06 March 2021

Last month, President Halimah Yacob presided over the official launch of an after-school activity centre, The Galaxy at BMSS.

This centre is part of an after-school initiative called the Resilient Merahan Programme (RMP), which was launched in 2019. The after-school engagement programme, which currently involves 30 students, caters to vulnerable students, helping them to build relationships with their peers as well as adult volunteers and school staff.

“The Galaxy is a very good centre because after classes, student may want to stay in the school, and this is a safe environment for them to come, organise their own activities and have the support of their teachers, peers and volunteers,” Madam Halimah said.

Besides the RMP, the school also has other programmes to cater to students’ diverse learning needs. For instance, Helping Our Merahans Excel aims to help students with long-term absenteeism issues to reintegrate into the school system, while the School Within School programme supports graduating students struggling with their studies.

06 March 2021

Second Minister for Education Maliki Osman has said that it will now take less time for Institute of Technical Education students to obtain a Higher Nitec qualification. He said that the ITE curriculum will be streamlined to achieve this aim.

According to the Ministry of Education, more than half of the 2019 cohort of Nitec graduates progressed immediately to a Higher Nitec qualification in 2020.

Dr Maliki is also leading a review into employment outcomes for ITE and polytechnic students. He has shared some preliminary ideas which have emerged from his review, which involved speaking to over 400 stakeholders linked to the polytechnics and ITE, including students, graduates, parents, employers and industry partners.

The ideas included recognising students’ diverse interests by strengthening porosity and flexibility in educational pathways, ensuring that courses and curriculum remain relevant to industry, and investing in the life skills of students, for instance cross-cultural communication and critical thinking.

03 March 2021

Mr Sharif Shaharudeen graduated with a first-class honours degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Glasgow’s aeronautical engineering degree programme at the Singapore Institute of Technology.

He was involved heavily in internships during his study at SIT, and as such, was very well equipped to enter the workforce. However, the aerospace industry was negatively impacted last year due to the huge decrease in commercial flights, and soon, he found his future career prospects in jeopardy.

His initial failure at securing a job proved emotionally draining, especially since his family needed him to step up and help out financially.

The former Temasek Polytechnic student then decided it was time to take a “leap of faith” and try to secure employment in a related industry. All thanks to the SGUnited Traineeship programme, he has since secured a position as a systems engineer at the drone company Drone Solutions.

25 December 2021

Students in Singapore who sat the GCE A-level examination last year achieved the best passing rate since 2006.

93.6 per cent of the total 11,646 candidates obtained at least three H2 passes, with a pass in General Paper or Knowledge and Inquiry.

Like in 2020, students who returned to their schools on Friday to collect their results had to do so in their classrooms, instead of as a cohort in the school hall.

Those who sat the exams last year also had to cope with the sudden shift from in-person teaching to home-based learning.

Education Minister Lawrence Wong said in a Facebook post: “Whatever your results, take some time to celebrate your growth and learning. Many of you will be thinking of your next steps and the options to pursue. Speak to your parents, teachers and friends, find out more about your options, consider your strengths and what you enjoy. What’s more important is to have the mindset that learning is for life – there are no endpoints, just the lifelong process of becoming a better person who can contribute meaningfully in your own way.”

21 February 2021

Last year, fewer students managed to secure a full time job upon graduation.

Around 70 percent of those who graduated from four Singapore universities last year found permanent employment, down from 81.7 per cent in 2019. Additionally, over one in five fresh graduates said they were employed in part-time jobs or traineeships

Nonetheless, those who found a full-time job earned a higher median starting salary of $3,700 last year, compared with $3,600 in 2019, with graduates from computer science, cyber security, and software engineering courses leading the way.

More than three out of four of these graduates in part-time or traineeship roles are participating in the SGUnited Traineeship Programme, a mentorship programme that helps fresh graduates from universities and polytechnics boost their employability when hiring demand picks up after the pandemic by going through an attachment with a company and receiving an allowance.