Dialogue with Mr Lawrence Wong, Minister for Education and Second Minister for Finance

mr janadas devon director of ips excellencies and distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen i'm very happy to join you this afternoon at this year's singapore perspectives conference in fact i think this is the first time in quite a long while where i have come to a gathering of this size not quite like what it was pre-covet but it comes pretty close especially with new safe distancing measures with an antigen test i think slowly gradually we can make our work our way back to a new normal the theme of the conference is aptly titled reset there is still great uncertainty about how the virus will reshape our society in the coming years but there is no doubt that covet is the most serious crisis the world has faced in a long time the virus has already changed our world and we have to be prepared for more changes to come and i think it's useful to think of these changes over different time frames for this year and maybe a good part of next year we must be prepared to continue living in an acutely changed world meaning the rules of around wearing of masks upholding of safe distancing measures and avoiding crowded places these will continue to be part of everyday life beyond that the availability of covet 19 vaccinations were progressively restart global travel but getting the world vaccinated won't be quick or easy it will take time for vaccines to be manufactured and distributed and even longer before the world gradually builds up immunity in singapore we plan to have all our residents here vaccinated by the third quarter of the year if all goes well but there is still a lot of uncertainty over the duration of protection following vaccination and whether vaccinated individuals can transmit the virus early data from some countries like israel suggest promising results with the vaccine but we will still need time to look at all of these critical unknowns and to resolve them and we may well encounter some bumps along the way for example the current vaccines may not be so effective against new mutant strains of the virus indeed there has been initial research suggesting for example that the south african variant can evade the defenses that vaccines build in our body's immune system the pharmaceutical companies are confident that they can respond to this threat but that means adapting the vaccine getting regulatory approval and ramping up manufacturing all over again in the positive scenario this means the vaccine becomes a bit like an annual flu jab we need to keep on getting one perhaps on a regular basis or perhaps we develop a vaccine that works for all strains but in the worst case we end up always a step behind the evolving virus and we will not be able to catch up in time so there are still tremendous uncertainties ahead of us and the bottom line is that we live in a shared world and no one is safe until everyone is safe of course no pandemic goes on forever at some point in time the pandemic will pass but it may take four to five years before we finally see the end of the pandemic and the start of a post-covet normal what will this new post-covet world look like no one can tell some positive change will certainly arise no one can recall that spittoons and public spitting were widespread in the beginning of the 20th century but after the 1918 influenza pandemic they were rightly seen as unsanitary and the practices stopped in the west and eventually all over the world in singapore covet 19 has prompted greater awareness of hygiene habits and social responsibility we have become more self-conscious about washing and sanitizing our hands and i certainly hope we will continue the habit of wearing masks if we are not feeling well in in this post-covet world on the other hand some habits may well die hard for example some people think that we might stop shaking hands all together i read an interview where anthony fautri said that post pandemic america will involve compulsive hand washing and the end of hand shaking i have tremendous respect for mr falchi but i'm not sure i fully agree with the compulsive handshaking i'm not sure that we will see the end of handshaking because this call for alternative forms of greeting has happened before in previous pandemics too you can trace back through history each time there is a pandemic there is a call to say let's have different forms of pendant of greeting in order to reduce the risk of transmission it happened in singapore too after sars but somehow humans being what we are we have always gravitated back towards some form of human contact will this change after clovid 19 we will only know after time over time in a crisis like this the natural tendency is to extrapolate the worst from our immediate circumstances for example some predict that digital technologies will accelerate the move towards less dense living and working arrangements and render cities obsolete now it's clear that digital trends will stick and world remain with us but predictions about the decline of cities i think are premature throughout history pandemics have not dampened the waves of urbanization nor the flourishing of innovation taking place in cities everywhere when the bubonic plague hit the city-state florence in the 14th century it was ravaged and many fled by some estimates more than half the population died but then lawrence bounced back and launched the renaissance a period of great flourishing learning and discovery when the yellow fever pandemic hit philadelphia in 1793 thomas jefferson said this will quote discourage the growth of great cities in our nation well look what happened after that and after the 1918 spanish flu pandemic we saw the roaring 20s and the boom in major cities like chicago and new york city so if history is a guide it has shown that cities can bounce back from catastrophe and emerge stronger than before and the reason this happens is that cities are not just buildings and monuments they are fundamentally about the people who dwell in them and humans are by nature social animals we are naturally drawn to participation collaboration and social interactions we are also adaptable and capable of adjusting to new situations and we must never underestimate this human capacity for innovation and learning so we have the ability to shape what our future looks like and as suggested by the team of this conference let's think of the crisis as setting the stage for a software update a reboot of sorts after the tremendous damage inflicted by the virus beyond the immediate task of up protecting lives and livelihoods i'd like to highlight three resets that we must make in our policy thinking our lifestyles and mindsets even as we tied over the immediate season first we must reset our social compact to emerge as a fairer and more equal society the pandemic may be indiscriminate about who it infects but its impact is anything but equal it has in fact widened the gulf between the haves and the half nodes globally we see poorer segments of society paying a heavier price be it in terms of economic impact or access to health care and that's why governments all of all over the world have had to spend huge sums to help their people cope in singapore it's always been at the top of the government's agenda to reduce inequality and to ensure a meritocratic system that works for the good of all we recognize that markets are incredibly powerful they inject dynamism they transform transform societies and give people from all backgrounds a chance to better their lives but free markets have their flaws it creates anxieties and stresses about technological change and foreign competition and we see a continued stretching out of incomes and wealth so we need a combination of open markets and effective state intervention to level the playing field at the starting point provide support and buffers for every citizen to help them bounce back from setbacks and to equip them to excel in an uncertain environment of global competition and technological change we started this journey more than a decade ago where we tilted social policies actively in favor of the lower income group for example through workfare and through a whole range of support programs in education housing and healthcare and more recently by providing more retirement assurance through the silver support scheme income in inequality in singapore as measured by the genie coefficient has in fact been trending downward last year we rolled out a significant package of emergency measures and we are luckier than most countries in that we do not have to borrow to fund these measures we are able to draw on our reserves to save jobs and tied over singaporeans who are hardest hit these temporary measures will have to be tapered down this year as the economy improves and to ensure our finances remain sustainable but the impact of the pandemic has created added impetus to strengthen our social support system so there will