Once upon a time, some people thought of creating the educational paradise and so they tried – in Singapore!
The city-country is famous worldwide for its very good levels on Pisa reports and so on, but I never imagined that education would take such a big and central place on a national agenda. Soon, I understood that Singapore lacks natural resources and therefore absolutely needs to enhance its human capital to be productive, competitive and stay up front. So the government has been, and still is, massively involved in creating the best possible educational ecosystem. They fund national universities, they give budgets to schools to pay for entrepreneurship/community service/financial literacy/etc. programs to complement the core curriculum, they enable youth centers to be created, they support the very energetic startup scene that is emerging, … Money isn’t a problem – sometimes investments are clearly made without enough assessment or social impact measurement, but overall it provides many great opportunities to citizens. And they are all very much concerned by this issue, making education one of the key values in Singaporean families. Parents pay for « tuition » (private tutoring) for their precious kids to be the best. Children and youngsters work very hard and non-stop to improve their curriculum, get awards, master new skills, and expand their competences. But there are downsides to this first very appealing portrait: many suicides, ngos needed to help young people find hobbies, lack of empathy and need for community service programs, etc.
Education seems to serve bigger interests than the ones of the individuals who often seem lost in this competitive environment. They do not know how or why to learn which, in the end, could be a real problem when companies and state departments will need to innovate. Hopefully, many young entrepreneurs are leading the sector towards a more balanced situation by creating innovative startups, incubators and apps to help young people enjoy learning and define purpose. (Detail of projects in following posts)
Singapore appears as a highly dynamic place to start building educational initiatives: there is financial support, very talented partners and collaborators, incredible intercultural spirit to enrich your project, vision for the future, a “hungry” market and playful competition. Singapore could be a great open door for the ones interested in making it in Asia. Almost no excuses to miss out!