Singapore School Showing the Way by Gordon Dryden

Singapore School Showing the Way

by Gordon Dryden

A school that started in Singapore almost 10 years ago—with 35 students, 11 teachers and a dream—is now being hailed as an international model for education's future. Singapore's Overseas Family School now has 1850 students from 61 different nationalities. And because no nationality is dominant, the school has no minority students.   It is the first in Singapore to use the International Baccalaureate's "focused inquiry" global curriculum for all students from age three. The school then adds to this the world's most effective teaching and learning methods and some of the world's best educational technology. The result is a brilliant six-step learning program that currently flows through six schools on one family campus: pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, elementary, middle, high school and an undergraduate university linked with California State University.

OFS is an international private school, but I believe it will become one of the most effective models for 21^st-century public education. Its six-step "global education" model:

A global culture to develop

Global explorers to discover

Global knowledge, aided by a

Global Information Technology Network to produce

Global citizens with

Global qualifications valued anywhere in the world.

OFS is calling its approach "The Global Way", adding its own innovations to the IB's global curriculum. That IB curriculum is generally best known around the world for its rigorous academic senior high-school diploma. But I believe its more recent innovations are much more important: the development of kindergarten, elementary and middle-school programs around global themes, such as the planets, oceans, minerals and weather. And all of them based around a process of focused inquiry.

While this concept is not new for many innovators in education, OFS is adding a major new ingredient: educational technology. The school is in the final stages of completing what I believe is the world's best school open-source information technology network. OFS founder and chairman, New Zealand businessman David Perry, believes open-source information technology, including free software and such computer operating systems as Linux, will be a major key to helping the underdeveloped world transform its education system. He says the aim of his school is clear: to develop multitalented, open-minded, confident and competent global citizens. "We want them to have open access to the world's best knowledge and ideas, and to develop the thinking skills needed to produce even better ones. We believe we have also developed one of the world's best school-based information technology systems. And our IT philosophy is the same as our educational one: to make the world's best open-source IT software, hardware and Internet systems available to all our students so that they, too, can develop full global IT competence."

The school is currently completing the development of a new Linux-based server which can store up to 14.5 billion letter-sized pages; or, more importantly, much fewer text pages but hundreds of videotapes and other graphics. When elementary-school students are then, for example, studying the world's weather or oceans and lead-students find out the best videotape from, say, National Geographic or the American Weather Network, these can be quickly installed on the server. And any other child in the school can then download that information in under a second. Each student will also be able to store his or her own permanent personal website with a permanent digital progress-portfolio: a digital record of all one's achievements. In this way, OFS will link together the IB's traditional role as a supervisor of high-level international academic exams (for those who wish an academic career) with individual digital portfolios in which all students can show their own specific achievements, whether in art, drama, computer graphics or anything else. Parents will also have access to the students' study programs so the entire family can be involved in exploring the universe.

Even more impressive, while students are exploring all aspects of a topic, as part of their computer studies they learn advanced IT skills while recording their findings.   For example: while studying the world's minerals, elementary-school students are encouraged to research their own individual "birthstones" (ruby, diamond etc.), and to record their results on Microsoft Powerpoint — so they are learning IT presentation skills while linking a global theme to personal interest. The new OFS network system will be in full operation for the start of the new 2001-2002 school year at the end of August 2001. And the school is meantime working on putting key aspects of its "Global Way" curriculum online for parents, students and teachers.

Public schools in Singapore are also in the midst of another type of school revolution. Almost four years ago the Government announced plans for a five-year $2 billion program to provide an IT system to all Singapore schools. Now every government school has around 10 computers in every classroom. All teachers have received about 40 hours of basic IT training.   But the Minister of Education agrees that it would have been much better to have tackled first the whole area of "change management", which he regards as the key to the future. The Singapore Government is also two years into a seven-year program to rebuild nearly all of its schools— and to refurbish those under 10 years old.  So don't be surprised if Singapore's combination of Government initiative and private enterprise form one of the main models for the future of education in Asia, and the world.

About the Author:

Gordon Dryden spent four months in Singapore as a consultant to the Overseas Family School in 1996, and he is currently a consultant on some aspects of its current projects. He spent two weeks there recently before writing this article. His book, The Learning Revolution, coauthored by American doctor of education Jeannette Vos, has so far sold 10 million copies in China.   See: www.thelearningweb.net OFS's website: www.ofs.edu.sg — but it has yet to add all its new innovations on line.

Copyright © July 2001 New Horizons for Learning, all rights reserved.

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