among others. These courses were designed to meet the skilled manpower needs of industrialization.
The phenomenal growth of technical and vocational education in Singapore required much coordination and management. The Technical Education Depart- ment (TED) was created within the MOE. All the technical and vocational schools and industrial training centers came under the coordination and management of the TED.
It was through the TED that basic workshop subjects such metalwork, techni- cal drawing, and basic electricity were made compulsory for all male students and 50 percent of girls in their first two years in secondary schools. The other 50 per- cent of girls took courses such as home economics (Chiang 1998). It was not pos- sible to provide every secondary school with workshop facilities. Centralized workshops, strategically located near most of the secondary schools, were set up to give students hands-on training in the use of basic tools and materials. As a result, every morning and afternoon, thousands of students traveled a few kilo- meters to the nearest centralized workshop.
In 1969, the TED made several changes to technical education based on recommendations from the MOE, MTI, and MOM. These policy changes once again reflected the interministerial collaborative working relationship. The voca- tional stream in secondary school education was discontinued. This vocational stream, introduced in 1964, was a stop-gap measure to keep those who failed primary six and primary school dropouts off the streets in the early turbulent and politically volatile days. With the economy growing, the need in the industrial sector changed from unskilled or semiskilled labor to technically trained workers. To meet the new challenge, the TED converted four vocational schools into indus- trial training centers. Six other vocational schools were amalgamated with secondary schools adjacent to them.
Strategy 3: EDB Training Centers. Singapore’s success in establishing a thriving manufacturing sector surfaced an increased demand for more skilled manpower. There was a need to meet this demand immediately, and the time taken for students to complete their secondary education and then proceed to technical education was too long. The EDB’s response was to set up training centers. This was achieved with technical and financial assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).10 By 1968, six EDB training centers were set up (Chiang 1998).
These centers were very different from the workshops that provided basic hands-on knowledge to secondary school students. The centers provided direct training for workers through the production of actual components or parts needed by manufacturing companies in Singapore. The training was therefore relevant and up to date, and graduates could go directly into new factories and be productive in a very short time with minimal on-the-job training.