be a permanent shift towards further strengthening of our social safety nets in singapore to protect the disadvantaged and vulnerable and we will have to work out how this can be done in a sustainable manner over the long term the bottom line is that we aim to give singaporeans more assurance and support in a more uncertain and volatile post-covet world beyond tackling inequality we must keep our society fluid and mobile meritocracy in singapore must not ossify into a hereditary system where the condition of your birth determines the outcome of your life how do we achieve this we start by intervening early and uplifting our children from birth and that's a key focus and priority for me in the ministry of education and that's why we are making significant investments in preschool we want to make sure you don't need expensive private enrichment classes instead all can benefit from quality programs in moe kindergartens and across our anchor and partner operators where fees are kept affordable and regulated we are now looking at the earliest years of childhood even at the prenatal stage where the well-being of a pregnant mother can have lasting effects on a child's development so early intervention is effective and we are going all out to do more on this front we are continuing this strong support in schools since joining the ministry i've made it a point to visit schools with a higher proportion of students from lower income and disadvantaged family backgrounds some of our most committed and dedicated principals and teachers serve in these schools we are giving them more resources so they are able to provide additional support for their students for example learning support in smaller pull-out classes and beyond academic support exposure to a whole range of different activities and programs so that it's not just about improving their academic results but also nurturing soft skills for example through public speaking through learning journeys through overseas trips and we are also deploying more airline educators counsellors and welfare officers to support students especially those with special needs we want to ensure that we continue to uplift these students and help them achieve their full potential we are also making fundamental shifts in our model of education we don't want to front load learning when someone is young but we all to treat education as a conveyor belt for the job market instead we want to have a system of education for life which is what we are doing through our national movement skills future we want to have multiple entry points across the age distribution and across the entire skills spectrum and thereby enable everyone to reskill upgrade and continuously improve to be the best possible version of themselves besides intervention in education a broader mindset change is required societies everywhere today place too much of a premium on cognitive abilities and do not value sufficiently those engaging in other forms of work as a result merit has become narrowly defined by academic and cognitive abilities but in fact there is a wide range of abilities and aptitudes needed for societies to thrive we need the craft skills of artisans and technicians the creativity and imagination of artists and the human touch of those doing care jobs and the pandemic has thrown a spotlight on this imbalance we've come to better appreciate the contributions of our essential workers who help to keep our lives going our allied health workers contractors security guards fmb operators transport workers just to name a few we must honor them for their work and accord them the dignity and respect they deserve we must ensure they receive fair remuneration for the important work they do and that's why we are pushing our on moves across different jobs through our progressive wage model and we are also reviewing our ite and polytechnic pathways to ensure graduates from these institutions get better jobs with higher pay good career progression and a strong foundation for lifelong learning if we attach more value in terms of prestige and income to people who excel across a wide range of fields and not just cognitively incomes were naturally spread out more evenly across society and we will go a long way in advancing our cause towards a fairer and more equal society second new habits from the pandemic show us that we can and we must push for a greener singapore when human activity came to a standstill this year carbon emissions around the world dropped significantly in fact satellites high above our planet detected the reduction of pollution the natural world began to heal so as economic activities begin to pick up we have to figure out a way forward we cannot go back to the status quo entei aside from dealing with the continuous threats of pandemic climate change will be the existential emergency of our time so we must build a greener economy and society that's more environmentally sustainable and this idea of sustainability is not new to singapore we are already one of the greenest cities in the world we are the only country in the world to freeze the growth of our vehicle population we are one of the few countries to have closed its water loop and to reuse every last drop of water but we must go further and build on what we have done to achieve greener growth and greener mindsets and so we are deploying more renewable energy like solar power we are exploring regional power grids and investing in new capabilities like hydrogen and carbon capture utilization and storage we are transforming our industries to be more sustainable and investing in r d in new energy and resource efficient technologies beyond that we have other ambitious plans we are going to phase out vehicles with internal combustion engines and have all vehicles run on cleaner energy we are making sustainable living a key feature of all hdb towns where we incorporate features to reduce energy consumption recycle rain water and cool our towns we will significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions and seek to achieve net zero emissions as soon as we can sustainability can also be a new source of competitive advantage and open up new opportunities for growth and job creation there is potential for singapore to be a carbon trading and services hub in asia for example in areas like sustainability consultancy verification carbon credits trading and risk management we can also be a leading center for green finance in the region and globally the greatest promise of going green however is not about what it will mean for us today it's about building for the future for our children and the next generation we must embark on a sustainability movement so that we can leave singapore in a better shape for our future generations just as previous generations have done for us finally one silver lining in colvit 19 is that it can present an opportunity for us to strengthen our sense of social solidarity throughout history we've seen societies rise and fall what is it that enables some society to thrive while others to go into decline it's a big question but one of our founding leaders mr s rajaratnam used to ponder over this and he would refer to the ideas of 14th century islamic philosopher and historian ibn khaldoon kaldun wrote about the concept of asabiya it's an arabic word that describes the born that exists in a community and in his view it's this sense of community and solidarity that explains the rise and decline of society when the community starts out everyone is prepared for austerity and discipline together people are prepared to make sacrifices for the common good and society prospers but as life becomes more comfortable this sense of solidarity is weakened people lose their social anchors and seek to advance their own individual interests and when that sense of community and common purpose is eroded things start to fall apart in fact before we were struck by clovis 19 there were already powerful forces chipping away at social cohesion both here and in countries everywhere even today in the midst of this pandemic there are significant minorities around the world who think that covet 19 is a hoax and does not really exist this is a pandemic where 100 million people in the world have been infected more than 2 million have died and when you do global surveys we're not talking one two percent we're talking significant percentage who think it's a hoax and this is the great irony we are living in an age where everyone can access information so readily people can access raw instant unfiltered information from multiple sources but unfortunately salacious falsehoods and conspiracy theories tend to gain circulation over facts and so the irony is despite the overwhelming ease of excess of information we are living as some would say in a golden age of ignorance we are also seeing the downgrading of expertise because experts are seen as out of touch elites and expert knowledge is sometimes portrayed negatively as a conspiracy by