Heng Swee Keat: Schools should share innovations

MOE to expand scheme to help schools adopt tried-and-tested ideas

By Stacey Chia, The Straits Times, 31 Mar 2012

PUPILS of Tampines North Primary School who are weak in the Chinese language are given a set of sentence cards to take home every day.

They have to read one card daily to their parents, who have to acknowledge that their children have done so.

The cards have hanyu pinyin and English translations on the back to aid parents who are weak in Chinese.

Dawnn Tan, 12, said her parents have started showing an interest in improving their Chinese since she used the cards one year ago. 'Prior to this, we hardly spoke Chinese at home.'

This example of a collaboration between schools and parents got the thumbs up from Education Minister Heng Swee Keat yesterday. He was speaking at the Ministry of Education (MOE) ExCEL Fest, an annual platform to showcase and share innovative efforts in schools.

He said when parents are involved in their children's learning, it has a 'positive spiral effect' of creating a more conducive learning environment for the child.

In his speech, he also stressed the importance of collaboration among schools and with the community, noting that many of the innovations on exhibit resulted from tie-ups among stakeholders.

'This is very powerful because when different stakeholder groups come together, the net effect is greater collective insights, greater accessibility to knowledge and more shared resources,' he said.

Schools interested in adopting any of the innovations at the ExCEL Fest can get funding help from the Innovation Adoption Platform launched last year.

Schools that come up with the innovations will get a top-up to their Innovation funds to spur more creations.

Mr Heng said that given the positive response, MOE will expand the number of projects that can be funded to include all that were submitted for the Fest and not only those put up for display. This year, schools sent in 385 submissions.

MOE has set aside $360,000 for the Innovation Adoption Platform for this year, with an option to increase the amount.

The platform provides a structured process for the adoption of ideas. Through it, Chung Cheng High (Yishun) last year successfully adopted a Ping Yi Secondary initiative to help students bounce back from errant behaviour.

The strategy involves having misbehaving students reflect on their actions by responding to a series of questions either verbally or in written form. The students then reach a mutually agreeable solution with a teacher on ways to make amends.

Mr Heng also gave out trophies to 59 recipients of the Innergy Awards, which recognise innovations that have created significant value for the ministry. Among four gold award recipients was Tampines Secondary School, which developed a board game that requires students to master algebraic fundamentals to excel at it.

Best Suggestion awards were handed out to 31 individuals and teams from schools and MOE.

The ExCEL Fest, held at the Suntec convention centre, is open to the public today from 10am to 6pm. More than 80 exhibits from schools have been set up and seminars for parents will be held. Admission is free.