Bilingual Education Policy in Singapore

Fatimah – 6036040

1. Introduction
Singapore is develop country in Southeast Asia. Singapore is a small (633 square km)
island state located at the tip of the Malay Peninsula (. Total population in Singapore is
approximately 5,3 million people (Wikipedia.com). Singapore is multi-cultural country, they
have many etnic, like Malay, Chinese, and India. Since independence in 1965, Singapore focus
to their economy growing and education also.
After their economy began prosper in 1980, it was making they more focus in education
system, from concern in quantity to be more focuing in quality. Singapore’s government realise
that the key for growing country is with develop the generation of nation.
In 1987, Singapore made the bilingual education policy, where English be the first/main
language of intruction to teaching in the class for all school (private and public). Hence, for
history course and regional language course, still use the mother tongue (Melayu/Malay,
Mandarin and Tamil).
In 2015, Singapore be the first rank from around 34 countries that have good education
in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) that implemented by OECD
(Organisation Economics Co-operation and Development).
In the Singaporean system, English is the language of instruction for most subjects,
although all students from a very early age will also study their ‘mother tongue’ language,
and often other languages which are commonly used in the region. The school year in the
Singaporean system is arranged into semesters. The first semester typically runs from
January through to May, with a vacation to follow. Then from July you have the second
semester, which runs until a break in November and December. There’s also a shorter break
in the middle of each semester (Transferwise.com).
Education System in Singapore arranged by Ministry of Education Singapore (MOE).
About syllabus and curicculum, MOE always do evaluation. The education in singapore Start
to Pre-School (kindergarten). This Education program consist of nursery, kindergarten 1 and
kindergarten 2 for ages 3 -5 years old. The course hours in kindergarten is 3 -4 hours from
Monday until Friday or 5 days per week. This program is not free because it was run by
companies, group and charity.
Primary School is the compulsory education phase for 6 years. It is free for all people
in Singapore to study in public primary school. They just have to pay small fees, which are
explained by the MOE. These are fairly small for public school, but not necesarily cover
additional costs for things like uniforms, transport and school materials.
Secondary School is 4 – 5 years education program. The course in this stage is
determined from the results that students get in National Final Exam, there is Express course,
Academic Normal and Technic Normal. Different curriculum are designed for students
according to their learning abilities and personal interests. At the end of this program, student
should take the National Final Exam.
According to transferwise.com, Pre-university education consists of a two or three
year course which is specifically tailored to students who wish to attend university. Places

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are awarded on merit and are fiercely competitive in the best institutions. The alternative
is to continue with ‘post-secondary’ education at a technical institute or polytechnic, which
is aimed at developing more vocational skills. There’s a wide range of institution types,
which students can choose, all handily described on the MOE website.

2. Language Planning in Singapore

According to Chua (1995), language planning in Singapore is closely linked to
economic development and nation building. Ho and Alsagoff (1998), also observe that in
Singapore language choices are dictated by forces of the marketplace. However, language
planning in Singapore is highly centralized. Centralized planning implies a top -down
approach in decision-making and implementation (Patrick, 2007).
As reported by Kuo and Jernudd (1994), decisions about language policy,
adjustment measures and their application are made in the cabinet, parliament and relevant
ministries. Kuo and Jernudd (1994) observe that the decisions to implement national
language policies are articulated by top political leaders without much consultation with
specialists on language planning.
Kuo and Jernudd (1994) and Ho, C. L. and L. Alsagoff. 1998. “English as the
Common Language in Multicultural Singapore.” Pp. 201–217 in English in New Cultural
Contexts. J. Foley (ed.). Singapore: Oxford University Press. inathan (1998) define
language planning in Singapore as an approach to language management: they state that
the basic strategy adopted by the government for dealing with linguistic diversity in
Singapore is to treat languages as resources and to engineer language development to
targeted needs.
Gopinathan (1974) explains that through decisions made by the Singapore
government, different languages play different roles in the domains of the home, school,
housing estates and other public places.
However, Kuo and Jernudd (1994) admit that Singaporean language planning
practice has allowed a gap to develop between the macro-level implementation of language
norms and micro-level observation and evaluation of language use. In pursuing the macro-
level implementation, individual difficulties in accommodating linguistic policies may not
have been given the attention they deserve. The following section will discuss two major
language-planning policies adopted by the Singapore government: the Bilingual Policies
(Patrick, 2005).