the elites to perpetuate their dominance and with easy access to information everyone can claim to be an expert just look at how many armchair epidemiologists have emerged during this crisis virtually everyone thinks they can say something intelligent about how the virus spreads nothing wrong with that and in fact it leads to more skepticism and questioning of expert advice which is in a way healthy because you you know experts don't always get it right and you do need to have some level of questioning but when you disregard expertise all together i think that's when trouble starts or for that matter when there is a tendency to view expert advice from the narrow prism of our own social and political tribes we end up self-selecting information to support and reinforce our own points of view the economists call this confirmation bias and there it just reinforces certain views without allowing us to see things from another perspective as a result it's very hard to find consensus you see in many places a hollowing out of the center as extreme views gain ground and it makes societies very hard to govern the pandemic has indeed intensified these divisions in many countries and it may get worse in some of these places at the same time going through a crisis like this can also lead to renewed strength because we are forced to reflect on our own values we develop a more acute sense of shared memories and common destiny we go through difficulties together and we forge a stronger sense of group solidarity and social cohesion so which path will apply to singapore how will the pandemic change us i am confident that we will prevail and emerge stronger from this crucible and i do not say this lightly i speak from my own conviction of seeing the best of singaporeans over the past year in the face of adversity and very tough conditions i've seen frontline workers both in the public and private sectors giving they are all working round the clock through the past year i've seen many ground-up initiatives people stepping out of their comfort zones to look out for the vulnerable and to help those in need and i've seen the resilient attitude that singaporeans have shown affirming the values we have nurtured since the founding of our nation this renewed sense of solidarity is critical as we recover and it will enable us to build a better society together and that's why the government is intentionally creating more opportunities for our citizens and stakeholders to be part of the decision-making process including in policy and implementation through the emerging stronger conversations we are bringing together singaporeans to share their hopes for a post-covet society and to discuss how we can partner them to get there we are also strengthening our engagements with young people on the sg youth action plan starting with their vision of singapore in 2025 and we are convening more alliances for action action-oriented coalitions with a mix of government community and business stakeholders to solve our problems and co-create solutions together and we hope all of this will pave the way for much higher levels of participation in shaping our future singapore together so in conclusion we've just crossed the one-year mark in our fight against colvit 19. as we have said before this fight is far from over there are still many many uncertainties ahead of us but even as we focus on the immediate battle at hand we must look ahead to the task of resetting for the future and my hope is for singapore to emerge as a fairer greener and more equal country with a much stronger spirit of solidarity and shared purpose we all know the hard truth from this crisis singapore remains a perpetually vulnerable country we are ultimately a tiny little red dot many things can go wrong for which we have no control over for example we cheer that we have managed to procure vaccines for everyone in singapore but anything can go wrong with the vaccine supply it can be a disruption in the manufacturing plant for which we have no control over it can be a disruption in supply chains for which we have no control over so many things can go wrong but the crisis has also shown that we are not without our own resources and resolve we have the nimbleness the ingenuity the gumption to solve our problems and move forward and most of all we have seen that as one united people we can achieve exceptional things together so that's how as one united people we can realize our aspirations and ideals and build a better singapore together thank you very much thank you minister now before we begin our question and answer session a quick reminder for our physical audience please leave your mast on as you ask your questions raise your hands our mic runners will come to you but leave your mask on now without further ado let us begin our question and answer session gentlemen good afternoon uh thank you for allowing me to join this conversation at the closing session of the ips perspectives uh it's a pleasure to be here with all of you and i just wanted to also congratulate the organizers for really making a virtue out of necessity and organizing these series of virtual conversations which has enabled us to have a really good diversity of views and perspectives over the last few weeks and which i think we will want to come to in the discussion and thank you minister for that very thoughtful and thought-provoking speech which was interesting and also inspiring in its its broad political and philosophical sweep i think you've managed to touch on quite a few of the issues that came up over the last few weeks issues of diversity and identity issues of inequality and social mobility and um discussions about politics leadership and solidarity all of which i think we'll want to come to in the q a but i think i'll try to steer the discussion in those broad areas the pandemic education and politics but let's start with the pandemic i think that's really what is on most people's minds and if i take a step back over some of the developments over the last few weeks in the interview you gave with your co-chair minister ghan kim yong you spoke a bit about having to manage the public mood swings over the course of the last difficult year that we all lived through um initially i think we we all hoped that we would get on top of the situation fairly quickly and emerge stronger didn't quite pan out that way and then you you mentioned the the sense of impatience to sort of hunker down and get on top of the situation which kind of swung the other way a few months later to the sense of impatience that we weren't opening up fast enough and then now of course with the latest measures a little bit of gnashing of teeth about the tightening up for the chinese new year period and i think it also struck me that you also said you felt a sense of deja vu at some of the questions that the journalists were asking you last week and because we have we have made progress you know with the vaccine with um testing with uh ramping up our health care facilities but they're also challenges as you mentioned at the end of your speech the delivery of the vaccines could go it could get delayed there could be new variants so in a way we are back to where we were last march or april so some people are wondering is 2021 going to be a rerun of 2020 i don't think many people want to watch that movie again or is it going to be a sequel minor variations in the plot but pretty much like what it was or are we thinking of a remaking of the movie or something quite different with new narratives and new plots and new players uh that brings me to my question which is related to this idea of reset you know ips has made reset the focus of its uh conference that straits times made reset a focus of its conference the world economic forum is making reset the topic of its conference but i'm not so sure we all we are all talking about the same thing because reset could mean if you ask an i.t professional at it every time something goes wrong with your computer he says press the reset button and you kind of go back to where you were without any change reset in a bilateral context could mean having a fresh start leaving the past behind but it could also mean something quite fundamental and i think you you alluded to that in your speech some major changes in the way we think changes in paradigms so i just want to start by asking you when you think about reset what is it you have really in your mind and what do you think that we as a society most need thanks for the question warren first of all um i do get a sense of deja vu sometimes watching where we are today and comparing with what happened last year journalists are asking me similar questions and when you see the community cases you know creeping up these few days you sort of your thought your mind goes back to the situation we were in uh at this time last year but there are important differences and we should recognize these differences we are in a far better and stronger