“Today, we face our own 1945 moment” boldly stated the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres in 2020. Since then, other sources have increasingly referenced calls to embrace a “Beveridge moment” from papers such as “Unequal Britain” (Duffy et al, 2021) to newspaper columnists, political papers and a radio interview I heard just this week, all suggesting our current political, socio-economic complexities offer a similar paradigm shift to that facing the nation in 1945; all inferring a signal for a comparable 5-year programme of reform and reconstruction.
Now I love a historical reference and there’s no doubting embracing a wartime rhetoric has worked for many in this country over the years, but a recent visit to Singapore courtesy of the British Council’s Building Educational Bridges Partnership and a passing knowledge of modern history tells me there is considerably more to solving our current complexities than soundbites and memories. The chance to observe another culture and country that has redefined itself in the face of significant political and cultural change enabled this school leader a moment of reflection on what can be learnt; a moment to consider how we might gain hope and inspiration from a former colony and now world-leading education system and economy.
After a history too complex for this blog (but fascinating), Singapore became independent in 1965. Since that point, its journey from ‘third world to first’ (Yew, L., 2011) in one generation is one of Asia’s great success stories. The subsequent rapid and highly successful transformation of their education system and consistently high levels of performance (PISA, TIMSS etc.) have garnered international respect and interest.
It is an outward-looking cohesive nation with a diverse population of c.6 million. ‘Singapore’s education system aims to bring out the best in every child’ (Ministry of Education, 2022) and does so through just 181 primary schools, 136 secondaries and 27 mixed level or junior colleges. The system has regenerated throughout its nearly 70-year history from ‘survival’ and ‘efficiency’ driven first phases creating the workforce and skills needed to build a nation to the later ‘ability’ and ‘aspiration’ phases which placed education at the heart of a national identity providing the knowledge and skills to compete globally.
