Special Assistance Plan (SAP) schools in Singapore: building Chinese elitism or settling on meritocracy, Singapore style?

Abstract

Since the People’s Action Party (PAP) came into power in 1959, there has been a series of tensions and tussles between the Chinese educated in their vernacular and the western-trained Chinese, whose own mother tongue is Chinese but who embrace western values such as liberty and western religion. The Special Assistance Plan (SAP) schools in Singapore – for example, Hwa Chong Institution and Catholic High School – were introduced in 1979 and remain the result of an elite education system built to ensure that there remains a core of Chinese-educated elites in Singapore who are educated at the first language levels in English and in Mandarin (Putonghua). This is to offset the balance between the dominant English-educated Chinese and the Chinese-educated Chinese in Singapore. Several problems are associated with the SAP schools, which are analyzed in this study. This study concludes with the power of Kuan Yew Lee and his PAP and provides several possible solutions to the SAP school problem and how they may be fixed over the short term for all Singaporeans alike. Raffles Institution, Anglo-Chinese School, and St. Joseph’s Institution have long histories in Singapore but are not SAP schools, thus proving that SAP schools may not even be necessary in the first place in the globalized world.