3. Bilingual Education Policy in Singapore

Singapore relize that language is really important, not only for face the globalisation
era but also linked to culture, values and traditions. Promoting bilingualism in schools makes
their students will have the opportunity to be acquainted with their cultures, and instil a sense
of rootedness in them.
Nowadays, home language in Singapore already changing. Compared to the past, more
Singaporeans are now speaking English at home, which has resulted in varying levels of mother
tongue language proficiencies among students.This is because there is bilingual education

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policy that made by government. The government made English compulsory to use in school
beside their mother tongue.
Bilingual education policy is where English be the first/main language of intruction to
teaching in the class for all school (private and public). Hence, for history course and regional
language course, still use the mother tongue (Malay, Mandarin and Tamil).
Singapore is multi-cultural country, they have many etnic, like Malay, Chinese, and
India. Thats why Melayu/Malay, Mandarin and Tamil is their mother tongue. So that they have
four language, even english be the main language in school and university.
Since the implementation of the policy, the population of English-knowing bilingual
speakers has been increase. According to the reported on the Singapore Census of Population
2010 website, the proportion of bilingual speakers increased 13.5% between the last census
data release in 2000 and 2010.
The bilingual education policy also gave policy makers, educational leaders, and
teachers the immediate linguistic ability and access to learn from other education systems,
particularly those in English-speaking nations. From teaching materials, to curriculum
development, to teacher education, to school administration and leadership, Singapore began
its important task of nation building through its education system.

"The practice of bilingualism can be affected by social and cultural developments and
is shaped by the local context," said Minister of State for Education and Communications and
Information, Ms Sim Ann, at the East Asia Summit (EAS) Conference on Bilingualism held
on 13 and 14 September 2013 (schoolbag.sg).

Professor Gopinathan, said “That's the Singapore style. Once we believe in something,
we persist", when he be the keynote speaker in that conference in Nationa University of
Singapore. As he shared how bilingualism policy was perpetuated in Singapore during the
earlier years, through the community, mass media and the education system (schoolbag.sg).

Though it may not be perfect, with persistence in implementation, significant shifts

have been observed in Singapore. Today, a majority of Singaporeans below 40 are bilingual,
with varying degrees of proficiency, and we continue to refine our model of bilingualism, for
greater effectiveness to benefit our future generations (schoolbag.sg).

In 1959, Singapore gained self-rule from Britain. Singapore is multi-ethnic country

with three major ethnic group in the following proportions: Chinese 77%, Malay 14% and
Indians 8%. Because of that, they choose to be multilingual state with four languages, there
is Mandarin, Malay, Tamil and English. English be the language that use for inter-ethnic
communication. And the other three languages are considered as mother tongues of major
ethnic groups (Dixon, 2005).
The new government in that era, really aware about the importance of language
policy and education for nation-building and managing ethnicity. The key education policy
goals is the equal treatment of schools in all languages that exist in Singapore with adoption
of bilingualism in the school system.
Singapore Independence in 1965 and they decreed that Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and
English would be the official languages of Singapore. This means that Mandarin, Malay
and Tamil are officially designated as the mother tongues of the Chinese, Malay and Indian

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communities, respectively. For an individual, this means that regardless of what
language(s) may actually have been spoken in early childhood, the ethnic group of a child’s
father must determine which language is officially assigned as his or her mother tongue
(Patrick, 2007).
Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore from 1965 until 1990, cites economic
reasons as the impetus behind the nation’s retention of English as an official language in
newly independent Singapore and the government’s encouragement of English as the
language of interethnic communication (Lee, 2000).

