On 9 October 2020, Associate Professor David Ng, Associate Dean from the Office of Strategic Planning and Academic Quality, was invited to participate as an expert witness in a web meeting involving 26 US legislators (Senators and Representatives from 18 states). “Effective Teachers and Principals” was the agenda of the meeting, which served to deliver the following objectives:

• Recognise how high-performing countries structure the role of school leaders to create structures, support and incentives for teachers to meet their full potential
• Familiarise participants with best practices to recruit and prepare the world’s best teachers
• Learn from Singapore’s success in bringing these systems together to recruit, prepare and support the world’s best teachers

Associate Professor Ng was given the honour to present Singapore’s strategic and systematic approaches to learning and development. He also shared the executive summary of the “Future-ready Learners’ Framework” as one of the reading pieces for the group.

This is the second International Education Study Group to be convened by the US’ National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) and Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), in response to the successful group that produced the 2016 report “No Time to Lose”.

The current study group will meet virtually for at least one year to study the common components of high-performing, equitable and efficient education systems in British Columbia, Estonia, Finland and Singapore. The outcome of the study would be a major report to other legislators and the American public outlining the findings of the study group, and providing a framework for legislators and state education systems for achieving excellent, equitable and efficient results for all students.