Nurturing Soft Skills in Students

1 Dr Tan Wu Meng asked the Minister for Education (a) how are soft skills inculcated, nurtured and evaluated in our education system; (b) how is the impact of e-learning and digitalisation on soft skills acquisition being assessed; and (c) what measures are being taken to ensure that soft skills continue to be learned amidst COVID-19 safe distancing measures including in higher education.

The Minister for Education (Mr Lawrence Wong): Mr Speaker, soft skills like critical and inventive thinking, collaboration and information skills, civic literacy and interpersonal skills, are part of what educators around the world commonly term as 21st Century Competencies, or 21CC. MOE strives to develop 21CC in every student to enable them to thrive in a fast-changing and increasingly inter-connected world. These competencies are developed through both curricular and co-curricular activities.

For example, through group work, students learn communication and collaboration skills and how to manage relationships with peers. In learning humanities, students develop stronger global awareness and cross-cultural understanding. In learning sciences, students are exposed to the inquiry process and inventive thinking of scientists. Beyond the classroom, co-curricular and Values-in-Action activities are platforms that enable students to deepen their mastery of 21CC through rich and authentic learning opportunities.

When students progress to the Institutes of Higher Learning or IHLs, they continue to develop soft skills through their course programmes and applied learning opportunities such as industry attachments, internships and community service programmes. In addition, the IHLs are enhancing their curriculum to provide students with more multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary exposure. This will help broaden students’ perspectives and encourage trans-disciplinary thinking and approaches to problem-solving.

Schools and institutions gauge the impact on student outcomes through regular programme reviews as well as student feedback. In recent times, with greater use of technology and digital platforms, soft skills can be nurtured through online and offline learning experiences that reinforce each other. For example, students learn interpersonal and collaboration skills through both in-person group work and through the use of online collaboration tools.

Even with safe management measures in place, our schools and IHLs seek to ensure that students spend sufficient time in face-to-face interactions, be it in classrooms, CCAs or other activities, so that they can benefit from a more holistic education experience. For example, schools will be allowed to further resume activities that are held outside of school and those that involve fixed inter-mingling of students across schools, during their post-exam period. IHLs have also progressively increased the number of students allowed back on campus for in-person learning. Classes and consultations, previously conducted online, are allowed to resume, with no more than 50 persons per class.

MOE is taking incremental steps to resume more of such in-person activities safely in schools and IHLs. We will continue to help ensure that our students and graduates are future-ready by progressively developing their soft skills at each stage of the education journey.

Mr Speaker: Dr Tan Wu Meng.

Dr Tan Wu Meng (Jurong): Mr Speaker, I thank the Minister for his answer and I would like to put two supplementary questions to the Minister for Education. Firstly, I would like to ask the Minister what measures are in place to identify students who may benefit from additional coaching and support in the development of soft skills, in the same way that today, for more technical skills or curriculum-related material, students who need extra help are being identified. So, how are students who need extra development in soft skills identified?

The second question, Mr Speaker, if I may ask the Minister, what measures are being taken to ensure that students from less advantaged backgrounds, students who are starting with less, that these students continue to have good opportunities to build social networks, to build social capital and to develop soft skills in a variety of domains? I raise this, Mr Speaker, because there is a good body of evidence from researchers such as David Deming or Catherine Weinberger on the role of soft skills synergising with technical skills. And this is all the more important today in our uncharted new 21st century COVID-19 world.

Mr Lawrence Wong: Mr Speaker, with regard to the first question, this is an on-going process. The teachers in the classrooms continue to identify students who are weaker and who may need more help, and will pay more attention to them. This applies, of course, to their mastery of subjects, but it also applies to soft skills.

For example, students that may benefit from more coaching when it comes to communication skills – that is something that the teachers would really be able to identify and they can provide more help, be it through their lessons in class or by giving them more opportunities.

The importance of the 21CC, which I highlighted just now, is integral to the teaching and learning process in schools. The school leaders and educators are fully aware of this and will continue to make sure they identify students who are weaker, who will need more help and can benefit from more help.

On the second point, we are also mindful that there will be students from certain backgrounds who may lack the exposure and the opportunities. That is why schools also pay a lot of attention to this segment of students to try and uplift them and provide them with more opportunities. This is work in progress. Certainly, we will continue to try to do better at this – provide more systematic uplifting programmes, more exposure, more opportunities for these students. It is a continuing process.

We already allocate more resources to help these students. We make sure that there are more programmes in place to help these students and we will continue to do so. And I would say that this effort cannot be done by schools alone. We also need help from the community, we need help from industry, so that together, we can provide maximum opportunities to help students who can benefit from such help.