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paid a generous stipend by the government as public servants. The
pre-service programme currently graduates approximately 2,300
students per year. In addition, NIE, working with the Ministry of
Education, provides extensive graduate education and professional
development opportunities to approximately 18,000 teachers every
year in both specialist content and pedagogical fields. Teachers are
allocated a very generous 100 hours of professional development
time per year. Recently, the Ministry announced the establishment
of a dedicated Academy of Singapore Teachers to coordinate profes-
sional development policy and programmes across the 360 schools
in the system.
School leaders
: Over the past decade, NIE has developed a range
of specialized and locally and internationally esteemed leadership
courses for outstanding teachers who have been carefully selected
for positions in school government as senior teachers, master
teachers, heads of department, vice-principals, principals and
superintendents. All leadership programmes are developed in part-
nership with the Ministry and are closely aligned to government
policy and priorities. Beyond this, as the Graduate Programme
Office announces, “NIE consistently scans the horizon to monitor
developing trends locally and globally and anticipate their impact
on educational leadership development. NIE is open to new
responses in the face of constant change and is willing to adopt
novel strategies in the design of leadership programmes when
merited. However, we recognize that change must not be at the
expense of stability and suitability to the local context. The need
to work with all stakeholders, conduct self evaluation, have high
expectations and believe in the importance of balancing competing
interests is paramount for the leadership development relevance
and success.” At a programmatic level, “receptivity to innova-
tion and change requires challenging conventional thinking and
moving away from a single discipline-based approach to leadership
development, to a multi-disciplinary approach.”
The flagship leadership programme is the Leaders in
Education Programme for school principals, which has
gained wide international recognition for excellence and
innovation. The full-time, state-of-the-art programme
is strongly future orientated and has a clear emphasis
on leadership capability in a dynamic and complex
context. Specifically, through a process of learning in
diverse contexts, including the authentic workplace of
the school and international locations, the learning plat-
form addresses a range of issues that are seen as critical
to the success of future leadership, including:
• Designing and managing learning school
organizations that can sustain a competitive
advantage in a fast-changing and turbulent
environment
• Strategic choice and marketing
• Innovative communication and information
technology
• Designing an integrative and innovative curriculum in
order to achieve excellence in teaching and learning
• Building human and intellectual capital.
Organizational capacity-building
The Singapore educational system also invests strongly
in organizational capacity-building. This is especially
obvious in the care and attention it gives to the selection
and training of school leaders, but it is also evident in
a range of other indicators: the commitment of school
leaders to providing a high quality education for all
children in their schools, strong support for continuous
pedagogical and technological innovation by both teach-
ers and school leaders, collegial decision making within
schools, a strong ethic of responsibility and accountabil-
ity at all levels of schools and, above all, a commitment to
The collaborative classrooms provide an environment that allows student-centred
and collaborative learning with the support of one-to-one computing facilities
NIE promotes the professional development of in-service teachers
through continuing education as part of lifelong learning
Image: NIE, Singapore
Image: NIE, Singapore