4. Policy Implementation
In 1966, Singapore started to implement the bilingual education policy in school.
These included making second languages compulsory examinable subjects in the Primary
School Leaving Exaination (PSLE) and then in the Cambrige School Certificate
examination – predecessor of the General Certificate of Education (GCE) examination in
1969 (National Library Board/ersources.nld.gov.sg).
The policy was explained by the former Minister for Education, Dr. Tony Tan Keng
Yam said “our policy on bilingualism, that each child should learn English and the mother
tongue. I regard as a fundamental feature of our education system. Children must learn
English, so that they will have a window to the knowledge, technology and expertise of the
modern world. They must know their mother tongue to enable them to understand what
makes us what we are today (Lee, 1983).
So, parents could choose education through any one of the four official language
(English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) to their children, but all students also had study one
og the other official languages, English for students that study in non-English medium
schools (Yip, Eng and Yap, 1990). Then the government required all schools to teach math
and science in English starting with first grade (Dixon, 2005).
The government also experimented with the practice of language exposure time (LET)
– the amount of time a student was exposed to the second language either through language
lessons or through its use as the medium of instruction for other subjects. To emphasise the
importance of bilingualism, the second language was assigned double weightage in the PSLE
in 1973. This gave it equal importance as the first language, which had been assigned double
weightage in 1963. The double weightage for both first and second languages, however, was
removed in 1985 to improve the accuracy of streaming pupils based on their PSLE results
(ersources.nld.gov.sg).
English is the medium of instruction in all schools and this was implemented from
a “bottom-up” rather than a “top-down” process without strong controversy (Chew 1999).
Thus, in the long run, as more parents embrace English as the language for success at
school, there is a strong possibility that English will become more important in the
linguistic ecology of Singapore. English is also being spoken in the homes to many student
(Patrick, 2007).
In 1978, a study team led by then Deputy Prime Minister, Goh Keng Swee, was formed
to identify the problems in Singapore’s education system. The team’s findings were presented
in the Report on the Ministry of Education 1978 (known as the Goh Report), which concluded
that the policy of bilingualism was not “universally effective”.

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 The conclusion was based on the finding that over 60 percent of the students who sat
for the PSLE and GCE O-Level examination from 1975 to 1977 had failed either one or both
languages. English and Mandarin were new languages to most of the Chinese students as 85
percent of them spoke dialects at home. The team’s assessment was that the one-size-fits-all
education programme did not cater to students with differing abilities, particularly when most
of the students were learning two languages they were unfamiliar with.
The team also made the assessment that students were unlikely to achieve the same
level of proficiency for both English and their mother tongue.This study led by Goh was a
milestone in Singapore’s bilingual education policy.
The study resulted in the introduction of the New Education System in 1979, which
entailed a major restructuring of the education system into one with ability-based streaming at
the primary and secondary levels (ersources.nlb.gov.sg).
After that, the government adopted the bilingual education policy with a few
modifications, currently in place: All students study their subject curriculum through the
medium of English, but they are also required to reach a “secondlanguage” level of
proficiency in their official mother tongue – Mandarin for Chinese, Malay for Malays and
Tamil for Dravidian-speaking Indians. (Dixon, 2005).
In 1979, passing a second language became a pre-university admission requirement. To
encourage effective bilingualism, language performance also became part of the criteria for
university entry by the early 1980s (ersources.nlb.gov.sg).
In that year, the Special Assistance Plan (SAP) was introduced in nine Chinese-stream
secondary schools to preserve the culture and traditions of the best Chinese schools and to
develop these schools into effectively bilingual institutions. In addition, after years of declining
enrolment in the vernacular schools, the national stream was introduced in 1983 which required
all schools – with the exception of the SAP schools – to offer English as a first language and
mother tongue as a second language by 1987 (ersources.nlb.gov.sg).
The principal finding of the Goh Report was that too much was being demanded of
too many in terms of language competence. The achievement of the bilingual educational
policy was described by its initiator, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, as “patchy and uneven” (Shepherd,
2003).
Lee observed that effective bilingualism, in the sense of being able to speak, read
and write in two languages, was being achieved by only three to five percent of school
students. The expectations of the authorities and the aspirations of parents were high but
students were not able to cope with the complexities of speaking two school languages.
As reported by Kaplan and Baldauf (2003), the bilingual policy was a failure as
students found it very difficult to learn two languages proficiently, especially when 85
percent of them came from dialect-speaking homes where Mandarin was not spoken. Ang
(1998) also observed that although a dialect might help schoolchildren to learn Mandarin,
having to cope in three languages was hurting students English performance.
The policy of bilingualism being propagated in the schools was undermined by the
various languages spoken by students outside schools which included Malay and Chinese
dialects. The failure of the bilingualism policy was also attributed to the attitudes of
Chinese Singaporeans toward Mandarin (Patrick, 2007).

