As Singapore heads into GE2025, education is a key battleground. Everychild.sg‘s latest article, “Small Schools, Big Possibilities” by Dawn Fung, founder of Little U, speaks directly to these debates by exploring how small schools can provide a more personalised, inclusive, and future-ready learning environment – issues all the major parties have addressed in their manifestos.
Have you heard of the small schools coalition in America? These are schools that don’t serve more than 230 students (1). Raising up small schools was a hot reform strategy in education in the 2000s, not least because wealthy philanthropists like Bill Gates endorsed it (2), hoping to solve issues caused by inequality in big urban schools.
In 2001, a WestED policy paper summarised the numbers:
“No agreement exists on optimal school size, but research reviews suggest a maximum of 300-400 students for elementary schools and 400-800 for secondary schools. In general, studies focused on social and emotional aspects of success conclude that no school should be larger than 500, while those looking primarily at test scores say that somewhat larger is still effective, especially for more affluent students. Perhaps most notably, researchers focusing on the interaction between poverty and enrollment size offer a rule of thumb: The poorer the school, the smaller its size should be.” (3)
Even smaller than the small schools are the microschools, archaic in their roots and modern in their marketing. In the 1940s, America had roughly 114,000 one-room schools (most of them primary schools), and most schools in rural America had fewer than 200 students (4). One-room schoolhouses did not just exist in the USA – one can argue any small group of learners being taught together could count as a “home / micro-school.” Microschools like these have the potential to offer “fidelity to personalisation and success for all in small communities.” (5)
In Singapore, small schools exist everywhere, from international schools (6) to preschools to tuition centres (which offer schooling as a private good). Microschools never lost their cool, either; they were always the first forms of urgent education. The Singapore Free School in August 1834 started with 12 boys. The Madrasahs started out as private classes in homes of religious teachers (7). Methodist Girls’ School, then known as Tamil Girls’ School, started with 9 students in 1887, thanks to a small network of Indian parents (who collectively donated the premises and footed the bill for the teacher’s salary) (8). Yet, it goes without saying that today, small schools are hardly the norm: schools in Singapore stand around 800-1800 students per school on average, considering both primary and secondary schools. There are usually 35-40 students in each class, and about 6 to 8 classes per cohort.
Regardless of what you might think of schools, past and present, school enrolments have always been diverse. To only think of schools as needing to be big is to conveniently forget history, and how humans make decisions about their children: small schools exist because people want them. Since mass education and compulsory education came under the MOE, Singapore mainstream schools have tended to be very big. There are no small schools in the primary and secondary years. Unless you are homeschooling or in international schools, those who are looking for a school environment for their children’s learning needs may find themselves paying for exclusive, expensive spots in the burgeoning tuition industry.
Why are small schools attractive? I explain using Little U (9), my microschool consultancy offering personalised education to families and learners, as a case study.
Enhanced Safety and Well-being of Students
The strongest case for small schools today is psychological safety.
Wanted: A miracle worker who can do more with less, pacify rival groups, endure chronic second-guessing, tolerate low levels of support, process large volumes of paper and work double shifts (75 nights a year). He or she will have carte blanche to innovate, but cannot spend much money, replace any personnel, or upset any constituency (R. Evans, Education Week, 1995).
One of the greatest downsides of big schools today is the lack of psychological safety, starting with school leaders. Ask any school principal whether they know their 1000 to 4000 students by name. Ask them what fires they fight each week, and to what extent their mental health has been affected because of stakeholders’ expectations. Anyone wants to guess what kind of policy decisions a burnt out principal concedes just to avoid more conflict and emotional pain?
Psychological safety is the first defence against mental breakdowns. When leaders are taken care of, psychological wellness cascades down to teachers and vulnerable children in their care. Small schools reduce the likelihood of burnout, bullying and distractions to effective learning. As a leader, I can only mentor so many people. At Little U, we cap our enrollment to 150 families. Currently we serve 50 families. There is space for more, but only so much more. 150 is not a magic number. First, it was the maximum capacity of my former community, Homeschool Singapore (10). Second, according to anthropologist Robin Dunbar, 150 is the highest number of coherent social relationships you can maintain (11). The kind of school leaders you often want are the ones who take care to connect well with people. Small schools are healthy for leadership because not all leaders do well taking care of big schools; in fact, the talent pool for leadership shrinks when there is not enough diversity of schools. If you want to see leadership flourishing in Singapore education, let them lead different kinds of schools, big and small.
Numbers do matter; the smaller your enrollment, the better everyone’s mental wellness. When I care for children, I care for their families in which they grow up. Without positive connections and trustworthy adults, children will not feel safe learning. Any school leader worth their salt will tell you that when you teach a child, you teach the family by proxy. Everyone is interconnected. A child who brings home 3 hours of homework after 7 hours of school time loses 3 hours of his rightful rest each day. A parent who brings more schoolwork to the child, hoping for the child to catch up, is taking away their rightful connection time. How is a school leader to act, if not to think clearly about the impact of the school policies upon every member of the family? And how to think like this if you have too many children to handle?
