Ideas to Practice: Contextualising Singapore's Policies through its ICT in Education Masterplan journey 1997 - 2012

The first Masterplan for ICT in Education (mp1) was launched in 1997 as part of a concerted national effort to bring technologies to bear in the economic, social and learning environment of Singapore. This plan primarily focused on building a strong level of ICT infrastructure for educational institutions, as well as establishing basic ICT skills amongst teachers. Following this, the 2nd Masterplan (mp2) (2003-8) leveraged the foundation created through mp1 to put in structures that pushed the frontier of experimentation in the use of ICT for teaching and learning, leading to programmes such as the Future School (FS) initiative. With pedagogically sound practices beginning to emerge under mp2, the 3rd Masterplan (mp3) represents the education system’s effort to consolidate and scale good practices within the system.

This talk aims to start with a brief overview of Singapore’s Masterplan journey set against a background of policy alignment in the economic, manpower and education spaces. It will then focus on the key projects within mp3, and how these projects are conceptualised within an ‘Ideas to Practice’ framework. These projects include the later phases of the FS initiative and the lessons that have been learnt and applied, the infrastructure development that supports the vision of mp3, and the capacity building work through the professional development of teachers and school leaders. The talk will conclude by looking at some of the anticipated issues facing the use of ICT for teaching and learning.