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 Ho and Alsagoff (1998) report that in the matter of language attitudes, there are
signs of linguistic and cultural discrimination against the Chinese language: Because
English has a great deal more status and prestige than any of the vernaculars in Singapore,
it is not uncommon for members of the Englishspeaking elite to show a negative attitude
towards the vernaculars and their users. A case in point is their prejudices against Chinese
language (Ho and Alsagoff 1998).
More recently, for Indians who speak Indo-European languages at home, Hindi,
Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu and Gujarati are offered as options for mother tongue study in
“community-run weekend … classes” (Saravanan, 1999). With an area only 3.5 times the
size of Washington, DC (CIA, 2001), Singapore’s diminutive size and public-transit
infrastructure allows for easy consolidation of students who speak lower-incidence Indian
languages for instruction (Dixon, 2005).
Though the government offers these languages as subjects in the national
examinations, it does not fund or provide facilities, teachers, or teacher training for classes
in these non-official languages (Kaur and On, 2001).
In 1990, the number of dialect-speaking Chinese households had fallen significantly,
while the number of Mandarin- and English-speaking families had risen. However, with the
increasingly widespread use of English among Singaporeans, the number of Mandarin-
speaking households has been on a steady decline since the 1990s and the proportion of Malay
and Indian children using English at home has been on the rise (ersources.nlb.gov.sg).
In 2015, English was the most common language spoken at home in Singapore. This
trend has resulted in varying levels of proficiency in the mother tongue languages among
students. Major reviews on the teaching of mother tongue languages in schools have been
conducted since 1990 in response to this trend (ersources.nlb.gov.sg).
Beside, implementation with some rules in the school. The implementation of bilingual
policy in Singapore is with campaing and some event, beside mother tongue festival, like speak
Mandarin Campaign (SMC) that implemented in school, it is to increasing widespread use of
English among Singaporeans, the SMC focus during the 1990s towards encouraging English-
educated Chinese Singaporeans to speak Mandarin in their everyday lives.
The other side, there is Malay language month that organised by the Malay Language
Council, it became an annual event in 2010. Various activities are held during the event month
to encourage the Malay community to speak their mother tongue in their daily lives. Or with
Tamil Language festival that was held for the first time in 2007. Spearheaded by the Tamil
Language Council, the event aims to promote the Tamil language and culture as well as to instil
confidence and pride among the Indian community in speaking the language.
And of course there is Speak Good English Movement that was launched on 29 April
2000 to encourage the use of grammatically correct English among Singaporea.
Thus, media be the important role to promote this policy since 1970s. On May 1977,
the twice weekly “bilingual page” section was launched in the Straits Times newspaper to
stimulate readers interest in Mandarin and help them to learn. And in 1978, two documentaries
on bilingualism were broadcast on television: Bilingual Scholars in Mandarain and A Balance
of Language in English.
In the other side, the Lee Kuan Yew Fund support bilingualism since November 2011
to complete MOE’s efforts in teaching and learning of English and mother tongue languages.

