What is the secret of Singapore? The question comes spontaneously after reading the results of the latest survey OECD-PISA which involved 760 thousand male and female students, representing approximately 33 million fifteen-year-olds in 91 countries. It is the largest international assessment ever carried out on 15-year-old skills: it does not measure how much a child remembers a lesson, but how much he knows how to use what he has learned to read a text, solve a mathematical problem, interpret data, deal with a new scientific situation.
The global picture is worrying: in the area OECD one in five 15-year-olds does not reach basic level simultaneously in science, mathematics and reading, compared to 16% in 2022.Italyin this context, holds up: 483 points in science against 482 of the OECD average, 474 in reading against 461, 468 in mathematics against 463. And while many systems are struggling, at the top of the rankings is Singapore.
The invisible infrastructure of Asian primacy
The small Asian city-state didn’t get there by chance. For years, its 15-year-olds have been at the top of the world in math, reading and science. There is no single magic formula: the result is the effect of a centralized system, of a strategy built over the long term, of the selection and training of teachers, of very structured teaching methods and of a culture that attributes a very high value to study. But that success has a downside: pressure, competition and the risk that school will too soon become an elimination race.
Singapore is a small city-state, without large natural resources and located in an economically hypercompetitive area. For this reason, since independence, it has considered education not as an ancillary service, but as the main infrastructure for building its future. The logic is simple: if you cannot count on raw materials, you must invest in the quality of people. The school serves to train skilled workers, technicians, researchers, entrepreneurs and citizens capable of moving in a knowledge-intensive global economy.
The Ministry of Education maintains a very strong drive. National programs are coherent, planned and periodically reviewed; staff training, evaluations and career transitions are not left to the chance of individual schools. The system is not devoid of autonomy, but it has a common direction that is much clearer and more stable than that found in many Western countries. It is a difference in approach even before that in methods. Singapore doesn’t change course with every political cycle: it builds reforms in stages, evaluates them, fixes what doesn’t work and continues to invest. This continuity allows schools to work on real goals, not just chase the latest emergency.
Investing in teaching staff: status, careers and salaries
The real secret of Singapore lies in the choice and care of teachers. Teaching is a high-status profession, with strict selection and recognizable development paths. The system aims to recruit candidates from among the best graduates, financing their initial training and demanding high standards. Only a limited number of the best candidates are admitted to training programmes, while teachers can choose different careers: remain specialists in classroom teaching, develop as disciplinary experts or take on supervisory functions. school leadership. This last point is crucial. In many systems, to grow professionally a teacher almost necessarily has to stop teaching and move into management or administration. In Singapore, however, a very good teacher can also be valued by remaining close to the students and becoming a point of reference for colleagues.
Training does not end with entry into the role. The teacher is observed, supported, updated. The school treats the quality of the lesson as a professional skill to be continuously cultivated, not as an individual talent entrusted to good will. The mobility of school leaders also responds to this logic: their periodic transfer serves to prevent the best schools from retaining the best leadership forever and the others from falling behind. The principle is to distribute the experience and make the quality of the system more uniform.
In Singapore, a graduate teacher who enters a public school generally starts from around 3,800–4,600 gross Singapore dollars per month (2,400–2,900 euros) which doubles when the teacher becomes “senior”, with career paths, bonuses and incentives for permanence which also make the profession interesting on an economic level.
The CPA method: taking apart the concepts to understand the formulas
The best-known symbol of the model is the so-called Singapore method for mathematics. Its structure is often summarized in the acronym CPA: concrete, pictorial, abstract. A concept is not presented immediately with a formula. First we start from objects, quantities and situations that can be manipulated; then students transform those reports into images, drawings and diagrams; only at the end do they move on to numbers and symbols.
The idea is that a child does not have to learn a procedure before understanding what it represents. If he has to solve a problem about fractions, he doesn’t just remember a rule: he uses objects, segments, rectangles divided into parts, bar diagrams. Only then does he translate that reasoning into mathematical notation.
The push of kiasu and the fear of being left behind
A very strong school culture is inserted into this architecture. Singaporean society places great value on merit, discipline and commitment. This is where the word appears kiasua popular expression that literally means “fear of missing out” or “fear of being left behind”. The term may sound disturbing, but it describes a real component: study is perceived as a decisive path for social and family mobility. Even an international test like PISA, which does not directly affect individual school grades, is approached with great seriousness. Not because students are “naturally more intelligent”, but because schools, families and institutions convey the idea that scholastic commitment has concrete consequences. This culture produces perseverance and results. But it can easily turn into anxiety, especially when a person’s value is identified too closely with their performance.
The Singaporean system has become less rigid than in the past, but retains a strong selective component. Historically, the transition from primary to secondary was marked by very important exams, capable of directing students early towards more or less academic paths. In recent years the Ministry has tried to reduce the label effect of these passages: it has overcome some fixed groupings and introduced greater flexibility by subject, so that a student can tackle different disciplines at different levels.
It is a significant reform. However, the competition does not disappear. Families continue to perceive each step as potentially decisive and the use of private lessons remains widespread. The so-called shadow education — the market for tutoring and private tutoring after school hours — extends school time well beyond the classroom. Here one of the most delicate limits of the model emerges. If academic performance also depends on additional resources that can be purchased by families, meritocracy risks becoming less pure than it is said to be: those who can afford support, courses and tutors start with an advantage.
The emotional price of primacy and the challenge of well-being
For years, Singapore has been associated with high levels of academic stress, test anxiety and fear of disappointing family expectations. It is the consequence of a system in which school is experienced as the main social elevator, while the competition for the best positions begins early. The Ministry of Education is aware of the problem and has introduced corrective measures. Report cards must no longer expose the student’s position in relation to classmates through explicit rankings; official rhetoric increasingly insists on learning, personal development, character, well-being and life skills, not just grades and exams.
The direction of the reform is clear: reduce visible competition without sacrificing high standards. It is far from a simple challenge. Because abolishing an internal ranking does not automatically erase external pressure, comparisons between families, the weight of selective exams or the expectations of a society that strongly rewards performance.
The risk is that of a school that teaches how to solve complex problems, but struggles to teach students to live with errors. A school capable of training very well-prepared young people, but which can make someone experience failure as a personal defeat rather than as a normal part of learning.
