Debate on President’s Address: Chan Chun Sing on a ‘resilient and sustainable meritocracy’

In an increasingly volatile and uncertain environment, Singapore must provide multiple pathways with diverse metrics of success, while equipping its people with the life skills they need to thrive in the 21st century, said Education Minister Chan Chun Sing. Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday (Apr 18), he stressed the need for Singaporeans to chart their own way forward, according to their own strengths and talents. To keep the Singaporean meritocracy resilient and sustainable, he said the Government will focus on six key areas. Firstly, it will continue to move away from evaluating diverse abilities by any single, narrow and static metric to an education system that is more flexible and provides multiple pathways to cater to different learner profiles. Secondly, the Government will continue to create more diverse education pathways to allow greater porosity throughout life. Thirdly, Singapore will invest in its people throughout life, and step up efforts to help them stay relevant and competitive. Mr Chan said the Government’s efforts alone will not be enough. It will need the partnership of industry, the innovation of institutions and the growth mindset of the individuals. “Industries cannot wait passively for the ‘perfect worker’ to be developed for them. They must be active partners in shaping students’ interests and skillsets even before they enter the workforce … After that, industry must also be prepared to invest the time and resources to support our workers to upskill continually,” he said. Fourthly, Singapore must fairly reward the “heart” and “hand” work and ensure it is commensurate with the “head” work. Fifthly, Singaporeans must always do more for those with less and uplift the less privileged. Lastly, Singapore needs to imbue the right values in all its people from young, so that they can grow up to become individuals who are willing to give back to society and create more opportunities for others. The Government will strengthen the school cluster system to enable better pooling and sharing of resources and allow more students to benefit from wider networks and build their social capital. Mr Chan described the Singapore Story as a “living story”, saying the country is never complacent to think that it can ever stop improving the system. “The mark of our success is not just how well we enable this generation to achieve success, but how well we establish the conditions for the next generation to be even more successful than us,” he said.