Grow our Human Capital

2.47 To become a knowledge hub and a centre for enterprise, we must continue to attract global talent. Management guru Peter Drucker has called knowledge workers “the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years.”² Google, one of the most innovative firms in the world, takes Drucker’s words to heart. To generate a continuous stream of new ideas, it systematically looks for the most talented programmers and computer scientists in the world, knowing that smart businesses must – to use Drucker’s words - “strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers’ way”.

2.48 Singapore must be a place where global talent with diverse backgrounds and cultures want to live, work and play. George Lucas set up Lucasfilms’ first and only studio outside US in Singapore partly because of our cosmopolitan appeal. When the studio opened in October last year, its first batch of 35 animators came from 19 nations, including Panama and Ecuador. We will continue to develop new attractions such as the Integrated Resorts and the Singapore Flyer, to make ours an interesting, lively and fun “City-in-a-Garden”.

2.49 Besides attracting talent, we are also investing in our own people. We are providing our students with opportunities, from the primary up to tertiary level. Our schools are striving to develop critical thinking skills and creativity in our students. We are reshaping the education landscape to allow greater diversity and bring out the best in every young Singaporean. We are opening up more curriculum options for them, including new ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels subjects, and Elective Modules for those in the Normal courses. A new school for the Arts is being set up, adding to our specialised schools in sports, and science and mathematics. Our students have more choices than ever before.

2.50 A sizeable number of our students go to the polytechnics, including many who have done well enough to qualify for places in the junior colleges. Our secondary schools will do more to cater to students who can benefit from some exposure to applied education while still in secondary schools. Some schools will partner our polytechnics to introduce new applied subjects such as electronics and digital media as electives. We will also allow students to be directly admitted into polytechnics based on their talents and abilities, just as we have allowed direct admission into junior colleges and secondary schools.

2.51 We are also investing more in our universities. The Government aims to have 25% of each primary one cohort enrolled in publicly-funded universities by 2010, up from the 21% in 2002. To fund the additional places and invest in new physical infrastructure, MOE will allocate an additional $2 billion to the university sector over the next five years, or an average of $400 million each year. By then, Government investment in our three publicly-funded universities is expected to reach $1.9 billion annually, or 1% of GDP.