A microschool of Little U’s size allows me to administer our microschool policies effectively, without reducing quality. Our community is built upon policies (12) of child safeguarding and trauma-informed care. From there, we devise curricula to develop child safety, secure attachment and interest-based portfolios around competency-based education. I take nothing for granted when I am taking care of children. Every child must be accounted for. Every child is a treasure. There is just no way I can speed things up and herd children around like cattle. We don’t do things to children. We want to understand them. We want to make them feel safe – this is good education. Because we are small, we are not bogged down by middle management administration. When the educators and the core team meet up monthly for training, we have time to reflect upon an ethos of being kind, respectful, gentle and safe in our interactions in the community. Because I feel confident as a leader, there is no need for punitive measures to protect the microschool. We do not enact suspension nor detention. Our discipline policy has only one abiding principle: natural consequences. As we prioritise our mental health, we have all the time to rest, converse and connect with children without the need to coerce them.
The secret sauce in any schooling community is the quality of social interactions. Our policies are enabled effectively by our small size, which in turn yields qualitative results. Our classes have no more than 8 students to 1 teacher. Within one term at Little U, our high school students feel more confident and socially less anxious than they did before. Some who have suffered school trauma have seen their symptoms alleviate. When children’s nervous systems are not overwhelmed, they feel safe to learn. When they feel safe to learn, they feel motivated to study. When they feel motivated to study, their chances of success in the marketplace grow exponentially. Small is a winning reason for tuition in Singapore as well. If only small was a daytime norm instead of an after-hours service.
Deep Community Involvement
Listen to what children want and need.
At Little U, the curriculum is built on competency-based education. Our high school students pick and choose their modules. If they don’t find a suitable fit, they make their own. Teachers act as mentors, rather than aiming to give step-by-step guided help as they would in a traditional classroom. How can you know what the child is like, without listening to what he/she wants and needs? Young children want their parents to be with them. Teens still want their parents around, even if they are in the background. All children want friends. They want to study what they are interested in. If they don’t get to learn what they like, they still want to be treated kindly and respectfully by adults who teach them. They want clear instructions so that they can succeed. When these ingredients mix together, we see the best outcomes. Children who feel safe, happy and motivated to learn are holistic learners.
How holistic learning happens is when interactions are safe and deep. Children feel they can trust you with secrets, with their hearts. They desire to learn from you because you show yourself to be safe. You don’t hurt them. You don’t hurry them to become butterflies when they are still in the cocoon. Because Little U is small, we can afford to take things slow. I can wait upon their readiness to learn. While waiting, I get to know each family – mums, dads, caregivers, children – by name. I don’t want to leave out knowing anyone because it is not effective. I miss out on valuable data to help them win in life.
If we believe parents are the child’s first educators, then we must trust they want an education that works with their children’s natural strengths and interests. It is knowing this love that I can unpack parent-speak. I help them see what they mean by “potential”. It is actually knowing the child better so that we can support the child. It is not getting As in subjects. Once parents feel understood, they trust me to guide their child.
On my end, I check in often with parents because I need to fact check my assumptions. Is the child really interested in this subject or just doing it because they were told? Has the parent considered another form of interest-based learning e.g. more work experience than academic? We keep testing until something clicks. In serving the whole family, we create strong connections between educators, parents, and children. The formula? Good old fashioned relationships. This takes time. We only have time for so many people. Small is not just effective, it is necessary.
Technology complements the educational experience. We encourage older students to use AI if it works for them. We maintain online interactions via our Little U Discord Server set up by an ex-student. There are some channels where older children may participate. There are some channels only for adults to talk. Akin to a professional development platform for teachers, the parents’ portal enables parents as the first teachers of their children, generating and sharing ideas.
In our preschool program, technology and face-to-face interactions create a full picture. Parents are involved as teachers and coordinators, learning alongside their preschool-aged children. They set up online threads to organise interest groups. They decide the frequency of the meetings, and how much they want to cover; there are co-ops for balance bikes, the zoo, geography, literature, languages, elevators, and more.
As the children get older, co-ops turn to classes where they get to teach for a small fee, too. As the microschool leader, I oversee the quality of the curricula. I train parents to teach on their own, and when they cannot, I step in to teach. At the high school track, educators guide students to personalise their curricula with AI when needed. In a small class and in a small school, the use of AI does not overpower the face-to-face interactions that teens need.
The microschool experience is the empowered community. Children’s education is high quality, parents are socially and emotionally present, and pedagogical wisdom is shared amongst everyone. What if this can be a reality for Singapore education at large? What would it take? How can you ask people to trust you for big things if you don’t start small?
Public Small Schools can be a Game Changer in Singapore
Education is social intervention.