position today our testing capabilities are much higher than they used to be our tracing capabilities are much better so we can test and trace and ring fence clusters much better than we could ever before more importantly vaccines are on their way and that's a game changer no doubt there is uncertainty with supply but we have done our best to procure as much as we can and if all goes well we get everyone vaccinated so what we need to do really is to die through from now until the point when everyone in singapore is vaccinated maybe that the third quarter of the year perhaps at the end of the year there is a solution so i think we have better tools to fight covet 19 that should give us confidence and that should help us to focus our minds yes there may be some sacrifices that are still needed from time to time we still will need restrictions but let's get through this stretch get everyone vaccinated and we should be in a much better situation after that now on the topic of reset my view is that the kovit 19 doesn't so much introduce new disruptions as it does accelerate existing trends so the the main force of kovit 19 is not so much to introduce something completely new but it really accelerates in a very significant way trends which we have already observed trends like the use of technology we've been talking about hybrid workplaces for years we've been talking about virtual conferences for a long time but within a short period of time bang everyone takes it up right so it's an acceleration of trend um for that matter even geopolitical tensions that you see everywhere that we see between the major powers it's not a new issue but again it's been sharpened and accelerated through this pandemic inequality it's not something that we are only dealing with today but again the pandemic has sharpened accelerated the trend of inequalities because you see the impact of the pandemic impacting different groups differently and having a disproportionate impact on the poor the vulnerable and the disadvantaged so it's with this in mind that we prepare our sequel if you will right it's a sequel where we already know what the big forces around us are but we must recognize that the forces are coming now with double triple the force that we had anticipated before and therefore it behooves us to fundamentally re-examine all our operating assumptions our paradigms and think about how we can better prepare our society for this new world thank you let me just take up that idea of old habits dying hard which you spoke about you know giving up handshakes and the progress we've made with digitalization over the past year and also the work from home which has really helped with um the progress in in flexible work arrangements i think as many of us in this room as employers as as leaders and as well as members of businesses we are having to grapple with how do we persuade workers to return to the offices because they're very comfortable working from home and i don't think we want to go back to the old way where of presenterism of bums on seats and managing that way how do we make sure we get the best out of this year-long painful experience that we've had and at the same time not lose something in terms of that human connection and collaboration that you mentioned well i think every company will find its own balance clearly the new normal will be some form of a hybrid arrangement it will not be 100 work from home i don't think that's doable nor is it as many of you would have experienced you you cannot function effectively without that human collaboration and that social interaction so you do need a chance for people to come together but do you really need to go back to where things were where you know sometimes you don't need to be in the office and yet you still insist on being in the office i don't think so so companies employers need to take on a mindset where they embrace more flexible work arrangements there will be more hybrid arrangements a blend of face-to-face as well as remote working i think these new possibilities were emerged after kovite 19 and i'm quite sure companies everywhere employers everywhere are starting to think about how to find this new balance i'm quite sure many of you who are managers or employers but start thinking very hard about how to find this new balance in the new kovit 19 world if you are not please start doing so this is one of the things that we will have to grapple with going forward you you talked about cities and you know how those will always be centers of collaboration and innovation and people will want to gravitate to city so i share your view that it's not the end of cities but you could push the question and say which cities because if people are used to working from home or working from anywhere companies international corporations could work directly with talent in mumbai or vietnam why would they need to be here which has obvious implications you know for your previous portfolio in terms of office space and rents and also for talent and suddenly our angst over foreign talent might sort itself out now i'd just like to ask you about that issue it has major implications for us in terms of a hub and a global hub well it does and i think that implication has precipitated some concern that will singapore's role as a hub in the future become less relevant and i can appreciate those concerns but i would also put the point the other way which is that precisely and even in this new normal you will still need some physical presence we are not going into a world where it's all just machines and we stop having face-to-face interactions that's not going to happen it has not happened across human history it's unlikely to happen going forward because as i said humans are fundamentally social animals so physical presence will still be relevant and if you ask people international investors the broader international community if you have to have some presence in asia where would you like to be well i would like singapore to be first on that list and i think if we are able to respond well true covet positions think singapore in a stronger position then indeed we can be more relevant as a hub not less relevant and when people think about having some presence in asia singapore ought to be the first answer that comes to mind and so i have many questions of my own but i'm going to take a question from from the audience which relates to this idea of cities and opening up and this is a question from that's most immediately from hui min but it has 12 votes one of the top which says with the risk of importing kovit 19 infection due to the search in cases around the world what is singapore's strategy to try to balance the risk from imported cases versus sustaining trade and the economy i understand the concerns about imported cases and when you see the daily statistics very often you see quite a number of cases that are not in the community but these are what we call imported cases i should explain that we have not increased our travelers coming into singapore it's not because there are more travel travelers coming to singapore the large volume of the people coming into singapore remain construction workers they are coming to do jobs for us because the contractors need workers and a good number of them have left singapore so they need to replace the people who have left with new workers and number two they are foreign domestic help who are doing caregiving work for singaporeans those are the two largest sources of travelers coming to singapore and the daily numbers have not increased they have been about the same in recent time why have the numbers gone up it's simply because the prevalence rate the incidence rate of the disease is much higher now the virus is raging in countries everywhere we require them to serve a pre-depart or to administer be administered with a pre-departure test 72 hours before they come in in order to screen off those who are already infected but the nature of this these sorts of tests is that it's not foolproof because you could be incubating the virus you take the test you're negative but later on you may very well turn positive and that's why we have taken all the precautions necessary to make sure that when these travelers come into singapore we put them on a stay home notice requirement up to 14 days sometimes even now extended to 21 days for certain countries but we keep them in quarantine so that we isolate them from the community and those are precautions that we have been taking all along and we will continue to take to ensure that even as we have a continued flow of people coming in which is needed for singapore economy and society to function we do all that is necessary to take the necessary precautions and safeguards and isolate these cases from seeping through our community other questions from the floor because it'd be nice to have a sort of interactive discussion i see a gentleman's hand at the back there table three and mike's coming to you