Can Asians think?” was directed at functional thinking for the post-modern future – thinking which could chart a course through an age of complexity, or find new solutions to new problems. This kind of thinking was not exactly prevalent in the SES.

It had become apparent that the eight nominally-independent schools approved by Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE) were being innovative, but perhaps insufficiently so [several research references], with one or two leading the pack and some almost indistinguishable from the non-independent schools. Re-enter the Ministry with a brand new scheme. In December 2002, the MOE approved the setting up of Integrated Programmes in four schools: “The introduction of Integrated Programmes will increase diversity and add choice to Singapore's education system. The Integrated Programme, which allows secondary students to proceed to Junior College without taking the 'O' levels, caters to those who can benefit from a less structured Upper Secondary / Junior College programme. The hallmark of the Integrated Programmes should be innovation and the provision of a holistic education.”

It was as if innovation and a holistic education had never existed in Singapore. With one statement, the Emperor had been shown not to have any clothes. Or was this really the case? This study seeks to examine the background to, and the implementation of the Integrated Programmes in the context of their times. The following questions arise at this point:

1. Is the concept of Integrated Programmes an appropriate and well-conceived educational response to the global sociopolitical situation of the early 21st century?


2. How have these programmes been implemented in schools, and what distinct functional and philosophical differences are there in each implementation?


3. What modifications and innovations in school structural and organizational models have been necessitated by these implementations?


4. To what extent have these implementation models met with, or are likely to meet with, actual or predicted success?


5. What are the likely national outcomes of these programmes and their probable effect on the future of education in Singapore?

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Such interesting stuff. I have been unable to elicit further information about the piece, or to find any sequelae. What a pity.

A Real Hoot

Yes, that was Alan Ayckbourn's comedic interlude, Relatively Speaking, which I just caught at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. It's an old play (first staged in 1965), yet simple and hence timelessly Brit. That kind of farce never dies, mock as you would. Here's an outline, courtesy of the BBC.

Ah, I wish I were young again! Sigh. I remember the days I used to have season tickets to such things.

This Island Race

Yes, I've been reading a lot of Churchill these days. A quintessential leader for dark times, his caustic wit and declamatory style burn through the fog like a beacon on a hill. It was he who appropriated the phrase 'this island race' for the British, he who said, "Do your worst, and we shall do our best."

I am a man of two parts, geographically and literarily; born on one island and living on another, I find the poetry of the first almost sufficient for all things and the poetry of the second infuriatingly sparse in resonant metaphor. Which island is it that goes with 'race'? It might seem a trivial issue. But listen to this, taken from Shakespeare's Richard II, II(1):

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands, –
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

Who could read this, born upon the 'sceptred isle', and not wish that it were true in every detail? Then again, my second island too has poets. One of them wrote these lines:

Peoples settled here,
Brought to this island
The bounty of these seas,
Built towers topless as Ilium's.

They make, they serve,
They buy, they sell.

Despite unequal ways,
Together they mutate,
Explore the edges of harmony,
Search for a centre;
Have changed their gods,
Kept some memory of their race
In prayer, laughter, the way
Their women dress and greet.
They hold the bright, the beautiful,
Good ancestral dreams
Within new visions,
So shining, urgent,
Full of what is now.

It is hard to choose between one island race and another, at times. One has a surfeit of history, a long and tangled tale told in dark rooms; the other has an earnest of history to come, but the shadow of doom upon it, that it might fade before that earnest comes to pass. It is hard; it is hard. Sometimes, though, it is worse.

Not Knowing Jack

I don't often make political commentary in this blog. Once in a while, however, I find myself sufficiently perturbed to comment on political matters.

Recently, the lawfully-elected parliament of the urbanised Machiavellian city-state of Singapore has decided that its ministers should be granted a salary increase of about S$1m over and above their existing salary of about S$1.2m. (At the time of this writing, US$1 is about S$1.50.) The arguments for the pay increase range from dubious to clever, to competent and valid. It is not my place to discuss whether or not these ministers should have their pay increased - that issue has been adequately covered elsewhere in the blogosphere and I shan't be providing links: you can easily find them in the world of Tomorrow, for example.

