Mr Chong Leong Chin was appointed as Deputy Executive Director of SCCL on September 15, 2014. He works with Dr Chin Chee Kuen (Executive Director) and Dr Tan Chee Lay (Deputy Executive Director) for the better development of SCCL. We had an interview with Mr Chong Leong Chin, attempting to provide insight into his past experience and ideas of education. For more information about Mr Chong, please click here.

Mr Chong Leong Chin 

Q: As MOE's Assistant Director for Curriculum Planning and Development in 2008, you provided support and help to the establishment of SCCL. Would you tell us your impression of SCCL? What makes it special?

A: SCCL was established to provide targeted support to enhance Chinese teachers' teaching knowledge and competence so as to help students with their Chinese language. The training contents and locations used to be restricted but the establishment of SCCL changed the situation. SCCL hopes to develop unique and effective teaching methods to strengthen the position of SCCL as the regional centre for the teaching and research of Chinese as a second language.

Q: You were the principal of Shanghai Singapore International School, and have also held various positions in primary and secondary schools in Singapore. Would you please tell us the differences in teaching and management between the Shanghai and Singapore? How does it influence your perception of education?

A: I had been in the Singapore International School in Shanghai for 5 years where students came from all over the world. For me, such experience is quite unique in terms of administrative management and communication. Shanghai is a good place for Chinese language immersion. The school only enrols children of foreigners working in Shanghai. There were students from different countries besides Singapore, but all of them studied both English and Chinese. The school once thought about offering Korean language courses to the large number of Korean students, but the idea was rejected by the Korean parents. They wanted their children to focus on learning Chinese while Korean could be taught at home, citing the reason that they chose the Singapore International School because of our heavy emphasis on bilingual education (Chinese and English). I think this should be the mindset that one should have when learning a language. In contrast, it is very worrying that our children in Singapore are afraid of learning Chinese. I could not help but wonder, on the international stage, do our children have the competence and advantage to compete with children from other countries? It strikes me that we must perform our roles well and help Singapore students with their Chinese learning.

Mr Chong speaking at Cultural Forum 2014

Q: What are your roles at SCCL? Do you face some completely different challenges and how would you deal with them?

A: Apart from administrative work like management, HR and finance, I'm also responsible for course development and supporting our master teachers. According to the directions and targets set up by the Minister of Education, SCCL should coordinate the work of different departments, to offer better teaching resources and courses to teachers and train them into "enquiring teachers". Therefore, in our training programmes, we should not only teach our in-service teachers "what" to teach, and "how" to teach. We must raise also their awareness as to "why" teach, and "whom" they are teaching. Only in this way can teachers be motivated for self learning and improvement. In the coming future, we will have more extensive collaborations with our lecturers and master teachers to develop strategies for the continuous enhancement of our Chinese teachers' abilities and qualities.

Q: What is your expectation of SCCL? Do you have any words of advice for our colleagues?

A: We are currently heading in the right direction and every decision we have made has facilitated the development of learning Chinese as a second language. However, if we fail to understand the demands of our language environment and Chinese teachers, our progress would stagnate, if not fall behind. I hope everyone in SCCL, both teaching and administrative staff, will understand the significance of our work.