yes hi good afternoon minister wong and warren fernandez um my name is winston from millennial institute i asked a question earlier during the first panel the business panel but i was recommended to direct this question to minister wong directly as a young student entrepreneur i always question the state of business or commerce stream in singaporean schools in today's education landscape junior colleges only offer two streams the arts or the sciences however there was a time in the past where business subjects were offered alongside these subjects today business subjects are only found at millennial institute the polytechnics offer such business causes but a percentage of people such as myself are interested in a multi-disciplinary learning such as the arts and business or even the sciences and business i believe that the common stream in the education landscape is vital for the growth of a new generation of entrepreneurs in singapore and the skills learned with business subjects are extremely relevant in today's work landscape for me learning business subjects actually allowed me to kickstart my love for business and entrepreneurship and now i have my own startup working with various nmcs and smes and government agencies in my honest opinion exposure to business and entrepreneurship from an early stage can actually benefit many young singaporeans such as myself who may be interested in starting up their own businesses even if one does not wish to start their own businesses the skills learned in business subjects such as human resource finance and operations are extremely vital in today's work environment which would better prepare students for the working world minister wong in light of the reset team today will there ever be a chance where business subjects are offered alongside the traditional arts and sciences to a wider degrees of schools in singapore thank you thank you thank you winston for the question i i will the education singapore landscape in singapore is always evolving so i would say it's something we will always consider what's the best mix of subjects to be offered across all our institutions in the past you are absolutely right jc students could take commerce but over time a lot of the commerce subjects have been offered by the polytechnics where they offer hr finance accounting and so students who are interested in more applied subjects now go to the polytechnics where these are applied subjects geared towards the job market whereas the jc curriculum has evolved to one that is you know providing more fundamental knowledge arts science humanities and not so much in the applied sense what is the right balance should we now reintroduced some applied subjects into the junior college right it's something that it's always on our minds and so we will continue to review and consider what's the best format what's the best balance between subjects that are offered in the junior college versus those at the polytechnic but i would make a second point which is very often we think about education you know that needs to be front loaded within this first 20 years of one's life what's the best combination but really really that it's not possible to teach and learn everything within that short period of time right so we really need to think about learning from a lifetime perspective and consider the different modes in which you can acquire new knowledge throughout one's life right so a jc student that doesn't have exposure to business can always do so later likewise a student like yourself or someone in the polytechnic that has exposure to business may acquire another form of knowledge which you did not have the chance to do so during your time in millennial institute or the polytechnic right because it's not possible to front load and cram everything within the short duration of time so if we take that perspective that really it's not just what i can do within two years but what we can do over a lifetime i think many many possibilities open up and we can continue to think about different ways of acquiring new knowledge minister could i follow up on that question um to relate it to what you were saying in your speech about shifting the focus and the emphasis away from just cognitive skills and intelligence to other skills and intelligence which you are trying to encourage and in that way recognize other essential skills that in a society and also rebalance and address the question of inequality in that in that way education therefore being the great leveler i was quite struck that you said in your speech that you were visiting schools from less well-off neighborhoods and trying to make sure they had the resources and um the ability to to to help people uh from those backgrounds now because you are the new education minister it would be interesting to hear in your own words how you are framing your sense of priorities for the education system and if i go back in time i mean your predecessors sm tarman framed it simply as teach less and learn more um the hings we get had the idea of every school being a good school talking about quality as well as inequality and your immediate predecessor saong talked about lifelong learning and skills future all of which you are building on but in your mind how would you crystallize your priorities as education minister well i'm only six months into moe so i would be a little careful about talking about my priorities and perhaps also i have a you know i i'm wary about you know talking about what i want to do because when my mother who's been a teacher for many many years used to come back from teaching and then she would lament oh we have a new minister and he's got this new slogan for the schools oh we've got a new plum sack and he's got this new program in mind and and and i can understand you know it's things keep changing and they don't feel like they are part of um the solution but it's something hoisted on them so my coming from my background and growing up the way i did i i hesitate a bit to say this is my priority i think it should be what educators want and all educators want to uplift every child and ensure that they are able to achieve their full potential and that's what we will want to do too together with our educators in every school make sure that we uplift every child i'll be sure to ask you the same question in a year from now so long as you don't have a sense of deja vu but related to that question on on education is this one which is very uh getting a lot of traction about how the pandemic has sort of awakened a sense in singapore about wanting to deal with the inequalities in our society and and addressing the needs of the less well-off as well as the foreign workers in our community interested to hear your thoughts about how we might grapple with inequalities both within our community as well as with others who come to work here well so as i said just now um let me just look at the question the i it's this issue of inequality is something that it's not something new that has come up it's something that has been on our minds for quite a while within our singapore community we have done quite a number of moves i highlighted some of those in my speech and we will continue to review and examine what we can do to strengthen our social safety nets taking care of those that are disadvantaged those that are vulnerable those that are unemployed what additional assurances and supports we can provide and then looking at mobility as well and ensuring that children from disadvantaged homes from lower income groups can get the best chance to thrive and do well the beyond that i think the issue is about what can we do for our migrant workers too and indeed we must do more i think the pandemic has shown that all of us can do more to respect the dignity of our migrant workers appreciate and value them for the many many contributions that they give to our society and this is something the government can do better it's something that society can do better too i i recall when we had to decant some of our migrant workers from the dormitories to new living arrangements in order to reduce the density of the dormitories and we had to set up these temporary dorms in some of our neighborhoods it's not such an easy thing to do a lot of reaction from the public and i can understand why but i hope through this pandemic and through a reflection on what has happened we can all start to change our mindsets that start to appreciate better the contributions of our migrant workers and that the government is doing its part because we've talked about building new dormitories reducing the density of the existing ones putting in place new norms in these dormitories and we will need to build many more of them and we hope singaporeans will also start changing the mindset and embracing migrant workers as being part of our community and should there be a dormitory built near to where you live let's let's let's not have this nimby sin syndrome anymore let's let's