Commentary: Improved meritocracy can focus on skills, training and career progression

SINGAPORE: In launching Forward Singapore, a year-long national conversation, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said that Singapore “cannot abandon” meritocracy despite its downsides, but can make it “more open and compassionate”.

It is hard to disagree with meritocracy as a principle that upholds fair opportunities for all. But it is also evident that meritocracy can, in practice, entrench privilege and inequality.

Discussions on meritocracy tend to centre on the education system and its emphasis on academic achievement. The lower-income and less academically inclined may become casualties in a system where the more affluent can gain a head-start in life through private tuition and enrichment classes.

Various initiatives aim to give all children a good start, such as KidSTART and the Learning Support Programme, and to broaden the concept of merit to reduce emphasis on grades and consider non-academic criteria for admission to schools and tertiary institutions.

Interventions in education, however, will take time to show results. They are also not a panacea as it is hard to eliminate advantages parents can pass on to their children in both academic and non-academic domains.

So to foster a more open and compassionate meritocracy, we need to look beyond the education system to the workplace and broader society, and the different roles we all play to get there.

SKILLS, TRAINING AND CAREER PROGRESSION

There must be opportunities for progression through one’s working life, or what Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam has dubbed a “continuous meritocracy”.

Demonstrable skills, as well as learning and performance on the job, should allow each worker to go as far as he or she can without being constrained by past educational attainment. Employers can do their part by not pigeonholing employees or locking them into preset career development pathways according to education level or qualification.

This makes sense when we consider that jobs have transformed dramatically and skills require continuous refreshing. According to a 2021 PwC study, about half of Singapore workers think their job would be obsolete within five years.