by Eric Feigenbaum
“We have to develop Singapore’s only available natural resource, its people,” Lee Kuan Yew often said in one variation or another.
Lee, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, held the role for 31 years before his “emeritus jobs” of Senior Minister and later Minister Mentor – staying active in Singaporean government until his death in 2015 at 91 years-old. Throughout his life Lee reminded Singaporeans and the world that Singapore had been not much more than a dusty red sandbar when it began – dependent on water from peninsular Malaysia and unable to meet its own agricultural needs.
Singapore’s economy was transformed from being centered around shipping, trade and a British naval base to being diversified to include more profitable and scalable industries including manufacturing, finance, software and biotech. To do this, Singaporeans had to be able to move into white collar jobs – which of course required education and lots of it.
Accordingly, education became an early focus for Singapore’s leadership. Most of Singapore’s founders were themselves graduates of the greatest schools in the British Empire – including Cambridge, Oxford and the London School of Economics. But they were the products of highly successful families who could afford to send their sons abroad (although notably, Mrs Lee also attended Cambridge and became a highly successful attorney in her own right – making her a pioneer and icon in Singapore). These leaders understood their country needed education not to be concentrated in the elite – but to be the standard for all Singaporeans.
There were of course debates about how this could and should be done. Notably, Chinese private schools worked off a very different pedagogy than British-based institutions – focused more on rote memorization and command of facts than critical thinking and love of learning. Students studying in English wrote essays and had oral exams in which they were questioned and challenged. Chinese students were drilled and graded on perfection.
Singapore reconciled these by retaining the strong technical learning of the Chinese system – especially focused on STEM – while adopting British outlook, flexibility and linguistics.
As with many things, Singapore took advantage of the systems already left to it by the British. Singapore’s secondary education structure is based on the British O and A-Level examination format. Most of its schools use English as the medium of education with the incorporation of “mother tongue” classes – requiring students to study Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.
As Stavros Yiannouka of the World Economic Forum’s World Innovation Summit For Education wrote, “Singapore’s education system is relentlessly forward-looking. From adopting bilingualism with English (in addition to the mother tongue of Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil), to its focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), Singapore anticipated many of the key education strategies being adopted by today’s policymakers.”
In 2024 – as in so many years – Singapore was ranked #1 in the World Economic Forum’s World Competitiveness Ranking for Education. In 2025, Singapore was outflanked by Switzerland with whom it is regularly neck-and-neck – however, it has been in the top three continuously for almost two decades. The United States, by comparison ranked #6 in 2015 and is now #13.
In the 1990’s, data began to accumulate that humanities were essential to a student’s overall performance particularly in regards to critical thinking and creativity. Singapore – which had prioritized STEM from the beginning, began to retool its curriculum to meet the modern need – especially as Singapore’s leadership emphasized the importance of creativity for Singaporean entrepreneurship.
It was around this time, Lee Kuan Yew said in a public speech, “By history, our young have always taken the safer course of joining a big corporation, usually an MNC or local corporation, and climbing up within their ranks. Hong Kongers, after joining a company, leave as soon as they have learned the ropes to start up their own. Not everybody has got the inventiveness and shrewdness to go for such ventures. We must encourage and support those who have.”
While it’s impossible to create a direct link, there’s plenty of evidence to show Singapore’s attitude and aptitude for entrepreneurship has improved over the past decade. According to the 2025 Global Startup Ecosystem Index by research platform StartupBlink, Singapore came in fourth globally ranked behind Israel, Britain, and the US. It has climbed 12 places since 2020, making it one of the fastest-growing startup ecosystems worldwide.
But curriculum alone doesn’t drive an education system. Singapore puts its money where its mouth is. Singaporean teachers are paid competitively. While the national median gross salary is S$5,800 (roughly $4500 USD) per month, the median wage for public school teachers is S$5,700 with Senior Teachers making up to S$7,500 per month and School Principals earning S$10,000 to S$14,000 per month. These earnings encompass various mechanisms including bonuses and increases for education and leadership duties. That said, education can be a financially rewarding career path in Singapore.
There are several ways to look at the results.
First, 98 percent of Singaporean secondary students go on to enroll in some form of higher education. Globally, 55 percent of secondary students matriculate to higher education and in the United States it’s 62 percent. Sixty-four percent of Singaporeans have some type of higher education degree or certificate – in the United States 55 percent have that level of education and globally, about 44 percent.
Roughly 80 percent of Singapore’s jobs are white collar. The United States has roughly 62 percent. Fifteen percent of Singaporeans have a graduate degree while 14 percent of Americans have the same and roughly seven percent of the world-at-large.
Certainly, there are critics of the Singaporean system. The average primary school student spends from early morning until bedtime with little free time. Extra-curricular activities including regular private tutoring and supplemental classes at school are considered the norm. Playdates and quiet afternoons at home are rare during the week. Finland’s highly ranked education system, by contrast, has a five-hour school day, no homework and encourages free-time and play for children.
Singapore’s system not only fills children’s day but is predicated on adult involvement in homework and projects. Singapore encourages parents across all ethnic groups to be vigilant and involved in their children’s education – a very different outlook than Finland and other Scandinavian countries who boast educational success.
That said, Finland has seen a 0.8 percent economic growth over the past decade while Singapore has seen a 3.3 percent average annual growth despite a 5.4 percent economic contraction during 2020. Proponents of the Singaporean system argue Singapore’s educations are better attuned with its economic needs and students’ long-term financial futures.
Lee Kuan Yew himself regularly praised the Singaporean parental involvement in education. In a 1967 speech, he articulated, “For every boy, every girl here tonight, there are fathers and mothers egging them on to perform better than the other pupils in school. Not all societies have this. In many societies, they are quite happy just to sit down under the banyan tree and contemplate their navel.”
More importantly, he identified education is not solely about economic development.
“Imparting knowledge to pass examinations and later to do a job, these are important. However, the litmus test of a good education is whether it nurtures citizens who can live, work, contend and cooperate in a civilized way. Is he loyal and patriotic? Is he, when the need arises, a good soldier, ready to defend his country, and so protect his wife and children, and his fellow citizens?”
Luckily, Singapore has not had to test this last part. However, the Singaporean nationality has developed strongly since the country’s unexpected creation in 1965. Today the descendants of a random collection of Chinese migrants, Tamil Indians and indigenous Malays – all of whom came for work under a British open-port – identify as a cohesive people with a common culture, law and social structure. Education has played no small part in reducing tribalism and – as the success of the Singaporean economy and standard of living show – helping people see they have far more to gain together than apart.
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