Diversifying Schools

Diversifying Schools

This book discusses the strategies that the Singapore Education System has embarked to encourage school change and innovations. It documents the change journey of Specialized Schools and Future Schools in Singapore with a view to understand the key tenets that enable school wide change and reform. The intents for change and reform are to anchor the education system to the basic foundations and principles of education and yet enable the system as a whole to be malleable to change and globalization. It shows how Singapore enables diversity within a structured environment through innovations in Specialized and Future Schools, and highlights the systemic rationale behind various efforts in Specialized and Future Schools and the kinds of adaptations schools have made to leverage structures and make adjustments for their contexts.

Diversification in Modern Language Teaching

As the effects of European integration become more widely felt the effective teaching of modern languages is moving towards the centre of the educational agenda and more and more schools are considering starting pupils on a first foreign language other than French - a development encouraged by the National Curriculum orders in Modern Languages. Diversification in Modern Language Teaching gives language teachers and heads of department the evidence upon which to decide if diversification is right for them. It looks at the factors which effect children's learning in this area and at the managerial issues both within and outside the school. Throughout it argues that the decision must be a purely educational one, based on pupil motivation and accessibility as well as on particular local strengths among staff and parents.

The Current Status of Schools of Choice in Public Secondary Education