The Desired Outcomes of Education are attributes that we aspire for every Singaporean to possess by the time they complete their formal education. These outcomes establish a common purpose for our educators, drive our policies and programmes, and allow us to consider how well our education system is doing.​

A child schooled in the Singapore education system embodies the Desired Outcomes of Education. They should possess a good sense of self-awareness, a sound moral compass, and the knowledge, skills and dispositions to take on the opportunities and challenges of the future. ​

They should be:​

• Confident persons who have a zest for life, have a strong sense of right and wrong, are adaptable and resilient, know themselves, are discerning in judgment, think independently and critically, and communicate effectively.​

• Self-directed learners who take responsibility for their own learning, are curious, reflective, and persevering in the lifelong pursuit of learning, driven by their passion and purpose.​

• Active contributors who are empathetic and open-minded to collaborate effectively in teams, exercise initiative, have courage to take risks responsibly, are innovative and strive for excellence.​

• Concerned citizens who are rooted to Singapore, have a strong civic consciousness, are responsible to their family, community and nation and take active roles in improving the lives of others.

As a teacher, we used to...

As a curriculum planner, we now need to...

• Tension between learning needs and desired outcomes - Factoring in the profile of students wrt bridging their learning needs to the objectives and outcomes - content, knowledge and skills of students. Differentiated learning needs - designing and crafting the curriculum to reach the needs of students.

• Tension between teachers' expectations vs societal expectations - some of the aspects we are hoping to develop in the students may not be so easily assessed i.e. values - is there a need to test everything we desire to or do we want to focus on just educating?

• Tension of balancing - how do we balance pedagogy, assessment and content and ensure that students learning are holistic?

Confident persons: Learner Centered

Concerned Citizens: Social Reconstruction

Self-Directed Learners: Scholar Academic

Current trend: Moving towards learner centred as opposed to scholar academic + social efficiency in the past

- Buy-in comes in through learner centeredness, but we feel we take a somewhat prescriptive approach towards what students' passions and goals might be.

- What occupation am I going to be? Early schema-building in students doesn't always give every student that freedom to pursue their passions.

- Shutting of O-level drama. Moving away from aspirations and towards future-proofing.

- Singapore cannot afford too much variance due to the importance of our human resource.

Recent push towards learner-centeredness in some aspects!

- Learner-centeredness can exist in giving students the skills and competencies to make the most meaning for themselves out of limited choices.

- Looking at things in terms of occupations (ECG portals)

- But the future may not be so neatly silo-ed into occupations!

- So learner-centeredness (importance of meaning-making) dovetailing with new competencies needed for our society?

- Also important to make students feel happy about their limited choices! A much more vocal and worldly crowd nowadays.

- Can see the issues with a fully egalitarian society like the US though, where people are entirely free.