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It aims to nurture a love for bilingual learning in young children so as to create a stronger
foundation for language learning in their later years (ersources.nlb.gov.sg).

In July 2012, the fund had raised S$119 million in donations, exceeding the original target of
S$100 million.The contributions included the first pledge of S$10 million by Lee, and an
additional S$2 million from the sale of 200 autographed copies of his book, My Lifelong
Challenge: Singapore’s Bilingual Journey (ersources.nlb.gov.sg).

5. Academic Result in Singapore’s Bilingual Education Policy

Singapore’s bilingual education policy did not result in high levels of English language
proficiency overnight. The 1978 Goh Report decried the lack of English proficiency among
Singaporean schoolchildren, citing a 1975 Ministry of Education study indicating that 33% of
English-medium and 25% of Chinese-medium Primary 6 (sixth grade) pupils did not meet
minimum literacy standards (Goh, 1979).
Two studies around that time also emphasised students’ low levels of English
proficiency (Moore, 1982). In a 1979 study of 198 Primary 5 (fifth grade) students choosen
randomly from four Singapore schools, Moore (1982) found Singaporean students scored a
grade equivalent of 3.1-3.9 on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) Reading
Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension subtests. Considering that the test was normed on
native-English speaking Americans, Moore concluded that Singaporean students were learning
to read English quite well (Dixon, 2005).
The thirty-five country IEA Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)
2001, which tested 10-year-olds (with four years of schooling) on reading for literary purposes
and reading for informational purposes, provides an interesting source of evidence of
Singaporean students’ English reading skills (Mullis et al., 2003).
Overall, Singapore’s Primary 4 (P4) students scored significantly higher than the
international average and fifteen countries, not significantly different from Scotland, New
Zealand and six other nations, and significantly lower than England, the United States and nine
other countries. For both literary and informational purposes, Singapore performed
significantly better than 15 countries, and did not significantly differ from eleven and twelve
countries, respectively, including the US on reading for informational purposes. Singapore, at
43%, was one of only four countries in which less than half of their students “always” or
“almost always” spoke the language of the test at home. Despite the status of English as a non-
native language for the majority of Singaporean students, Singapore’s scores compare
favorably to countries in which the majority of students speak the language of instruction at
home. The international comparisons do not compare the different ethnic groups within
Singapore. Singapore’s Ministry of Education releases some of its own exam results by
ethnicity. On the Primary School Leaving Exam (PSLE), required of all students after six years
of elementary education, overall 97.7% of Singaporean students in the top (EM1) and middle
(EM2) streams passed in 2001 (Ministry of Education 2002), with little variability by ethnic
group (95.7% of Malays, 98.0% of Chinese and 98.2% of Indians). In other words, for the
approximately 95% of Singaporean students who make it into the regular and elite tracks for
upper primary school, virtually all of them pass their English exam, regardless of ethnicity.
This would indicate that English may function as a “neutral” language, giving no ethnic group
an advantage, at least at the primary level. Students in the lowest (EM3) stream take a
“Foundation English” exam and are not included in this figure; this group probably includes a

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disproportionate percentage of Malays and Indians, as reflected by differing PSLE pass rates
(Dixon, 2005).
What happens at the secondary level? Since 1995, over 60% percent of students
from Primary 6 each year entered the “Special” or “Express” streams. Since 1998, an
additional 50% or so of the “Normal” stream students took the Cambridge O-levels1 after a
fifth year of study. O-level results, therefore, already exclude the bottom 20% of students.
Despite this exclusion, a disparity between the ethnic groups exists on the English exam (see
Figure 1), which includes oral, aural, reading comprehension, vocabulary and writing
components. Over the years, Indians have consistently outperformed other ethnic groups on
the English O-level exam (Ministry of Education, 1997).
In 2001, about 87% of Indians passed English, whereas 80.4% of Chinese and only
70.9% of Malays passed. All ethnic groups have improved their pass rates since 1988 (Ministry
of Education, 2002), with the gap between the ethnic groups narrowing as well.

