SINGAPORE – More students can deepen their study of mother tongue languages from 2027 as the Education Ministry (MOE) expands the Language Elective Programme at both the secondary and junior college levels.

The Chinese Language Elective Programme (CLEP) at the junior college level will be expanded to a sixth school, Anderson Serangoon JC (ASRJC).

The Tamil Language Elective Programme (TLEP) at both secondary and junior college levels will be expanded to the Umar Pulavar Tamil Language Centre.

Students from schools that do not offer the TLEP can take it up at the centre, which also organises cultural programmes and showcases Indian performing arts.

Education Minister Desmond Lee announced these changes at the Mother Tongue Languages Symposium 2026, held at the Singapore Expo on Aug 1. The event is held every two years.

Those who wish to learn Malay as a third language can look forward to the expansion of the Malay (Special Programme), or M(SP), to a fifth centre at National Junior College (NJC).

The four-year M(SP), which leads up to the O Levels, is currently offered at 12 secondary schools and four “centres” – the MOE Language Centre (Bishan), Bukit Batok Secondary School, Tampines Secondary School and Zhonghua Secondary School.

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Students whose schools do not offer M(SP) attend lessons at the centre nearest to their school.

This will allow those whose mother tongue is not Malay to learn the language and build an understanding of the socio-cultural aspects of the Malay community in Singapore and the region, said MOE on Aug 1.

Addressing parents and educators at the event, Lee said home exposure to mother tongue languages has become more challenging as fewer families use them predominantly as the main language at home.

Lee said it was encouraging that many Singaporean families continue to use both English and their mother tongue.

He said: “Raising a bilingual child in an English-dominant environment is not easy at all. Some parents worry that their own mother tongue is not strong enough for them to model the language to their children.

“But we do not need to be perfect speakers.... What matters is effort and consistency.”

He encouraged parents to start small – reading a picture book at bedtime, talking about their day in their mother tongue, or listening to a song with their children.

The Mother Tongue Language Elective Programme was introduced in 1990 at the pre-university level to nurture students with a high level of proficiency in their mother tongue languages and enhance their appreciation of literature and culture.

MOE said the programme aims to develop a sustainable pipeline of bilingual and bicultural talents who can forge meaningful connections with the region and contribute to Singapore’s cultural fabric.

Students on the two-year programme will study literature in their mother tongues and participate in local camps, overseas immersion trips, and school-based activities such as literary lectures.

The CLEP was the first to be launched in 1990. The MLEP was introduced in 2001, followed by the TLEP in 2020.

The programme was expanded to the upper secondary level in 2020 across the three languages.

Esther Tan, head of department for mother tongue languages at ASRJC, said there is strong interest from its students in Chinese language and literature. Although ASRJC does not currently offer CLEP or the Bicultural Studies Programme, students would participate actively in Chinese language competitions.

NJC principal Lucy Toh said: “For some time now, we have quite some interest amongst our own students to take Malay language as a third language, and they currently travel to another centre.”

She added that students tend to take up a third language at Secondary 1 in NJC but drop it later as their schedules fill up. Having an M(SP) centre in NJC will make it easier for students to study the subject, she said.

Around five students take Malay as a third language at NJC annually.

MOE has made efforts to shore up bilingual education in the last few years.

Pupils who do well in the subject in the Primary School Leaving Examination are now able to take higher mother tongue languages in Secondary 1, regardless of their overall PSLE score.

While higher mother tongue is an advanced-level academic subject focusing on higher language proficiency, the elective programme delves into culture and literature.

Marking essays with AI

In September, MOE will launch the new AI Essay Marking System (AIMS) in secondary schools to help Chinese language teachers handle routine marking – such as grammar, spelling and sentence structure – for both handwritten and typewritten essays.

MOE said this will allow teachers to focus on providing feedback on students’ creativity, depth of expression, and the quality of their ideas. Teachers will retain full authority to review and curate the feedback, ensuring it is contextually appropriate and tailored to students’ learning needs.

Teachers can customise AIMS’ parameters to suit different language proficiency levels, enabling more targeted feedback for students of varying needs, it added.

Oh Sze Wee, Chinese language subject head at Jurong Secondary School, said AIMS has helped her give better feedback to her students.

She prompts AIMS to generate the first draft of feedback for each student, which she reviews and edits before returning students’ work to them. She also gets students to discuss the feedback given, and has them re-write their essays with corrections.

She said: “When they understand what the feedback means, they can internalise the learning. So, it makes students more self-directed learners.”

In his speech, Lee said a new programme was launched in July to help parents engage infants in Chinese through sight, sound and touch. He said similar programmes will be developed for Malay and Tamil.

Six MOE Kindergartens have also been piloting more mother tongue language exposure, increasing it from one hour to 1½ hours a day, said Lee.

He added: “We are studying the pilot further to assess whether and how it should be scaled up.”

SINGAPORE – Hours spent playing computer games as a boy fuelled his curiosity about technology that eventually led Chew Shou Zi to become TikTok chief executive.

In a speech to Nanyang Technological University (NTU) PhD graduates on Aug 1, the Singaporean said he built his career on this curiosity, and the belief that impact often means doing things differently from what everyone expects.

Chew, 43, who was born in Singapore in 1983, said these ideas started early in life, with countless hours spent on a computer his father bought when he was a child.