NTUC to run 20 PCF kindergartens

KINDERGARTENS run by Singapore's largest kindergarten operator have brought in an external consultant to keep their enrolment numbers up.

Twenty such centres of the PAP Community Foundation (PCF) in Jurong and Bukit Timah will now be managed by NTUC First Campus, which itself runs 50 preschools.

NTUC has overhauled the curriculum, added more training hours for teachers and renovated the centres. The cost was paid for by fund-raising.

Now called Little Wings, these kindergartens will have a uniform curriculum for its 2,200 youngsters, with teachers able to move between centres.

Its 600 nursery students have gone through a year-long trial run of the programme.

Other PCF kindergartens are not undergoing an overhaul of curriculum as yet.

Finance Minister and Member of Parliament (Jurong GRC) Tharman Shanmugaratnam said that other MPs in his constituency - Mr Lim Boon Heng and Ms Grace Fu - along with MPs for Bukit Timah- Holland GRC Lim Swee Say and Yu-Foo Yee Shoon, agreed to pool resources to 'raise the quality of the programme' and reverse a gradual decline in enrolment.

The 20 centres are in their wards. Explaining the decline, he said: 'Some of it is demographic - some parents are moving up to upper middle class and are able to afford private centre fees.

'We were no longer growing and in some centres we were seeing a gradual decline year by year...We wanted to act early to reverse the decline.'

NTUC First was picked because of its expertise, said Mr Tharman.

The new curriculum focuses on learning through play and hands-on activities. Pupils are divided into smaller groups. Before, teachers would teach all 25 pupils together.

Said one teacher, Madam Ng Eng Moi, 50: 'Children get to move around the class to do different activities which keep them excited.'

Fees will remain at $105 per month. A new $40,000 retrenchment relief fund will help parents pay school fees even if they have lost their jobs.

Mr Chua Shih Yang, 33, a coffeeshop owner, has already seen a change in his four-year-old son, Rui Heng, who is attending the nursery pilot programme.

'He's talkative now and enjoys learning more,' said Mr Chua.

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Instilling values a complex task

I READ with concern last Saturday's letter supporting the suspension of all sexuality education programmes offered by external agencies ('Schools should stop offering them altogether').

Some of the questionable assumptions underlying the writer's criticisms of the external programmes include:

• Schools and parents are the primary sources of information on gender and sexuality for young people.
• Focusing on mainstream views and values of Singapore society will help students learn them and adopt them without question.
• Making students aware of alternative views and lifestyles is as good as promoting them.
• All parents and teachers are sufficiently willing and able to teach their children the best values concerning gender and sexuality. These assumptions underestimate the complexity of values education in our contemporary society. The social and cultural environment in which young people are informally educated consists of more than parents and teachers. In today's information society, a child's identity develops under influences that far exceed the censorship of well-meaning adults. Television, cinema, popular music and the Internet, for example, are powerful and pervasive transmitters of popular culture and cosmopolitan values. Such media images of gender roles and sexual behaviour draw on a range of liberal and conservative perspectives. To what extent does the formal curriculum in schools teach students to critically analyse these diverse media messages so as to help them make responsible, well- informed decisions for themselves? Censoring all alternative views would be contrary to the Ministry of Education's (MOE) push for critical thinking. If argumentative essays at the secondary and junior college levels can encourage students to engage both sides of the 'pro-life' and 'pro- choice' abortion debate, why should not this balanced approach be similarly extended to the controversial topics of gender roles and sexual orientation? A mature curriculum for sexuality education should reflect not only the mainstream views and values of Singapore's society but also an educated awareness of alternative views based on well- researched knowledge and information. Perhaps, MOE would be wise to consult students for their views on what ought to be included in a 21st century sexuality education curriculum. Our children are often more precocious than we give them credit for. Silencing their views in favour of the dominant conservatism is itself a kind of prejudice against the ability of young people to think for themselves. Warren Mark Liew

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NUS is 10th in Asia varsity rankings

A NEW ranking of Asian universities that has the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 10th place has raised eyebrows among academics here.

They are questioning how Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd (QS), the compilers of the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings, gave NUS such a low ranking.

The university was placed fourth in Asia in a worldwide survey done last year - by the same company. It was listed as No. 30 globally in that ranking.

However, in QS.com's latest ranking of varsities in Asia, schools in Hong Kong took three of the top four spots, ahead of the University of Tokyo (Todai), a perennial regional powerhouse.

The Nanyang Technological University was placed 14th - it finished 12th in Asia in the worldwide survey last year. The Singapore Management University was unplaced. (See box)

QS head of research Ben Sowters said the reason NUS dropped down the charts is that new criteria reflecting Asian contexts were used to calculate the rankings.

For example, he said, many Asian university faculty members lose out on the citations per faculty criterion, which is used in the world university rankings.

This is because many write and publish research papers in their local language and are therefore not cited as often in international journals, which are mostly in English.

To reflect this, the new criteria of papers per faculty and citations per paper, which measure both productivity and quality, were introduced.

But NUS president Tan Chorh Chuan said the university is still trying to understand how its 10th- placed ranking was derived.

'Clearly, survey methodologies will affect the rankings of individual universities, but for NUS, all other indicators show that we are indeed a leading global university centred in Asia,' he said.

In total, nine categories were measured: Asian academic peer review, papers per faculty, citations per paper, student-faculty ratio, Asian employer review, international faculty, international students, inbound exchange students and outbound exchange students.

NUS received perfect scores in five categories: peer review, recruiter review, papers per faculty and international faculty and international students. However, it lost out in the faculty-to-student ratio.