understand that they too are part of our community and we should embrace them minister [Applause] a good follow-up question which was trending as even as you were speaking is this one by nicholas how can we encourage employers to raise salaries to add value and raise the status of more jobs and how can we in turn encourage society to see the value in tradition traditionally low paying low status jobs yeah it's it's ongoing this is not something that can change overnight i mentioned earlier how societies everywhere now place a high premium on cognitive work and not enough on work or other forms of work if you think about the spectrum of work there's hate work there is hands work technical hands-on work there is hard work work that involves the human touch or caring and i think that balance in many societies have shifted towards a lot of emphasis on hate but not enough on hands and hearts and we do need to strike a better balance it means not just incomes it also means recognizing the contributions of every worker across the entire spectrum and according dignity and respect to the contributions of each worker well that happens so easily i i i think it's not so straightforward it will take time but again if there is one reset that can happen after this pandemic if there's one thing that forces us to think differently as i alluded to just now it is that we i think all can see it for ourselves the the vast contributions that many of these people in the essential workforce make to our lives and how we should honor them and appreciate their contributions so that that that goes to the societal mindset and i hope the pandemic will start to shift that i have hope because when i go to schools and i talk to young students and i see the kinds of things that young students do they write thank you notes and appreciation letters for what has happened and they reflect on what has happened and they write these thank you notes and many of them spontaneously not because i'm around or because the teachers ask them to many of them write thank you letters to migrant workers and to workers in the essential sectors front liners and that gives me hope that you know with the next generation they will have a different mindset about um the contributions of workers and about recognizing these workers now going beyond that mindset it's really also about incomes we need to have better incomes for these workers part of it can be done through government policy and that's why we are talking about the progressive wage model rolling it out getting wages to be higher but part of it is by the employers themselves redesigning jobs um making enabling these workers to be more productive and that requires some form of industry transformation which we are trying to facilitate we have grants and incentives but we also need employers to come on board and then thirdly we are doing everything we can on the training front to upskill the workers and to give them new skills so that they can take on these new jobs become more productive and contribute more so it's not just a matter of employers you know increasing pay without seeing the additional productivity of the worker but through job redesign through skills training the employers can see these workers contributing more and with that added contribution they would justify higher pay as well so these are moves we are making and we hope we can make significant changes in the coming years let's take another question from the audience can i see over there yes lady waving at us thank you minister wong and mr fernandez i'm kalpana from ips the question i have is an education related question so there are two types of skills that i would argue are the most important side perhaps from our spoken language skills but neither of these skills are currently taught in school these are one relational skills so empathy and communication and you know this will allow us to better communicate and particularly better hear and listen to one another and number two reasoning skills so here i'm talking about informal logic skills um the ability to sift through this pervasive information and content that we now have at our fingertips these are domain neutral subjects that will serve us both as individuals and also as a community i am wondering what are your thoughts on making this available to all students through our schooling thank you it's it's not so much that we don't have we don't teach these subjects you may not see them as formal subjects in schools but we are very conscious of the need to develop these competencies and that's why moe talks about 21st century competencies and if you look at the framework for 21st century competencies they encompass these skill sets that you talk about human to human relational skills soft skills as well as reasoning skills logic skills so our hope and again it takes time but what we would like to see is every teacher not just being a subject teacher the teacher's role is not to say this is the subject i'm teaching math science and my goal is to help every student to excel in that particular subject but every teacher being a 21cc teacher 21st century competencies meaning to say the teacher itself whatever subject you are teaching has to be cognizant of the students abilities with regard to relationships with regard to reasoning logic and then consciously and deliberately foster this and nurture this in the classrooms right so you can do this through a whole you know different ways you can encourage more participation more group projects you can you know have a whole range of different formats of teaching and learning the point is you are not no longer just teaching to the exam trying to get the students to do well just for the sake of scoring well on academic results alone and that's something that we have been talking about for some time it's not just because i've just come into moe we've been talking about this for a while we've been trying to inculcate this mindset across all our teachers and they embrace it right they fully are on they are fully on board and they would like to move and shift to this new approach as well we would need parents to also come on board because it's you know the whole learning and education process is not just about what happens within the classroom but if society if parents supports what teachers and what schools are doing i think we can go a long way in shifting away from this emphasis on book knowledge and academics towards more holistic education at this point i'd like to take up the concept that you introduced in your speech of azerbaija i found it a very powerful one you know and i wondered how how did you come up with this idea what what attracted you to it why did it resonate with you at this time and what's the role of education and helping to shape it well it's it's something i read in a book long ago it's um this is a book i think it's hinchi's book it's henchy here no um she wrote a book on rajnam with edited interviews and this law way back and i read that book many years ago and i remember this concept of rajaratnam mr rajarat and i'm talking about this and sort of when when the covet 19 struck i think it resonated again because you know the pandemic has i think forced countries everywhere societies everywhere to ask ourselves what sort of individual sacrifices should we make for the collective good there is no doubt we have to make individual sacrifices we have to curb individual liberties be it safe distancing rules you know lock down rules uh wearing of mars these are all curbs on individual freedoms but to what extent are we prepared to make these modest or sometimes not so modest depending on the extent of the measures to what extent are we prepared to make these sacrifices for the common good that's a that's a question that's a big question that um i think societies everywhere have to answer not just for covet 19 covet 19 i think brings up this particular issue but the broader context is we all have to ask ourselves what is the common good what is the good life and are we prepared to make modest sacrifices in order to pursue that collective sense of the good life or do we want to be a contentious society where it's anyone to himself and everyone just protects their own selfish benefits and and this debate i think will happen in societies everywhere uh following kovit it already you already see people talking about it i think in singapore we have our own balance but we always need to remind ourselves that the stronger that sense of shared purpose common destiny we have as a nation it's not going to be perfect not everyone may agree but it's stronger that consensus i think the better we will be in charting our way forward i think sm tarman spoke about social empathy and solidarity and in the recent uh inauguration speech by president joe biden there was a lot of emphasis also on solidarity and unity and what struck me was he said you know in a democracy it's not about uniformity there is diversity of views and i