But there was one particular argument which stood out for what I felt was its inherent... hubris, perhaps? This argument came from the otherwise relatively competent, relatively erudite and relatively informative mouth of Member of Parliament K Shanmugam. You can find his speech here in its entirety.

If you look at that linked document and scroll down to paragraphs 33 and 34 (don't worry, they're numbered very nicely in the document), you will find this:

[33] After the 17th Century, the British reformed their system and by early 20th Century, a top Minister like Churchill was earning £5,000. I am told that that would be about £350,000 in today’s terms. That is roughly what our MR4 was. But British Ministerial salaries have however not kept pace with inflation. It is probably not politically feasible in the UK. But that does not make it right. As an aside, if you read Roy Jenkins’ biography of Churchill, you will see that Churchill also made money by writing. For example, he received an advance of £8,000 for a book (about £550,000 now) in early 20th Century just before he took office. He wrote several books, and was a good, sought after writer.

[34] Likewise in the US. In 1960, President Kennedy was getting US$150,000. If Presidential salaries had kept pace with inflation, the salary would be higher than the US$450,000 that the US President now gets.

What's wrong with those two paragraphs? I guess I instinctively shy away from comparing the gentlemen who run Singapore with Sir Winston Churchill and President John F Kennedy. The problems tackled by Churchill (for example, the threat of Hitler and the isolation of Britain) and Kennedy (the Cold War and the Cuban incident) seem somehow larger than the economic concerns of a small nation-state, no matter how important it has made itself to the global community.

I am sure that Singapore has always punched above its weight, ever since Foreign Minister Sinnathamby Rajaratnam declared that intent to the United Nations in the early years of Singapore's existence as an independent state. I am sure that for many people it is a nice place to live. But I am not at all sure that Singapore's former Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, and Singapore's current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, are comparable in terms of ability or potential with Churchill or Kennedy.

Don't get me wrong. There are lots of sources which will tell you about the negative sides of these leaders. It is always fashionable to demythologize in hindsight, and it is always a good thing for history that this is done. It is difficult to say what Lee (or Lee) would have done as the leader of Britain under siege by Hitler's Luftwaffe, or as the leader of the US when Soviet missiles began to appear on Cuba. It is easy to say unflattering things about any of the politicians in this post; they are all human beings with various virtues, flaws and other qualities. We can make any number of powerful but irrelevant ad hominem attacks on the historical reputations of these men, and a few might be legal as well as true.

But some points of direct comparison can be made, based on Shanmugam's speech as cited above. He doesn't tell us much, but he tells us that Churchill was a good writer. Churchill had a 60-year political career. These two points - political longevity and literary prowess - are the only points Shanmugam raises. Correction: he raises the latter and very tangentially implies the former, but the former point holds, nevertheless.

In Singapore, PM-emeritus Lee Kuan Yew still continues to draw a Churchillian salary, continues to have an extended political career, and has written a few books. The first volume of his political autobiography is called The Singapore Story.

Well, here is a reasonably fair account of Churchill's writings. The article seems to say that his historical writings are of obvious value although tainted with some equally obvious flaws. He wrote histories which were ennobled by his gift of rhetoric and demeaned by his subjectivity, but they were such good books that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature on their strength. Churchill's honours (and his legacy) can be evaluated against Lee's by any reader here, and you can form your own judgement about whether one deserves the pay of the other.

Somehow though, when I evaluate paragraph 34, Lloyd Bentsen's one quote-that-will-live-forever comes to mind. For all JFK's flaws, a fair portion of the subsequent fate of the world was in his hands. And history would probably have to say to any one of Singapore's ministers, "I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Minister, you're no Jack Kennedy."