Hwa Chong Institution (High School)

[wonderm]

Below is the BT article today:



Leaders without borders

Hwa Chong Institution aims to break down geographical and cultural barriers in order to groom students to become bicultural leaders, reports TEH SHI NING
IT IS one thing to boast of students who have won world championships and attained global standards of excellence, but quite another to be the institution that produces such students.

Hwa Chong Institution's vision of being a world class school traces back to before the 2005 merger between The Chinese High School and Hwa Chong Junior College produced Singapore's first mega-school to offer the six-year 'through train' integrated programme.
'We were already travelling the world to find out what 'world-class' is. And we weren't just looking at schools but also organisations. We looked at what Google was doing, we looked at the case-studies of Harvard Business School,' says principal Dr Hon Chiew Weng, who led the high school pre-merger.

Hwa Chong's journey of pursuing organisational excellence as a means to improve its education over the past 14 years, led to its clinching the Singapore Quality Award this year. It is the second school to do so after Anglo-Chinese School (Independent)'s win last year.
'In the beginning, we thought that to get this award we must impress people with results and systems and processes. So we told the assessors all about our students' championship wins, their scholarships to the best universities in the world, our links with partners globally,' Dr Hon says. But though critical, these weren't in the end what most impressed.
'What stood out for them was our bicultural leadership,' he says. In other words, the distinguishing feature was the clarity of Hwa Chong's broader vision - to be a global academy that grooms bicultural leaders - which ties together its various programmes and initiatives.
Hwa Chong's positioning as a bicultural school means 'striking a balance between tradition and innovation' and knowing how to 'keep the traditional heritage but yet be very forward looking at the same time', says Eileen Tan-Tay, principal consultant for organisation development and an economics tutor at the school.
Dr Hon paints Hwa Chong's growth in three broad phases. The first emphasised academic excellence in an exam-oriented way, but was soon replaced by a second phase stressing scholastic achievements. This, he says, is clear in how the Hwa Chong Diploma, introduced in 2008 as a 'passport to top universities worldwide', looks at students' leadership skills and community service too.
In this third and current phase, Hwa Chong's focus is on grooming bicultural leaders in a 'borderless learning environment'. Innovations which have emerged to support this strategy include the Hwa Chong-Beijing Satellite Campus, which was set up to move beyond short-term and superficial cultural exchange programmes to offer students a longer immersion during which they study the Chinese curriculum and gain greater exposure.
So while he speaks, Dr Hon says, one group of HCI students can be learning about China's social and cultural developments in the Hwa Chong-Beijing Satellite Campus, while another is in Shanghai learning how business is done there, and a third is doing research in the Virginia Academy of Sciences in the US.
There are plans for other satellite campuses to be set up in the US and India, but in the meantime, Hwa Chong still has more than 100 partners across 16 countries with whom they create programmes to break down geographical and cultural borders for its students.
'That we can maintain this network of partners is crucial - actively engaging alumni, non-stakeholders. It isn't due to chance that people just knock on our doors and want to work with us,' says Dr Hon.
Another initiative of the school that breaks down boundaries, this time between disciplines, is its Projects Competition. While its name isn't the most exciting, the programme involves a 'very very different way of doing project work' from other schools, Dr Hon says.
The programme, started years ago, underwent a major revision in the mid-1990s to throw away subject-based categories and move into cross-disciplinary ones such as experimental and non-experimental research, creative arts, math and infocomm, entrepreneurship and inventions.
'Hwa Chong prides itself on a research culture, which has driven innovation,' says Mrs Tan-Tay. This makes it conducive for students to flourish in these aspects too, she says, citing one instance of Hwa Chong students working across time zones with a team in the US to eventually win the Stanford Global Innovation Tournament.
Dr Hon sees much value for students in the Projects Competition too. 'In Sec 1 and 2, they do the work in our own labs and they will fumble but that's okay. Many of these students have never failed before, so when they come to Hwa Chong we're willing to let them fail, sit up, wonder what happened and find their own way to do things better,' he says. And after a few years, many are very good researchers, able to collaborate with external labs and research institutes too, he says.
Delivering all these exciting new plans to transform Hwa Chong into a global academy are its quality teachers and quality staff.
'The assessors were quite impressed with the high energy levels, and innovativeness shown by our staff,' Mrs Tan-Tay says. This is in part the result of hiring and retaining motivated staff, but is also thanks to deliberate moves like the I3 (Innovate, Improve, Impact) system.
In the past, staff suggestions had to be coerced from each member of staff and the top-driven approach meant that the management decided which suggestions to act upon.
The new system however, allows staff to act on any ideas for improvement they chance upon in their own areas of work and log these proven ideas and results into the system.
About 75 per cent of the innovative entries logged thus far are teaching and learning related, so the system has also become a knowledge database for staff to share best practices and develop more innovative lesson packages.
'The underlying culture is very important. We have 4,200 students and about 500 staff members, so if we're to run this organisation like a bureaucracy, you won't get innovation nor creativity,' says Dr Hon.
Another structure which has worked well for Hwa Chong is the organisation of its high school into consortiums or 'four mini-schools within the school'.
'This is very different from the subject departments system, where the teacher's focus is on say Mathematics and if the students are doing well in Math, he thinks, 'I'm fine, I've done by job',' Dr Hon explains. Instead, the consortium system means teachers are more involved in the holistic development of the 500 students in their mini-school and can push through changes more quickly.
In the future, Dr Hon thinks one challenge will be to seek out more resources to further research and development work. The Hwa Chong Centre for Pedagogical Excellence set up in 2007 is one step in that direction, to promote and support teaching innovation.
Hwa Chong was also among six schools selected by the Ministry of Education to pioneer its FutureSchools@Singapore programme, which links schools with industry partners to serve as test-beds for R&D in infocomm in education. This receives funding support from the National Research Foundation.
'So far, I've been able to mobilise teachers to do a bit of R&D work in some areas. But going forward, I'm planning to look at R&D into leadership concepts. Specifically, a hybrid between servant leadership and entrepreneurial leadership, which I think is something that will be good for our nation,' Dr Hon says.