think in the course of our discussions over the past week we've heard about that diversity and increasing complexity in singapore society how do you manage that diversity and yet have greater unity it's a bit of a tension isn't it absolutely so it's it's a big question everywhere particularly in a more plural society in a more diverse society where people may have different goals aspirations your definition of a good life may not be the same as mine and that's completely understandable these it's fine to have differences but as i said the more we can build consensus around what that common good is regardless of our differences political differences aside individual differences aside the more we can build consensus around what that common good is for singapore i think that gives us purpose it gives us that sense of a common destiny for the future and it will enable singapore to continue thriving and doing well in the future so that's that there are no easy answers to this societies everywhere will have to grapple with it i think it is so much more important for singapore given our small size that we maintain that strong sense of consensus and not end up frittering away at cohesion and have individuals or individual groups lobbying only for their own interest and neglecting what is at stake which all of us have common ground in it becoming harder to do in this age of ignorance that you talked about i think it's it's it's becoming harder to do for countries everywhere but like i said you know it's a if there is one server lining in kovit 19 it is that a crisis like this does force us to reflect more deeply on what our shared values are what do we want from society what kind of life do we want for ourselves and our children what is that purpose in our limited duration on this planet what would we like to achieve and and if that reflection in singapore leads to a coming together of shared values and common purpose i think we would be able to move forward better faster and with a renewed sense of purpose i think one of the the themes that seem to have you know captured attention during these these forums over the past few weeks was the idea of ideas that are coming at us through social media talk about walk culture and cancel culture and privilege and it's it's always been the case that ideas come to singapore and we we deal with them but how do we respond to them in a contextualized sort of way knowing our own history and our own culture and and isn't there a role that as education minister you see schools playing to help contextualize these ideas which are coming at us at a relentless pace it's it's a continued uh process uh everything comes back to education after a while but it it's true we are all exposed to new ideas online and nothing wrong with that in fact it's good that we get these uh access to information is so tremendous in today's world but as you said there is always that risk that we um take in ideas without understanding the context in singapore being different or worse we buy into conspiracy theories or um you know falsehoods that may not be true and what we have seen overseas is that these um ideas tend to sharply divide people into different tribes social tribes political tribes and when that happens as i said it's you become very resistant to hearing from the other side right you you self-select information to reinforce your own blind spots and biases and and then it starts to polarize and that's very worrying uh it's you see this happening in many places can we avoid this happening in singapore we will we must try our very best we must do our you know in education in schools we will continue to focus on cyber wellness helping students to navigate through the internet but in the end it depends on all of us as singaporeans to decide how best we can navigate this new landscape i was hoping you'd say you need good media as well but never mind is there another question there's a role for that too yes please dino thank you uh and this is lauren swang zino here um i was following the forums earlier on and there was one forum in particular which struck me this was about the soul of the nation and what struck me was that during the discussion hardly was there any mention about the challenges of multiculturalism and diversity but there was a lot more talk about what would normally come from the millennial our younger generation the challenges of the future so that brings me to this question i mean early on there was a session on social cohesion and there was talk about cohesion but even then it was in the context of social cohesion rather than ethnic cohesion or multiracial cohesion and early on i think chris g here did a very wonderful summary of the earlier session when he used the example from mandala mandala as a design in terms of things of getting in place and this is what we see in singapore so back to the question of soul of the nation how do you see not only as minister for education as maybe if i can say 4g generation with hopes of taking us to the future how do you see singapore our singapore our multi-racial multi-religious singapore in the context of that mandala and whether you see multiculturalism and multiracial cohesion as a big issue and whether we are actually equipped to handle the changes to come in the future thank you thank you thank you zainab it is a big issue and i would say that our aspirations and ideal for a multi-racial multi-cultural singapore must continue we must strive for that ideal it's a continued work in progress is there still racism in singapore today yes of course there is let's acknowledge it but is the situation today better than it was 10 years ago 20 years ago i would say it is true i would say most objective i hope most objective observers would acknowledge that it is better but is it perfect no it's not so our aim must be to continue working at this trying to reduce the imperfections trying to make it better year after year after year and that includes us re-examining all the things that we have done with regard to all the different policies we have to bring about a stronger closer union of people there are a whole range of issues that we can talk about whether it's ethnic integration quotas whether it's self-help groups none of this should be cast in stone or regarded as sacred cannot be changed right but we can constantly reveal evolve look at ways we can achieve a better closer uh multi-racial society we must avoid we must do our very best to ensure that identity politics that is divisive and polarizing just never gets a chance to take root in singapore i think when that happens it it really fuels the worst tendencies in people it breeds hostility and divisions as we have seen in many other places so let's recognize that this is an issue it is an issue we are continuously working at it and making it better mr we're almost running out of time but i'd like to bring the discussion back to politics and the politics of the pandemic so to speak um some people have said you've had a good crisis you've been confronting the whole effort in a way of crisis in a way what does that mean well let me get to that i mean you've had to your co-chair has described you as a decisive leader and you yourself described how you had to manage um having to take difficult decisions you know in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty and having to sort of sense the public mood and carry the ground with you i'd like to hear your thoughts about how you grappled with having to take those difficult decisions was it mostly head or heart or gut what did you do to help you make a decision you know you know and also more broadly what did this very difficult year that we all lived through but you especially what did you take away um about the exercise of political leadership you always save the best questions for last i it's certainly not about deciding by gut right i don't trust my own gut so um i i have obviously got reactions to anything that comes up but in decision making but you know in a situation like this it is not just based on instincts you've got to look at data you've got to look at evidence and we have a whole team of people helping us experts scientists advising us so we bounce off ideas we bounce ideas off them very rapidly constantly almost we get daily updates each time new developments happen a new variant that develops is there a risk is there no risk should our measures be updated it's a constant daily affair it's i mean this has been my life for the whole of last year and it continues to be possibly for the whole of this year it's a constant daily affair tracking these developments getting inputs from a whole range of different people sensing as you said just now also the public mood public sentiments not so much because not so much that we that public sentiments would shape or in what impact on the policies per se because the policies first and foremost have to be determined by what's right from a public health point