When I think about our education landscape, my heart goes out to the ones that are left behind. Singapore has bold talent. People with big hearts and big dreams do make things happen. There is plenty of wonderful social work in education. What if initiatives like Little U, Impart (13), or Tak Takut Kids Club (14) receive permits from MOE to pilot small schools for their beneficiaries? What would that look like for the children in their care? As the population shrinks in wealthy Singapore, redesigning school enrolment should not be an issue but an exciting possibility.
Consider:
- Small schools give school leaders flexibility and more autonomy in education.
- Small schools make safe and interesting pilot initiatives that attract like-minded parents – only they would be foolhardy enough to start as pioneers.
- Policymakers and school leaders can experiment with letting the new cohort have a say over curriculum. This leads to increased student participation, and better relationships between teachers and students.
- Small schools enable small class sizes without exhausting the faculty. This prevents teacher burnout, and increases students’ sense of safety and engagement in class for deep learning. (When the Gifted Education Programme (GEP) revamp was announced, both current and former gifted students highlighted the benefits of the small class sizes.)
- School leaders that propose small enrollment should lead in teaching demographics that need customised care regularly. Neurodivergent children come to mind. Small schools can define reasonable frameworks for healthcare and social services to partner effectively.
- Small schools develop the national education landscape through alternative education pathways. Policymakers can work with industry partners to design small, boutique schools for particular cohorts – e.g. a business school in partnership with a bank housed in a design centre to teach entrepreneurial children.
- Small public schools can be sourced from existing groups, such as select tuition centres with a good track record that help the poor and marginalised. They can be given permits to become small schools with government funding.
Education is an egalitarian solution – everyone can participate. Little U would be happy to work with agencies, NIE and MOE on long term studies on trauma-informed education and competency-based education for: homeschooling families, families facing adversity, schooling neurodivergent children and students who suffer school trauma. Data can then be shared freely and publicly. There are not enough labourers when it comes to children’s work. Everyone should find a place to help out somewhere. Existing school leaders should take a poll on their preferred school size so that MOE can develop its talent pool. There should be 4 sizes of schools :
- micro (150 and below)
- small (up to 500)
- big (up to 1000)
- institution (above 1000)
Capping small schools at 500 students for Singapore is reasonable. It works out to about 50 students per cohort, if the school covers Primary 1 to Secondary 4, which is 10 cohorts. If the school is not a through train from primary to secondary years, a small primary school could have 80 students per cohort, and a small secondary school could have 125 students per cohort. Besides fewer parents to deal with, these numbers ensure that more resources can be allocated to children’s learning needs on the ground. It is easier to find quality vendors who can service a small CCA cohort than a big one.
Small schools have more choice of spaces in Singapore. Imagine:
- microschools hosted out of National Libraries and community centres (especially at hours when facilities are less used)
- small schools near businesses for industry exposure
- 3 boutique small schools sharing a defunct institution ground so that more amenities get used throughout the day.
There are so many exciting possibilities as we dream about moving everyone forward in Singapore.
Finding Balance to Meet the Needs of Every Child
To sum up, there has never been a one-size solution for schools. Schools have always been diverse in meeting the needs of learners everywhere. To be sure, public small schools have largely been phased out in favour of big schools; small schools still exist, but mostly in the private sector.
Today, small schools promise big possibilities in the education landscape. They can deliver what big public schools find difficult to do: personalised learning experience, psychological safety to all stakeholders including school leaders, small class sizes and better mental health overall. The case study of the Little U microschool consultancy shows how small is effective in helping families and students achieve their goals.
In February 2025, the Education Minister spoke about two structural shifts that he believed would help prepare Singapore students for an era of increasing uncertainty, volatility and fragmentation. The first is for Singapore society to embrace lifelong self-motivated learning, beyond schools and books. Secondly, MOE needs to support the customisation of education to meet diverse students’ needs and aspirations. In the same light, EveryChild.SG and Little U see that these two structural shifts mentioned are necessary. Whether one is homeschooled, schooled, neurodivergent or neurotypical, there should be many ways to receive a great education in Singapore. Smaller schools – again, not as a “one-size-fits-all” prescription, but as one available option among many – are a missing key in public education today.
Citations
- https://smallschoolscoalition.org/about/
- The Gates Foundation and Small Schools
- are small schools better?
- Schools Historical Perspectives on Small Schools – Robert L. Hampel, 2002
- The Rise of Micro-schools
- Singapore’s Best Small International Schools
- Madrasah Aljunied and Madrasah Alsagoff : History of Singapore Malay Schools
- Methodist Girls’ School – Singapore
- www.littleu.org
- https://homeschoolsingapore.sg/
- Dunbar’s number: Why we can only maintain 150 relationships
- Policies – Little U
- Impart
- Tak Takut Kids Club – Quantedge Foundation
Written by Dawn Fung for EveryChild.SG
Reprinted with permission from EveryChild.sg
First published : April 24, 2025