It would be interesting to explore whether Singapore’s housing policies have an impact on its small achievement
gap; 80% of people live in government-built, but self-owned apartments and ethnic groups are deliberately mixed in
each housing block. When asked about this during interviews for this report, Professor Lee said that he did not know
of any empirical studies, but thought that it seemed plausible that being in a community with high expectations for
academic achievement would have an overall positive effect on children.
On the educational side, children who require additional support in learning to read are identified through screening
tests at the start of first grade. These children are provided with daily systematic intervention by teachers in small
groups (8-10 students) in learning support programmes so that they do not fall behind. About 12-14% of children
need such support for reading. The curriculum includes phonics and English language development since many of
the children speak languages other than English at home. Learning support programmes also exist in mathematics.
In addition, while most preschools in Singapore are privately funded, the government provides funding support to
preschools that cater for low-income students.
In recent years, Singapore has replaced streaming in elementary schools with subject matter banding. It has
also created more opportunities for students to move horizontally between streams at the secondary level and
beyond – to create more flexibility in the system and to recognise “late bloomers”. Another remarkable feature of
the Singapore education system is the value, attention and resources it devotes to lower level achievers, not just
high achievers. This focus on “levelling up”, so that the lowest stream gets very high quality training, exemplifies
the “many pathways” approach and is discussed in the section below on the Institute for Technical Education. The
resources devoted to vocational and technical training are immense and the vocational
perhaps the best in the world – a significant element of the Singapore success story.