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Op-Ed

Education Op-Ed 

Shifting Policies, Unshifting Issues: Educational Equity in Singapore’s Primary 1 Registration Exercise

Ruru Hoong argues that the Ministry of Education’s recent change in the 2022 Primary 1 Registration exercise does not address underlying issues of educational equity. Rather, two potential policy interventions should be implemented—critically assessing the priority schemes and re-evaluating the overall school assignment structure for greater procedural equity. Rethinking these policies could have immense implications for the country’s goal to ensure that schools remain accessible to children of all backgrounds.

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Exterior of an MOE Kindergarten campus.
Cross-Publication Education Long Form Op-Ed 

Preschools for the People: An Examination of Singapore’s Early Childhood Education Landscape (Part 2)

In this two-part series, students from Roosevelt Network@Yale-NUS College delve into Singapore’s early childhood care and education (ECCE) landscape, examining the current state of quality and access in the sector. In part one, the authors discussed Singapore’s progress towards improving quality in the ECCE sector. Here in part two, they now turn towards the accessibility of ECCE services, and subsequently synthesise the issues of quality and access to deliver insights regarding the industry as a whole.

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Photograph of a classroom in an MOE Kindergarten.
Cross-Publication Education Long Form Op-Ed 

Preschools for the People: An Examination of Singapore’s Early Childhood Education Landscape (Part 1)

In this two-part series, students from Roosevelt Network@Yale-NUS College delve into Singapore’s early childhood care and education (ECCE) landscape. They draw upon expert interviews and careful study of existing government policies to unpack issues surrounding quality and access in the sector. In this first article, the authors argue that while the government has made significant strides in uplifting and standardizing ECCE provision in recent years, there remains room to tighten minimum quality standards. Effort also needs to be made to correct the societal undervaluation of ECCE jobs, providing professionals in the sector with remuneration and recognition that reflects the vital role they play in child development.

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Op-Ed 

Looking Beyond POFMA to Combat Fake News and Misinformation in Singapore

Ryan Chua argues that Singapore cannot rely solely on hard regulations like the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) to address the proliferation of fake news. He assesses how information is being consumed and disseminated in this new age of heightened populism, before evaluating alternative approaches that could be taken in Singapore. He advocates for softer but more experimental approaches that may not necessarily yield immediate results in the short-term but bode well towards building institutions and technology we can trust in the long-term.

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Digital Technology Op-Ed Our Future Smart Nation 

The Possibility of an Inclusive Smart City: Designing for Foreign Domestic Workers

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Joshua Tan argues that Singapore must consider the “Other” in the design and conceptualization of its smart districts and masterplans. He surveys smart city initiatives like Smart Nation Singapore and the Punggol Digital District, observing that there is hardly any mention of the foreign domestic workers (FDWs) that contribute to the domestic labor vital for our nation’s development. He outlines strategies to include FDWs into the discourse and technologies of “smartness” in Singapore, benefiting not only FDWs, but also the households they serve and regions from which they came.

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Covid Op-Ed 

Rethinking What We Owe Each Other

Jane Loo and Yasmine Wong examine our moral obligations to one another during COVID-19. They discuss the importance of social responsibility and how it maps onto the provisions and shortcomings of existing tracking technologies used to curb the spread of the virus. From the angle of beneficence—acting for the benefit of others and the common good—they explore possibilities for our control strategies and the community going forward.

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Data Digital Technology Government Administration Op-Ed 

In TraceTogether We Trust: Singapore’s Challenge with Data Governance and Ethics

Sarah Anderson and Lionel Oh highlight existing gaps in Singapore’s current legislative and bureaucratic structures for managing data and digital technology. They argue that these concerns extend past any single product or incident; because of the importance of building public trust in the government’s use of digital technology, transparency, privacy, and other ethical considerations should be a fixture of technology policy. The authors also provide recommendations on how these data ethics concerns might be addressed through augmented workstreams which introduce procedures and safeguards for government technology.

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