[Zann]

Just wondering why HCI does not offer MEP till now? A frien of mine has to choose one with MEP.

[phankao]

Zann:

Just wondering why HCI does not offer MEP till now? A frien of mine has to choose one with MEP.

Yup - apparently HCI doesn't believe in it. Say it clashes with their existing programmes. But strangely NYGH can, hor! Anyway, even NYGH's is a school-based MEP, not an MOE MEP center, but that's fine too bc it is run along similar lines.

[yellow-dk]

jtoh:

verykiasu2010:

[quote=\"ycpang\"]
Go early. Reach there before 8am. Chop chop register, buy books first (before the Q becomes long) then buy uniforms. Last year we completed everything within one hour.

open at what time ? 7.30am ? we will be there in 5 minutes if eventually we choose HCI

Reporting time is 8.30am for all schools.[/quote]Get your child to queue for uniform while you queue for books. Queue for books quite long but should be done in 1.5 hrs. If child is in Isparks, no queue is very short

[Vanilla Cake]

Hi HCI parents/students,


Could you pls check and advise whether the bookshop @ HCI still sells the past year question papers in the SMOPS booklets?
According to http://www.hci.sg/aphelion/apmops/sample.htm, is my interpretation that only this year (2010)'s SMOPS booklets that come with questions and worked solutions will not be printed?

Thank you for your useful response and feedback.

[xxjustakidxx]

Vanilla Cake:

Hi HCI parents/students,


Could you pls check and advise whether the bookshop @ HCI still sells the past year question papers in the SMOPS booklets?
According to http://www.hci.sg/aphelion/apmops/sample.htm, is my interpretation that only this year (2010)'s SMOPS booklets that come with questions and worked solutions will not be printed?

Thank you for your useful response and feedback.

I'm a student of the school in question.
The bookshop is to provide books for HCI students, and I suppose they don't provide SMOPS booklets as they are for primary school students.

[Vanilla Cake]

xxjustakidxx:

Vanilla Cake:

Hi HCI parents/students,


Could you pls check and advise whether the bookshop @ HCI still sells the past year question papers in the SMOPS booklets?
According to http://www.hci.sg/aphelion/apmops/sample.htm, is my interpretation that only this year (2010)'s SMOPS booklets that come with questions and worked solutions will not be printed?

Thank you for your useful response and feedback.

I'm a student of the school in question.
The bookshop is to provide books for HCI students, and I suppose they don't provide SMOPS booklets as they are for primary school students.

Hi xxjustakidxx,

Thks for your quick response. Pls confirm with the bookshop @ HCI as HCI is the organiser for SMOPS and they may have some old stocks of SMOPS booklets.Perhaps, you wish to advise the contact number for the bookshop @ HCI.

Just for your information, past years' questions in booklets from NMOS competition can be purchased from NUSH-Maths & Science's admin office.

Wish you all the best in your studies.

[ycpang]

Try calling this number for the bookstore @ HCI 64623240. I found the number from Google so not sure it is the right one.

[DecJan]

ycpang:

Try calling this number for the bookstore @ HCI 64623240. I found the number from Google so not sure it is the right one.

The number's the same as that printed on the booklist.


Vanilla Cake,
FYI, my DS saw past yrs' SMOPS booklets on sale at the bookshop earlier this year.

[verykiasu2010]

Vanilla Cake:

Hi HCI parents/students,


Could you pls check and advise whether the bookshop @ HCI still sells the past year question papers in the SMOPS booklets?
According to http://www.hci.sg/aphelion/apmops/sample.htm, is my interpretation that only this year (2010)'s SMOPS booklets that come with questions and worked solutions will not be printed?

Thank you for your useful response and feedback.

Starting from the 2010 SMOPS they are NOT publishing the Q&A. As for the past years' Q&A, it has been sold out and they will not do a reprint.

HCI is the copyright owner to those Q&A and they have decided to discontinue with publishing those Q&A.

I spoke to the teacher / dept concerned specifically on this matter