Speech by Minister for Education, Mr Chan Chun Sing, at the Teaching Scholarship Presentation Ceremony

1.A very good afternoon to all of you, and congratulations to all the scholarship recipients.

2.Today, I am going to start a bit differently as you start on your journey with the teaching fraternity. I am going to ask you a couple of questions to get you thinking about your role, your mission, and the future of the teaching service.

3.In a few years time, when you come back as a full-fledged teacher, what do you imagine yourself doing? First question, what do you think your class will be like? How many students and what kind of students? Will you be teaching in a room, or outside a room? In the Internet space or in the physical space? Where do you think you will spend most of your time?

4.Second question, in a few years' time, who do you think will be your partners? Who do you think will be the people who will need to work with you? Would it be your fellow colleagues, your seniors? Would it be parents, from the most demanding to the most supportive? Or will it include people in the industries who may be potential employers of your students and their future workers?

5.Third question, who do you think you will be teaching? Would it be mainstream school students, students with special needs, or students in special schools? What if we tell you that when you walk into the classroom of the future, chances are that your students may even know more than you? If so, what is your job and what is your role? These are many questions which I hope you will contemplate as you prepare yourself for this journey.

6.I can describe to you the environment of tomorrow's world. If you are here because you were inspired by what your current teachers do, very good. However, I will also say that in time to come, if not already, you have to reimagine the role of a teacher and the ways that you have to teach.

7.It will certainly be true that when you walk into a classroom, some and maybe most of your students may know more than you in certain areas, and your job will not be just a didactic transmission of content knowledge. It will also be true that you will have more diverse student profiles from the higher abilities to the higher needs. It will also be true that you will have to deal with parents with more diverse aspirations and expectations, from the most supportive to the most demanding.

8.It will be true that you must be humble enough to know that you do not know very much beyond the teaching service and will find it hard to guide your students. You will have to leverage on the collective capabilities of the people beyond the teaching service, and you will certainly need to complement your abilities with technology and data.

9.Today in the teaching service, as with throughout the centuries, every education system has to face a trilemma. I hope that in your generation, you will master the art of breaking this trilemma. What is this trilemma?

10.The trilemma is that in order for us to deliver education, we seek to achieve at least three things - quality, speed, and accessibility. It is a trilemma because most education models can give you two out of three, but seldom three out of three. If you have high quality and high speed, chances are that it is not accessible nor affordable. If you are high quality and affordable, chances are that you are slow. If you are fast and affordable, chances are that the quality is not very high.

11.Today, we want to see how we can leverage technology to complement our strong pedagogical practice to break this trilemma whereby we can mass customise our education and mass personalise our education to the unique needs of the individual. We will henceforth break free from this dictum that we are teaching to the average. When we are teaching to the average in class with diverse needs and abilities, 50 per cent of the students may find it too difficult and 50 per cent of them not so, and we are 100 per cent off the mark.

12.Can you imagine a situation whereby your teaching practice is customised to each and every individual enabled by technology, stretching the able and lifting the high needs. Is that a very far-fetched vision? No, it is not. In today's technological possibilities, we are already on the threshold. We need to apply technology intelligently in the areas to complement our capabilities - but not think that technology will solve our problems.

13.Those of you who have already gone to schools will know that the high ability students will take to technology like fish to water. For the high needs students, we will need to start off with high touch engagement and high trust relationships. Therein lies your art and skills as a practitioner in teaching, who has the mastery of your tools and is able to apply them accordingly. This why I encourage every student, including our teaching scholarship holders and our members of the teaching service to rise to the occasion to be three things: be a Connector, be a Contributor, and be a Creator.

14.Let me start with being a Creator. I want everyone of you to have the confidence and commitment that in the teaching service, you will always seek to create something new in service of our teaching needs, of our people, and our country. All of you have the ability to do so. In order to create something new and relevant, you must deeply understand the needs and capabilities of our society, and our people.

15.There should be absolutely no reason why you should graduate university answering yesterday's questions with yesterday's answers. Your job is to go forth in universities and beyond, to remember to constantly find tomorrow's questions and develop tomorrow's answers ahead of time. It is the same for the teaching practice and your pedagogical practice. I hope that everyone of you will come up with new and innovative ways to master technology and data in service of the teaching profession.

16.To inspire you, let me tell you this story of Singapore Polytechnic. Today, Singapore Poly has put their materials online where students can access them anytime, anywhere. On top of that, they are able to know the progress of each student, so that they will focus their teaching and learning on the areas that their students are weak at, instead of trying to teach to the average. If Singapore Polytechnic can do that, there are many lessons for us to learn and engage in. They have started a vision way before Covid to be bold, to create something new for teaching and learning.

17.Next, I hope that you will be a Connector. We must be humble enough to know that we will never have all the capabilities you desire in the teaching service. Once I visited NIE, and a trainee teacher shared that her most feared question by her student was this: "Teacher, you told me to do this, have you done it before? Teacher, you told me that ITE, Polytechnics, and Universities, are all multiple pathways to success, have you been through them all?"

18.I certainly don't expect you to be a jack of all trades. Do not depend on your own strength because you will never be able to accomplish it all. Learn the art of building relations in order to mobilise the energies and capacities of the parents, the industries, and other partners beyond the school to enrich your teaching. Learn to work as a team - as a connector - whereby none of us in the teaching service will be on an island on our own, where we feel that we have to overcome all the pressures and expectations on our own. Today in the teaching service, we work as a team where everyone brings something to the team, bringing something unique.

19.This brings me to my last point, where I hope all of you will be a Contributor. I want all of you to remember that you have something special and have something to contribute to the team. Each and every one of you in the years to come, must bring something to the table to enrich the teaching profession. We will have a diversity of strengths and capabilities which will allow us to be more adaptive and more resilient as circumstances evolve. Never believe that whatever we teach you will be eternally relevant to the school. Our job is to make sure that we continuously challenge ourselves to bring something better for tomorrow.

20.On that note, long may it be that you be a Creator, a Connector, and a Contributor. Last but not least, I want to remind all of us that teaching is not faint-hearted. There will be ups and there will be downs, just like any other career. I want all of you to remember that you must keep learning and keep growing. When you are no longer learning and growing, even as you pour your hearts out to teach, you will get tired. When I visit you in the schools, if I do not see the sparkle in your eyes, I will not need to look at the children because they will not have the sparkle in their eyes.

21.When you keep learning and are an exemplar of lifelong learning, your students will be inspired to be lifelong learners. So, may you serve long in MOE, in meaningful service of our people and our country.

22.On that note, thank you very much. Congratulations.

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