AS A mother of a two-year-old boy, the recent slew of changes to primary school education interested me greatly.
One change, in particular, stood out: All primary school teachers hired from 2015 - when my son will be in primary 3 - will have to be graduates.
The other measures announced on Sept 25 by Education Minister Ng Eng Hen as part of a retooling of primary school education included going fully single- session and introducing co- curricular activities for children from the minute they hit school.
It is high time that more emphasis is placed on teacher quality in primary schools. secondary schools and junior colleges have long had the cream of teachers. Currently, only 55 per cent of primary school teachers are graduates, compared to 91 per cent in secondary schools.
Sure, the proportion has been increasing over the years, and among new primary school teaching hires, 69 per cent have a university degree.
primary school education in Singapore has long been viewed as important, but not critical, to shaping a child's outcome in the education system. But that view seems to have shifted, and this should be applauded.
A look at high-performing education systems around the world shows why primary school teacher quality counts.
Consultancy firm McKinsey, which did a study last year on the factors behind the world's best performing systems, found that in Finland, all teachers have to have a master's degree. The country also recruits teachers from the top 10 per cent of each cohort.
The result? Finnish children, who enter preschool only at age six and primary school at seven, and study for just four to five hours a day, top the world in assessments of reading, mathematics, science and problem-solving by the time they are 15 years old.
In South Korea, primary school teachers are more highly regarded than those who work in secondary schools because the system emphasises building a strong foundation. It recruits teachers from the top 5 per cent of each cohort, and all primary school teachers have to be graduates.
In the United States, teachers from a programme which targets graduates from top universities get significantly better outcomes from their students even though they have a short period of training, work in the toughest schools and have no prior experience.
For sure, Singapore does not do too badly. Our students come out tops in international exams for mathematics and science, for instance, even though the system spends less on each student than almost any developed country.
So the system works. But more can be done, and this is where upgrading of primary school teachers comes in.
Research in the US, for instance, shows that if two average eight-year-olds are given different teachers - a high performer and one who does not do as well - the student's performance would diverge by more than 50 percentile points within three years.
Other studies have shown that teacher quality matters more when a child is younger.
That is not to knock the current lot of teachers who are not graduates. They are doing a good job, and the fact that our system is world-class is as much down to them, as anyone else.
But, as with everything else, there is room for improvement, and upping the quality of teachers at the lower level is one big area.
Hiring graduates only, as National Institute of Education director Lee Sing Kong put it, is a timely and significant evolutionary development, but not a radical departure from existing models.
He said that in future, classroom teachers, not just university lecturers, will have to do more school- based research, and this alone will require teachers to be better trained.
With the shift in emphasis in the education system - it now aims to impart not just exam smarts, but soft skills such as communication - hiring quality teachers is more important than ever.
For instance, in my interviews over the years with teachers here, for instance, I have found that many speak - and teach - in Singlish.
As a result, many of their young charges pick up this habit of speech in their formative years, and by the time steps are taken to correct this, it is usually too late.
For sure, not all graduates speak good English, so the Ministry of Education has to make sure that its hiring process is tailored towards getting the talent that will be equipped to impart the soft skills.
Perhaps the biggest indication that the move to up quality is the right one comes from teachers themselves. Many non-graduate teachers in service have already taken up degree programmes, part-time or otherwise.
Radin Mas primary teacher Siti Mas Laily, 27, is one. She is doing a part- time degree in English and psychology.
'My diploma is in IT, but I am teaching English, so I felt a need to improve my content knowledge,' she said.
As of August this year, 448 have applied for professional development leave to upgrade themselves, more than double the 214 last year.
For all these reasons, I am excited about the way primary school education is going. Not only will the emphasis shift subtly away from exam results, I think children will be a lot happier studying at the primary school of the future. They will get a chance to learn from the best and get a crack at picking up activities that could liven up school too.
All this, and they might not even have to get out of bed at an ungodly hour, what with the move to single-session schools.
Now, for an encore, the Education Ministry need look no further than to take a crack at raising standards at a lower, but just as critical level: preschools.
Then, our education system will be world-class from top to bottom.
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