Ho, Weng Kin

In Singapore, nationwide educational policies and movements have taken place frequently and within a short space of time from each other. In turn, such educational initiatives get translated into changes in curricula of every school subject – mathematics inclusive. In this chapter, we make an explicit connection between Singapore students’ PISA performance and the aforementioned curricular shifts by highlighting the major changes that have taken place in K-12 Singapore school mathematics curriculum, analysing them in terms of the shifts in curriculum ideologies. Then we map each of the dimensions of the PISA assessment framework with the components of the Singapore Mathematics Curriculum Framework to further substantiate the claim that “the [Singapore] education system and school mathematics curriculum contribute in part towards the success of Singapore’s students in … PISA” (Kaur et al., Mathematics education in Singapore. Springer, Singapore, 2019, p. 134). Additionally, we give some answers to the “Ten Questions for Mathematics Teachers … and how PISA can help answer them” (OECD, PISA, OECD Publishing, Paris, 2016) that are relevant to the Singapore context. Based on the twenty-first-century competencies identified, respectively, by the OECD and Ministry of Education (Singapore), we explore possible new directions the national mathematics curriculum may head towards and hope to peek into the future education landscape for Singapore mathematics.