S$500 to kick off each SkillsFuture account

Singapore

FROM next year, every Singaporean aged 25 and up will have a personal SkillsFuture Credit account with an initial amount of S$500 to spend on education and training.

The credit can be used to pay for a range of government-supported courses, such as those offered by institutes of higher learning and accredited education and training providers, and the government will provide regular top-ups to this life-long account, which will not expire.

Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam was announcing the details of SkillsFuture, the national movement that sets out to give opportunities for every citizen to develop themselves throughout life. This push will promote the mastery of skills in every job and be for all Singaporeans, regardless of their academic qualifications or grades.

He said the government is committed to spending an average of more than S$1 billion a year from now until 2020 on continuing education and training, an increase from about S$600 million a year over the last five years.

To partly meet this increase in expenditure, Mr Tharman disclosed that the National Productivity Fund - established in 2010 for all companies that invest in innovation - would get a S$1.5 billion top-up this year.

Other initiatives in the works under SkillsFuture include study awards, fellowships, internships, course subsidies and career guidance for students.

Describing the scheme as a "major new phase" of investment in Singaporeans, Mr Tharman spoke of the need to create a new environment of lifelong learning.

"It is critical to our future. It will develop the skills and mastery needed to take our economy to the next level," he said. "More fundamentally, it aims to empower Singaporeans to chart their own journey in life and gain fulfilment at work, even in their senior years."

The plan is to reach out to people starting from the time they are in secondary school, to help point them in the right direction in life.

Every Singaporean will be given an online Individual Learning Portfolio, a one-stop education, training and career-guidance resource to enable them to plan their learning, starting from their time in secondary school.

But Mr Tharman said that SkillsFuture was not about telling people that they have to zero in on a particular career at a given stage of their lives. Rather, it is about allowing them to discover their strengths and interests in order to make informed choices about their future course of study and the possible career opportunities that come with it.

On that note, the government will develop a professional core of education and career counsellors at schools and institutes of higher learning to provide better guidance for students.

Internships in two-thirds of polytechnic courses and half the courses at the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) will be enhanced over the next two years. More details will be announced at the upcoming Committee of Supply debate in parliament next month.

An Earn-and-Learn programme will be rolled out this year for fresh graduates from the polytechnics and ITE. Under this, they will be matched with suitable companies, where they will receive a salary and undergo on-the-job training that eventually leads to an industry-recognised qualification.

Both trainees and employers who sign up will receive "substantial support" from the government, said Mr Tharman, adding that the Earn-and-Learn programme would eventually be scaled up to cover a third of all polytechnic and ITE graduates.

To drive home the message that learning should never stop, he announced that education and training subsidies for Singaporeans aged 40 and above would be enhanced to a minimum of 90 per cent of training costs for government-funded courses.

Meanwhile, the Education Ministry will provide multiple subsidies for modular courses at all levels, regardless of a person's age. Mr Tharman said that this flexible approach would cater to workers who need to balance their families, careers and learning.

Another major plank of SkillsFuture is study awards, with about 2,000 of these to be given out each year to those who want to develop specialist skills needed for Singapore's future growth clusters.

And from 2016, there will also be about 100 SkillsFuture fellowships awarded every year to enable people to master the skills in their respective fields.

The government also intends to work with companies under a new Leadership Development Initiative, to develop a pipeline of Singaporeans to take on corporate leadership roles and responsibilities in the future.

"No one can honestly tell what they will be doing a decade or two after leaving school. We must each develop through life, adapting to changes in the job market and the new opportunities that will come up," said Mr Tharman.

"But whichever the field we are in or the job that we do, we must, as Singaporeans, aim to gain expertise and achieve mastery."

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