Throughout her career in the Public Service, 2nd Permanent Secretary of Education Lai Wei Lin’s greatest challenge has been to give her best self both at work and at home.
But for the mother of three, who has twice worked part-time to devote more time to her children, her approach to every problem and challenge is simple: “I always start with the perspective that a solution exists somewhere for every problem, even if it seems like a big problem.”
“It's just a matter of finding it, after discussing the issues with colleagues, and sometimes seeking advice from a wider group. Sometimes the solution may become apparent only later, so what we have to do is try our best to manage in the meantime.”
And 2020 had been an intense working year for Ms Lai, whose main job is to oversee the development, planning and review of higher education policies and programmes. Just as it was for the school system, it was also a trying period for the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHLs), which include the universities, polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education.
Managing IHL Responses to COVID-19
Breaking down MOE’s response in terms of timeframe, she recounted the immediate need back in February 2020, and then during the Circuit Breaker period, to manage the COVID-19 response for about 200,000 students in the IHLs.
That included bringing back more than 2,000 students who were studying or on internships overseas as the COVID-19 situation around the world deteriorated, putting them, as well as thousands others, who were returning over the Chinese New Year or term breaks on Stay-Home Notices – often in campus housing.
MOE staff also worked with the IHLs to implement safe distancing measures on their very large and dense campuses, and ensure that their implementation of home-based learning worked and adjustments to examinations and assessment went well.
She revealed one memorable episode was making sure that 23,000 polytechnic students could start their first year of polytechnic education on the right foot. In a typical year, their orientation would have been in the later part of April, which would have been during the Circuit Breaker period.
“We were worried that if we didn't onboard them properly in the polytechnics, we would lose them and see a higher-than-usual attrition in this transitional stage,” said Ms Lai.
Over one weekend, polytechnic colleagues pushed themselves to advance the onboarding for the freshmen by a few weeks. They asked students to come to campus in small groups in the immediate week, to complete their enrolment processes and introduce them to the online learning management systems, while taking all safe management precautions.
Home-based learning can also be challenging for students from polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education, as many courses tend to be more hands-on, requiring quite a lot of lab work, for example.
“The lecturers had to think of how to videotape experiments and teach in that manner. Kudos to our teachers in the schools for rising to this challenge, having that spirit of adapting along the way to just keep trying,” she said.
Internship opportunities were lost too. Some of these were addressed by creating such opportunities on campus. “Rather than taking an internship at a publication firm outside, the student could write for the campus publication instead,” said Ms Lai.
With all these efforts, the schools and IHLs were able to keep learning going, while ensuring the safety of students.