Mr Chairman
1. Minister Chan has emphasized that we need to adopt a lifetime view towards learning, instead of relying only on the education that we go through in the first twenty years or so of our lives. Our higher education institutions and adult training system must provide re-tooling opportunities for Singaporeans as they journey through different jobs over their career lifetime.
2. It is important that we do this well, as it enables Singaporeans to remain employable and access good jobs.
Expanding Opportunities for Mid-Career Workers
3. This is why MOE has worked closely with our statutory board SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) to push ahead with our efforts to strengthen our Continuing Education and Training (CET) ecosystem, as Ms Foo Mee Har, Mr Shawn Huang, and Mr Darryl David have asked about. Under SkillsFuture, we have been expanding the range of opportunities for Singaporeans to regularly reskill. This is especially important for mid-career workers, who need to retool in the face of fast-changing technologies and new trends.
4. The need for reskilling was particularly evident during the pandemic, which brought great disruption to our industries and workforce. To address this, we introduced the Enhanced Training Support Package that helped enterprises make productive use of the downtime to train their workforce. To-date, companies have sent workers to take up almost 245,000 places in training courses, which better prepare them for emerging roles when the economy recovers.
5. As part of the SGUnited Jobs and Skills package, we launched the SGUnited Skills (SGUS) and SGUnited Mid-Career Pathways – Company Training (SGUP-Company Training) programmes to help mid-career individuals acquire new skills and capture new career opportunities as the economy recovers.
We worked with 18 CET Centres and 16 companies to provide industry-relevant training coupled with employment facilitation to help jobseekers secure placements.
More than 22,000 Singaporeans enrolled in SGUS and SGUP-Company Training.
The outcomes have been encouraging. 2 out of 3 of the initial batch of SGUS trainees found employment within six months after course completion. For SGUP-Company Training with companies such as Google and IBM, more than half the trainees found jobs as well.
6. I met Mr Oscar Yong last year, one of the SGUS graduates who successfully switched to a new career in Food Manufacturing after working for more than 20 years in the Electronics sector.
Oscar is in his 50s. He was displaced from his previous job when his company relocated overseas in 2020. He signed up for the 6-month SGUS Advanced Manufacturing Programme at the Singapore Institute of Management in the hopes of making a career switch.
As part of the programme, Oscar did an Industry Attachment with Super Bean International. He performed well during the attachment and was offered a job of Assistant Manager of Inventory and Quality Control when he graduated.
I am heartened by Oscar’s determination to reskill in pursuit of a new career. I hope that his story will inspire more Singaporeans to upskill.
Launch of new SkillsFuture Career Transition Programme
7. As we look towards post-pandemic recovery, we will build on our experience with SGUS and SGUP-Company Training and merge these two programmes into a new SkillsFuture Career Transition Programme (SCTP) from April 2022. The SCTP will be our steady-state train-and-place programme for mid-career individuals. It will be delivered by IHLs and selected private training providers, and will incorporate key features of the SGUS and SGUP-Company Training which have worked well to strengthen training outcomes:
First, skills and training advisory services will be made available upfront, to help trainees select courses that best suit their strengths and interests;
Second, all courses will have elements of industry involvement, such as industry projects or attachments with companies, to enable trainees to acquire industry-relevant skills; and
Third, employment facilitation and career coaching will be part of the SCTP, to support trainees in their job search.
8. SCTP will have a duration between 3 and 12 months, and we plan to launch them in sectors with good hiring opportunities, such as ICT and Advanced Manufacturing. SCTP will be subsidised at SSG’s prevailing rates, with enhanced funding of up to 90% for Singaporeans aged 40 and above. On top of this, to ensure that jobseekers with greater needs can access the SCTP, we will provide additional subsidies to cover up to 95% of course fees for eligible Singapore Citizens who are lower-income earners, long-term unemployed, or Persons with Disabilities.
9. The SCTP is part of the continuum of initiatives by SSG and Workforce Singapore (WSG) to ramp up reskilling opportunities for Singaporeans who are looking for jobs or considering career switches. By working closely together to offer a suite of place-and-train, attach-and-train and train-and-place programmes, and by jointly delivering outreach at career fairs and SGUnited Jobs and Skills Centres in the heartlands, SSG and WSG are aligned in their efforts to help Singaporeans access good jobs.
Expansion of course eligibility for additional SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career Support)
10. When we started to scale up provision of career transition programmes at the CET Centres in 2020, we also provided additional SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career Support) to enable Singaporeans in their 40s and 50s to access such programmes. Along the way, we received feedback about individuals who may not intend to switch careers but would nevertheless like to utilize their Credit to pursue meaningful upskilling to remain employable.
11. To this end, I am glad to share that we will expand the range of courses that the additional SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career Support) can be used for.