Figure 1. The graph below depicts the percentage of each ethnic group (Chinese, Malay and
Indian) that passed the O-level exam in English and the AO-level exam called General Paper
(GP). Data Source: Singapore Ministry of Education
Only the most academically able prepare for A-level exams, the top 30% of O-level
takers (Ministry of Education, 2001). Most students do not take the English literature exam,
but all must pass the General Paper (GP), technically an “AO”-level exam, to qualify for
university. The GP consists of general English reading comprehension questions with one long

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essay on a social or political topic, so GP results may be used as a measure of English reading
and writing skills. At this high level, all three ethnic groups post high pass rates. Since 1991,
80-85% of Malays, 90-96% of Indians, and 86-92% of Chinese have passed their GP (see
Figure 1). For Chinese and Indians, achievement seems to have leveled off after a decline from
highs in 1994, whereas Malay performance has fluctuated with a tentative upward trend since
1994 interrupted by a major dip in 2000 (Dixon, 2005).
In general, Singapore’s national exams show usually upward trends for all ethnic
groups, but with an achievement gap between the majority Chinese and the Malay and Indian
minority groups (Ministry of Education 2002).
But we can see that Chinese consistent good in perform overall and a greater proportion
move on to each higher level of education compared to the Malays and Indians, each ethnic
group shows strength in different areas. The Malays outperform Chinese and Indians on their
“mother tongue” exams; Indians perform better on the English exams; and Chinese perform
better on the math and science exams.

6. Bilingual Policy in Other Organisations

Bilingual policy in Singapore isnot only for education but for general also. So, all of
organization in Singapore have obligation to obey this policy also. The government make the
law about Singapore English (Singlish) is to develop their country with good communication.
The important thing from communication is language, and English is global language.
Automaticaly, if they have skillfull or ability in English, they will get earier to built the relation
in business, politics and other with outhers country.
Beside, Singapore want make their citizen have high ability not only in English but in
many thing to make their generation be the high quality person. Bilingualism is already
implemented in all organization of Singapore and i think it’s work to make this counry develop.

7. Conclusion and Analysis

Singapore focus on language because they are multi-ethnic country. There are four
ethnic in Singapore and they have their own language. In 1959, legalise the four official
language in Singapore, there are Malay, Tamil, Mandarin and English.
In 1966, Singapore started implemented bilingual policy in school, with compulsory to
use English be the language in the class. The bilingual education policy also gave policy
makers, educational leaders, and teachers the immediate linguistic ability and access to learn
from other education systems, particularly those in English-speaking nations. From teaching
materials, to curriculum development, to teacher education, to school administration and
leadership, Singapore began its important task of nation building through its education system.
Singapore’s bilingual education policy can be said to have succeeded in several ways.
First, it succeeded in shifting home language use from Chinese dialects to Mandarin and,
perhaps unintentionally, from vernaculars and official Mother Tongues to English. When this
policy was implemented, virtually no one spoke English as their home language and only a
small elite reached high levels of English proficiency. However, through education and the
government-sponsored Speak Mandarin campaign, the Singaporean population essentially
taught itself English and Mandarin in a matter of 20 – 30 years.