Professor Simon Marginson, an authority on higher education at Melbourne University, also expressed surprise at the rankings.

He said: 'This is great for Hong Kong, which does have an excellent university system, but even the strongest supporter of universities in the island would not claim this kind of primacy over Singapore and Japan.'

He added: 'NUS is respected throughout the higher education world. It is emerging as the most globally effective university in Asia and has very strong and improving performance on research, as well as an advanced model of teaching and internationalisation.'

Prof Marginson said he did not consider QS's methods for data collection 'sound' - for example, academics are surveyed on their views of the universities - and therefore does not see it as an important ranking.

'Reputational surveys are notoriously poor research instruments. Studies show that most respondents usually know only their own university, and perhaps the one where they did their PhD,' he said.

'I don't think NUS has reason to think its performance has declined. Different rankings produce different results and some are more sound than others.'

NTU, meanwhile, did well for most of the categories, but lost out in those for faculty-to-student ratio and citations per paper.

Reacting to its 14th placing, NTU president Su Guaning said the university is 'pleased to be ranked among the top in Asia'.

He added: 'While the high rankings are cause to celebrate, we do not look at rankings as the only or the most important guide for developing the university.

'We shall continue to focus on enhancing the global education for our students and building our faculty and facilities befitting a top university.'

ameltan@sph.com.sg

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Reaping benefits from tech projects

SOME day, people may be able to operate their computers by gesturing with both hands before their computer screens, as Tom Cruise's character does in the science fiction movie Minority Report.

Working with a mouse, the cause of repetitive stress injuries for some people, could be history.

Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) lecturer Jason Chan, 32, already has a prototype for this alternative to the mouse, and is looking to try it out with patients in hospitals and physiotherapy centres.

Nanyang and other polytechnics are coming up with more such technology projects. Some products, such as Singapore Polytechnic's purple gold used in Lee Hwa jewellery, and its Pokka drinks, Lemonsi Delight and Elderflower Tea, are commercial successes.

Singapore's five polytechnics, set up to train students in mid-level professional and technical skills, typically put their students through internships with companies, but lately, they have also produced marketable products and services.

Support for this push has come from a year-old Ministry of Education fund called the Innovation Fund, which can disburse up to $10 million each year.

It has bankrolled 16 projects, among which are two by Republic Polytechnic - one to design an ergonomic backpack, and the other, a system to milk energy from food and fuel-oil wastes.

Schools like Republic Polytechnic and NYP have even set up 'technology-transfer' offices to oversee their tie-ups with industry.

NYP's Centre for Technology Innovation and Commercialisation was set up last August, when innovations by its various schools started earning patents.

Commercialising a product can earn a school royalties. For instance, the royalties Singapore Polytechnic now receives from its Elderflower Tea goes into a fund for needy students; Pokka is also funding a $2,000 scholarship each year for the next five years.

Financial gains aside, the polytechnics' close ties with industry and the market also benefit the students academically and otherwise.

Dr Valdew Singh, who heads NYP's Centre for Technology Innovation and Commercialisation, said: 'Since the projects we work on with companies are cutting-edge, the skills students develop are also cutting-edge.'

Industry-linked pro- jects also give students real world manufacturing and business experience. In coming up with a fat- and sugar-free dessert called Koolwerkz, Temasek Polytechnic students picked up the rudiments of running the factory that made it.

Ngee Ann Polytechnic biomedical science student Aishah Mohamed Rashid, 20, whose final-year project is being tested for commercial use, said the experience 'has surely added value to my CV'.

Early this year, she and her classmate Nurul Dinah Kadir found a way to speed up detection of the genes that make some urinary tract infections resistant to antibiotics.

Their screening method, which makes it possible for treatment of the infection to begin in three hours instead of three days, is being tested at Singapore General Hospital and Changi General Hospital.

Some polytechnics do not see the need to rush to file for patents on their innovations because it is an expensive and complicated process, said Mr Warren Wang, director of Republic Polytechnic's technology development office.

Patents do not, in any case, guarantee success in the market.

Mr Wang said that even if a project is not picked up by a company, the effort that went into it is not wasted.

'Even failure is something to learn from. At least the learning is done, so we don't see it as a waste.'

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Top grad nearly failed to get into Ngee Ann

AMONG the 38 students graduating from Ngee Ann Polytechnic's first run of its pharmacy science programme yesterday was top student Ng Khai Yin, 21.

The Ipoh native bagged more than 30 distinctions - not bad at all for someone the school nearly rejected.

Three years ago, while still in her Perak home town, she learned that her application to Ngee Ann was unsuccessful.

The plucky daughter of a manufacturing manager and housewife got on a bus to Singapore and convinced Ngee Ann that it would not regret giving her a chance to study about drugs, drug manufacturing and clinical trials, in preparation for a hospital or pharmacy career.

As it turns out, she kept to her word.

In all, 4,600 students from Ngee Ann will graduate from various disciplines in the coming week.

The Senior Minister of State for Education S. Iswaran, the guest of honour at the convocation for the pharmacy science graduates, reassured them that despite the recession, this 'resilient' sector still had job opportunities and good prospects.

Last year, Singapore's biomedical sciences sector contributed $19 billion in manufacturing output and employed 12,450 people.

This year, another 900 jobs will become available.

Of the 38 graduates, eight have landed jobs, seven will begin their National Service and 23 will further their studies.

Miss Ng has offers from the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University to read chemistry but is still undecided about taking either offer.

'My true passion is in pharmacy, but I didn't get a place in the course at the university,' she said.

She added she would do what she did three years ago - appeal for a place in a university.

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