Around 7,000 courses will be available from 1 June 2022, up from around 300 courses today, to give mid-career individuals more options to use the Credit for upskilling and reskilling.
The list will remain focused on courses that deliver good employment outcomes. These include SkillsFuture Series courses in IHLs, industry-relevant courses offered by CET Centres including private training providers, and courses which enable workers to progress in sectors with the Progressive Wage Model.
Enterprises and Employers as Drivers of Workforce Transformation
12. While we strengthen support for individual upskilling, I agree with Ms Foo Mee Har that enterprises also have an integral role to play, in supporting their employees in their skills development journey.
13. We also agree on the importance of workplace learning. This is why we have incorporated elements of workplace learning into many of our CET offerings. For example, the SkillsFuture Work-Study Programmes allow trainees to upskill through a combination of structured on-the-job training and classroom learning. To increase such opportunities, we rely on employers to step up to deliver quality training at the workplace, and we will continue to support them in their endeavour to do so.
We have expanded the reach of the National Centre of Excellence for Workplace Learning (NACE) to uplift workplace learning capabilities of companies, especially SMEs.
To-date, about 1,500 companies have benefitted from the programmes offered by NACE.
14. We also encourage enterprises to play the role of SkillsFuture Queen Bees to mobilize other companies within their networks to engage in training and upskilling. This will raise capabilities of the sector as a whole and enhance their competitive advantage.
SSG has been expanding partnerships with enterprises through the SkillsFuture Queen Bee initiative. Since its launch, more than 930 companies have participated in programmes curated by SkillsFuture Queen Bees, of which 90% are SMEs.
15. Sheng Siong is an example of a company which took on the role of a SkillsFuture Queen Bee, and is helping its suppliers build up workforce capabilities to accelerate the adoption of digital technologies.
With the support of Skills Managers and training providers, Sheng Siong has reached out to more than 60 suppliers to customize skills development interventions based on their business needs and skills gaps. This includes SkillsFuture for Digital Workplace courses to build foundational digital skills.
Sheng Siong is also integrating SkillsFuture courses and resources into their supplier portal to encourage their wider network of suppliers to engage in continuous learning.
16. Such examples show us the significance and impact of enterprises taking on a more proactive role in supporting skills development. This is why we have pressed on with our plans under the Next Bound of SkillsFuture. Strengthening the role of enterprises in driving workforce transformation will continue to be our key priority in the coming years.
Fostering Collaborations with Tripartite Partners and Industry Intermediaries
17. As we ramp up our efforts to drive enterprise-led training, we can tap on unions and industry intermediaries as our key partners too. With their extensive networks and understanding of companies’ needs on the ground, they can help us broaden outreach, aggregate skills demand, and spread the benefits of our job-skills interventions to more companies and workers.
18. Our tripartite partners are supporting companies in their business and workforce transformation efforts, such as through NTUC’s Company Training Committees (CTCs). Employers are supported in their firm-level action plans, in areas like employment facilitation, job redesign, and training. SSG can complement the CTC process by helping these companies build their skills development capabilities.
19. SSG’s partnership with PM Link and the Building Construction and Timber Industries Employees’ Union, which formed a CTC in 2019, is an illustration of how this can be done.
Over the past two years, SSG worked with the CTC to pilot a skills profiling digital solution that is based on SSG’s Skills Frameworks. PM Link, a project management company in the building and construction industry, used the Skills Frameworks to identify core competencies for their workforce. This enables their employees to self-assess and benchmark their skills proficiencies against industry standards, identify relevant training to address skills gaps and participate in SSG-supported courses.
20. We also want to better tap on industry intermediaries, such as Trade Associations and Chambers (TACs) and professional bodies, as they have deep industry networks and greater agility in sensing the jobs-skills needs of employers.
21. SSG plans to partner TACs as “Skills Development Partners” to identify in-demand and emerging skills, facilitate timely dissemination of Jobs-and-Skills insights, and put in place structures to accredit skills acquired at the workplace. This will help companies better plan for workforce upgrading, and improve job mobility of individual workers.
For a start, SSG will work with IMDA to partner the Singapore Computer Society and SGTech in the ICT sector.
SSG is also exploring similar partnerships with other TACs, to expand outreach to more sectors.
Conclusion
[Building a strong skills ecosystem is essential to ensure that our workforce can access quality training opportunities throughout their lives. We endeavour to build a robust ecosystem that leverages the different strengths of the IHLs, private training providers, NTUC, TACs and industry.]
Mr Chairman, our plans to achieve this were set in motion when we launched the SkillsFuture movement seven years ago. We will continue to strive towards our goal of providing opportunities for all Singaporeans to upskill, and have more confidence to build a competitive Singapore.]
Source: Ministry of Education, Singapore