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 Singapore’s policy succeeded in educating bilingual students who perform as well as
or surpass students in other predominantly monolingual industrialised countries who are
schooled monolingually. This achievement seems especially remarkable considering the
starting point of English as a nonnative language for the majority of Singaporeans when the
policy was initially implemented. Although a much greater percentage of students now report
English as their predominant home language, a majority still report Mandarin, Malay, Tamil
or other languages as their predominant home language, and available evidence indicates that
Mandarin and Malay remain, respectively, Chinese and Malay students’ predominant oral/aural
language. Considering the importance of a strong foundation in oral language as a basis for
developing literacy skills in a language (Snow et al., 1998), Singapore’s success in producing
students who are academically successful in an orally nondominant language is impressive.
In 1987, Singapore implemented bilingual policy for all sector/ not only for education.
Since that the population of English-knowing bilingual speakers has been increase. According
to the reported on the Singapore Census of Population 2010 website, the proportion of bilingual
speakers increased 13.5% between the last census data release in 2000 and 2010.
English language competency remains Singapore's most important asset for
international trade. And the policy really work for this digital era, where information transfer
occurs at breakneck speed, high levels of language competency to process, transfer, and
communicate information effectively on the global platform will only grow in importance.
Need time to know about the bilingual policy success or not, because this policy is
about knowledge in English, practice and change the habit in language.Singapore ned time to
know about the implementation of this policy is work being well or no. From the resul of
english exam, the percentage that student passed increase from year 1991 to 2000.
Singapore implemented this policy with top-down approached with the compulsory
school to make English be the main language in the class. Beside, they still studied by student
in a single subject.

8. Refenrences
Chew, P. G. L. 1999. “Linguistic Imperialism, Globalism and the English Language.” Pp. 13,
37–47 in English in a Changing World. David Gradoll and Ulrike M. Meinhof (eds.).
Guildford: AILA Review.
Dixon, L. Quentin (2005). The Bilingual Education Policy in Singapore: Implications for
Second Language Acquisition. USA: Harvard University Graduate School of
Education.
Dixon, L. Quentin (2005). Bilingual Education Policy in Singapore: An Analysis of its
Sociohistorical Roots and Current Academic Outcomes. USA: International Journal
Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.
Goh, Keng Swee. 1979. "Report on the Ministry of Education 1978." Pp. 113. Singapore:
Education Study Team.
Gopinathan, S. 1974. Towards a National System of Education in Singapore 1945– 1973.
Singapore: Oxford University Press.

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Ho, C. L. and L. Alsagoff. 1998. “English as the Common Language in Multicultural
Singapore.” Pp. 201–217 in English in New Cultural Contexts. J. Foley (ed.).
Singapore: Oxford University Press.
Kaplan, R. and Baldauf, R. 2003. Language and Language in Education Planning in the Pacific
Basin. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Kaur, Dilpreet, and Andrew Andeny On. 2001. "Punjabi as a second language in Singapore.".:
Sikh Education Foundation.
Kuo, C. Y. and Jernudd, B. H. 1994. “Balancing Macro and Micro-Sociolinguistic Perspectives
in Language Management: The Case of Singapore“. Pp. 70-89 in English and Language
Planning: A South East Asian Contribution. T. Kandiah and J. Kwan-Terry (eds.).
Singapore: Times Academic Press.
Lee, K. C. 1983. Language and Education in Singapore. Singapore: Singapore University
Press.
Lee, Kuan Yew. 2000. From third world to first: The Singapore story: 1965-2000. New York:
Harper Collins.
Mullis, I.V.S., Martin, M.O., Gonzalez, E.J. and Kennedy, A.M. (2003) PIRLS 2001
International Report: IEA’s Study of Reading Literacy Achievement in Primary Schools.
Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College.
National Library Board Singapore/ NLB (https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg)
Patrick NG (2007). Language Planning in Action: Singapore‟s Multilingual and Bilingual
Policy. Japan: University of Niigata Prefecture.
Saravanan, Vanithamani. 1999. "Language maintenance and language shift in the Tamil-
English community." Pp. 155-178 in Language, society and education in Singapore:
Issues and trends, edited by S. Gopinathan, A. Pakir, W. K. Ho, and Vanithamani
Saravanan. Singapore: Times Academic Press.
Schoolbag Education New Site (https://www.schoolbag.sg)

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