Options
Of perspectives and policy: a case study of the implementation of the subject-based banding policy in one Singapore primary school
Loading...
Type
Thesis
Abstract
Streaming has been part of the Singapore primary school system school since 1979. In 2008, it went through a major revamp with the implementation of the Subject-based Banding (SbB) policy. For the first time in three decades of a streamed system, pupils are allowed access to subjects across the higher and lower curriculum levels. One policy analyst I spoke to saw SbB as a means of detracking Singapore's primary school system. Streaming is an emotive issue for many Singaporean parents anxious about the consequent effect of streaming on their child's school career and consequent life chances. Each year it gets some airtime in parliament and a share of column inches in the newspapers, variously couched in the discourses of fair educational access and opportunities and social mobility. Yet there is little we know about streaming in our primary schools by way of educational research that can better inform these discussions.
This study locates itself in the field of sense-making policy implementation research to look into how the SbB policy was defined, decided on and practiced in one neighbourhood primary school, and to what effect on the pupils it was meant to serve. It investigated the perspectives that policy actors on the school site held in implementing the policy. The perspectives and experiences of a group of Primary 6 pupils on the receiving end of the school's decision-making with the policy were included in the research. The study also evolved to examine insights on the comparative perspectives of four principals.
Policy actors were found privileging certain policy messages as stimuli to form their perspectives and direct their line of action with the policy, and neglected others. SbB was meant to serve two groups of pupils but three out of the four principals in the study directed their decision-making to only one group. SbB presents two objectives but all four principals did not attend to the second objective in carrying through the policy.
SbB exacted more demand on policy actors on the school sites compared to the past streaming practice. My study was done in the second year of SbB's implementation, when policy actors were still sense-making way around the policy. The theoretical understandings and practical implications with which I concluded my study however, point to the fact that this is a policy that will require much more modifications in its 'symbolic centre', as well in the tangible and intangible structures of primary schools and primary schooling in Singapore than what I was able to find.
This study locates itself in the field of sense-making policy implementation research to look into how the SbB policy was defined, decided on and practiced in one neighbourhood primary school, and to what effect on the pupils it was meant to serve. It investigated the perspectives that policy actors on the school site held in implementing the policy. The perspectives and experiences of a group of Primary 6 pupils on the receiving end of the school's decision-making with the policy were included in the research. The study also evolved to examine insights on the comparative perspectives of four principals.
Policy actors were found privileging certain policy messages as stimuli to form their perspectives and direct their line of action with the policy, and neglected others. SbB was meant to serve two groups of pupils but three out of the four principals in the study directed their decision-making to only one group. SbB presents two objectives but all four principals did not attend to the second objective in carrying through the policy.
SbB exacted more demand on policy actors on the school sites compared to the past streaming practice. My study was done in the second year of SbB's implementation, when policy actors were still sense-making way around the policy. The theoretical understandings and practical implications with which I concluded my study however, point to the fact that this is a policy that will require much more modifications in its 'symbolic centre', as well in the tangible and intangible structures of primary schools and primary schooling in Singapore than what I was able to find.
Date Issued
2012
Call Number
LB3061 Mar
Date Submitted
2012