Channel NewsAsia - 2 hours 46 minutes ago
SINGAPORE: Singapore’s school dropout rate is declining. It is now 1.6 per cent of the cohort, down from 5.3 per cent in 1997 and 3.6 per cent in 2002.
The Education Ministry says the decline reflects the success of initiatives and efforts to address the needs of students who are at risk of dropping out from school early.
More resources will be provided to help schools further lower their dropout rates.
Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Education Masagos Zulkifli told Parliament that 70 high—needs schools will get an extra full—time school counsellor and an additional operations manager over the next four years.
The ministry is also enhancing screening tools for students with behavioural and emotional difficulties.
A monitoring system will also be developed to help teachers track development of individual students, with alerts to pick out those at risk of dropping out from school.
Mr Masagos said the additional tools will provide useful information for teachers to monitor students’ development even as they move from school to school and class to class.
Mr Masagos heads the Committee on Reducing Attrition in Education, which aims to reduce the overall dropout rate to 1.5% by 2011.
Around 0.15 per cent of the cohort drops out during primary school while another 0.45 per cent drops out during the transition from primary school to secondary school.
The remaining one per cent drops out during secondary school. About 70 per cent of these students leave school at the upper secondary level, particularly at Secondary 3.
About 90 per cent of secondary school dropouts are from the Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) streams. — CNA/ir