Lee Kuan Yew’s achievements have been the subject of much global discussion since his recent death. But one aspect of his success has been little mentioned: the investments that he, and his successors, made in education.
SINGAPORE – Lee Kuan Yew’s achievements have been the subject of much global discussion since his recent death. But one aspect of his success has been little mentioned: the investments that he, and his successors, made in education. His strategy, he would often remark, was “to develop Singapore’s only available natural resource, its people.”
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Today, Singapore routinely ranks among the top performers in educational attainment, as measured by the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Moreover, though a city-state of just five million people, Singapore boasts two universities among the top 75 in the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the same number as China, Japan, and Germany.
How did that happen? What did Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore do right?
For starters, it should be emphasized that Singapore’s education system was not designed de novo by Lee Kuan Yew and his colleagues. Rather, it was built on the very solid foundations inherited from Singapore’s British colonial past. In contrast to many of his contemporaries among post-colonial leaders, Lee Kuan Yew was not afraid to embrace whatever elements from that past that would prove useful to the nation-building enterprise.
Nowhere is this approach more evident than in education. Many of the country’s premier educational institutions – for example, the National University of Singapore (founded in1905), Raffles Institution (founded in 1823), and the Anglo-Chinese School (founded in 1886) – significantly predate independence in 1963. Moreover,
the curriculum for secondary education is modeled on the British O level and A level qualifications (with some adaptation to account for the generally higher average attainment levels of students in Singapore). And, though infrastructure is by no means neglected, the primary focus of educational investment is students and teachers.
A national system of generous scholarships enables the best students to avail themselves of an education at some of the world’s premier universities, even as Singapore develops its own world-class institutions. Moreover, with starting salaries above the national median, the teaching profession attracts, develops, and retains some of the best graduates.
