Update, Aug. 30, 2017, 9pm: The Ministry of Education (MOE) clarified on Mothership's Facebook page on the evening of August 28 that the Director-General of Education did not make the statements quoted in the EducationHQ Australia article. EducationHQ subsequently withdrew its article and issued an apology, which you can read here.

The original article written by Australian educator Walter Barbieri attributed the quotes to Education Minister for schools Ng Chee Meng, and was published in the August 2017 hard-copy edition of Australian Teacher Magazine. A scan of the print copy was shared by him on his Twitter page:

However, the version of the article published online edited out Education Minister Ng Chee Meng's name and replaced it with Director-General of Education, Wong Siew Hoong.

It also appears Barbieri was present at the 7th biennial Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference, held at Nanyang Technological University's Nanyang Auditorium on May 31.

An MOE spokesperson has clarified that Minister Ng Chee Meng was on an overseas work trip and was not present at the NIE conference.

Singapore recently topped the Pisa rankings in Maths, Science, and Reading.

Which is great news.

However, an Australian magazine, Australian Teacher Magazine, did a write-up urging people not to place too much stock in these type of rankings.

The crux of the article was dedicated to National Institute of Education's (NIE) conference, "Redesigning Pedagogy", a biennale conference that ended on June 2, organised by NIE.

Specifically, it highlighted what Director-General of Education, Wong Siew Hoong, had said during the conference.

It recounted how graphs depicting Singapore's incredible PISA results were showcased, before juxtaposing it with data on student well-being, which showed Singapore in the lowest quartile.

The article claims that Wong had attributed Singapore’s PISA success to standardised test drilling and a culture of compliance.

Concluding with this statement.

"We've been winning the wrong race"

Wong also touched on the changing tides of education, claiming that what had worked in the past would not prove successful now.

“we’re building compliant students just as the jobs that value compliance are beginning to disappear”.

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Making learning fun

They also quoted one of the keynote speakers at the event, Professor Kim Sung Il, of the Brain and Motivation Research Institute, on what he considered a critical component of learning.

Which is the lost art of making education fun and engaging.

“... if you can’t make material interesting, don’t teach it, because you will lastingly damage it in the learner’s mind”

The article ended with a pragmatic do and don't list by senior research officer in MOE, Dr Yang Silin.

Stop:

Applying unrealistic timings to tasks (eg. in-class timed assessments)

Expecting unprofessional presentation modes (eg. pen and paper)

Setting assignments out of context (eg. practice questions)

Start/Keep:

Asking students to create authentic products

Aligning learning clearly to assessment criteria

Rewarding initiative and originality

Teaching Creativity

Handy.

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Image from NIE