of view but to some extent the implementation of the policies do depend on the public acceptance of these measures and and that's a judgment if if the sense is the public is not prepared to accept the measures we can talk about having new measures but if the compliance rate is very low then it's not going to be effective so we have to think through a whole gamut of different issues before we develop any new measures that's the very challenging almost exhausting part of the work but i think it's more than just about me it's a really a whole team effort behind this we have many ministers on the task force each overseeing different responsibilities dpm hing is the advisor to the task force he provides us with useful inputs and guidance smto as well and then we have an excellent team of public officials across the entire uh government across different ministries and agencies all working together and and we've had to sort of ramp up very quickly at the start of the crisis but by now the processes are much better the inter in inter-agency coordination work is much more efficient so it's it's that kind of work that continues and we we will have to you know keep on adjusting keep on monitoring the situation never quite ensure what will throw up what what new uncertainties will throw up the next day right so this is this is just part of our dealing with a crisis like that your second part of the question was about i've forgotten about the second part of the question but but i really had one more question for you and i the monitor is saying time's up but i do want to ask you this question which was your last rounding up statement about emerging stronger and i noticed you said that i do not say this lightly and it's easy to say but i felt the conviction when you said it and i wanted to ask you what makes you so sure um you know i think having a going through an experience like this and a crisis like this is it's it's really quite surreal if you think about this no one would have imagined a year ago that the world would have come to a standstill travel will be stopped and we will be where we are today no one would have imagined it's when we say it's a crisis of a generation and at that stage you know last year some people said no you know this is scare mongering you know everything will pass by the summer of 2020 things will be over it's not over yet and it's not over by a long shot because we may still have to live with this for a year two years three years who knows so it it really um i think puts us in a very different position where we have had to deal with so many difficulties so many unknowns but i've been fortunate in having this front row seat at seeing people responding to the crisis at face to face at in close proximity uh when for example we had so many cases breaking out in the dormitories and that in many ways was our darkest hour last year more than a thousand a day we could have easily easily been overwhelmed by the number of cases our hospitals would have been overwhelmed and if that were to happen i have no doubt that fatalities would have gone up drastically significantly and you know then you see how within a very short time the people came together the those who worked on the community care facility getting the expo ready getting the changi exhibition center ready in double quick time we thought it would be impossible we said it would be impossible but they made the impossible possible public sector private sector coming together working on it and you know how they say the sometimes it's just a few people can change the cause of history and change a trajectory in the crisis this was one of those moments where i thought the contributions of a few people truly made a difference because they enabled us to care for tens of thousands of workers without overwhelming our health healthcare system and we cared for them and did them and did the best for them and the result speaks for themselves we have had one of the lowest fatality rates in the world and we have very few fatalities among the migrant worker population as well we did everything we could to care for them and it's the result of these few people working together getting the facilities set up caring for the workers and making sure that they are looked after and i see them from time to time i know they are exhausted they are tired but they never gave up they continued to persevere last late last year when we stood down these facilities we gave a very small farewell for them and said thank you for all the contributions not farewell but thank you right and because we are standing down we don't need these facilities anymore but we said look i don't know how things will unfold please be prepared there is a chance that i have to call you back again and activate you i don't i really really don't want to i would do my dharmas not to activate you but should the need arise please be prepared and they said without a moment's hesitation we are ready if you need us we will be back and and that's the tremendous spirit i see in this example but across so many different examples of singaporeans rallying together showing tremendous resilience and that's why i say i don't speak lightly when i believe with conviction that singapore can emerge stronger from this crisis thank you minister hang on i think that's a good optimistic note to end thank you minister for the very engaging session and for your candor with your answers see jonathas ready to take over so thank you minister um we have come to the end of this year's sp it was a stranger singapore perspectives we have had the most difficult to organize as you might guess three days was online nine sessions spread over three days over two weeks as it so happens a few complain of things hanging and freezing but on the whole it was a success we discovered too that there were advantages to doing things online for one we were able to uh get a wide cast of distinguished speakers from all over the world a great many were willing to do it because they didn't have to fly here so that was an advantage today's in-situ proceedings as you might guess was very difficult to organize um but i think it is good that we tried as minister wong noted just now this thing this new normal we grandly call it may actually last for quite a while he said four or five years so i dearly hope you're not right but who knows as you might guess there are many people who worked very hard put to put all this together first of all i want to thank our sponsors they are listed on the board uh my colleague please do that some of them are very long time sponsors and and supporters my colleague christopher gee did the heavy lifting um organizing this conference curating the subjects choosing the speakers persuading them to take part and of course ips excellent admin staff all of them this year because we're to do so many things including testing all of you almost the entire ips tribe of about 70 odd people were called into service registering ushering and so on but i would like to thank in particular a few our fundraiser hansen who of course you know did all the the lacing with our sponsors publicity kaisen you may have run across her regine who was a tremendous help to chris uh supporting him we're dealing with about 52 speakers that's how many we had and moderators with nine being overseas speakers so it's quite a quite a quite an operation uh chai he was hired to do our digital stuff and and he did i think without him we would not have done this online sessions and finally ceiling and zahida who you may have seen run around they did the administration and organized everything else i want to thank in particular mbs the singapore tourist promotion board as well as moh they were all of tremendous help and i've been asked to thank in particular one officer in sdb uh xavier coo who was i'm told of tremendous help in august organizing today's antigen test so the system actually works so um i finally um you know i want to do a bit of advanced publicity um the the next big conference we are doing in ips this year actually um will be sometime in june on women um and this will be proceeded in may with our next essa naden fellow karina lim who will be delivering three lectures also on the subject of empowering of women so it's the year of the women this year so do look out for these things and finally all of you and the hundreds of tuned in online thank you for your participation your presence and your support covet or not i promise you there will be a singapore perspectives 2022 so till then thank you and good night

Channel: Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), Singapore

Views: 8,594

Rating: 4.5428572 out of 5

Keywords: Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore, 新加坡, 政策研究所, IPS, LKYSPP, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, 李光耀公共政策学院, NUS, National University of Singapore, 新加坡国立大学, 国大

Id: YIDGPysVTrA

Length: 89min 8sec (5348 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021