In his keynote address at the sixth Mendaki Symposium focusing on the theme of “Rethinking Education”, Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam pointed at the early academic gaps that appear because of students’ different starting points in life. He elaborated on the experiences of students from different ethnic group, and highlighted how, within the lower socio-economic groups, there was a greater proportion of Malays who started off weak at the beginning of their education and continued to remain weak as they move forward in their schooling. Data from the 2020 Singapore Census further suggests that these academic gaps remain unresolved even as these students advance to subsequent levels of learning. The Malay community represents the youngest demographic group in the country, and projected statistics tell us that that more Malays will join the workforce in the coming years, forming a higher proportion of the labour force.
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