Moving Singapore from great to excellent : How educational research informs this shift

The McKinsey report on how the worlds most improved school systems keep getting better evaluated Singapore as a great system (Mourshed, Chijioke, & Barber, 2010). While the report identies factors, such as high quality teachers, that enable high-performing systems to do well, it does not provide suggestions on how countries can shift from great to excellent. This paper takes a systemic, ecological view to discuss how educational research invested in ve levels of the education system the history and society; cross systems; whole system; school; and classroom levels can yield research ndings that may inform Singapore on how to make this shift. Three areas of change are proposed to help Singapores efforts towards excellence: 1. a more balanced teacher-centric and student-centric pedagogy, 2. improving the performance of lower achieving students, and 3. greater diversity of talent recognition beyond academic achievements.