I am nine, in the airport with my family, munching on kaya toast. My mum’s phone rings. As she speaks, her expression changes. She puts down the phone and looks at me. “You got into the Gifted Education Programme,” she says, her joy tinged with disbelief. 

“What?”

My dad turns to me to cheer. “You got into the GEP! You’re in the gifted programme!” 

I’m gifted. I’m gifted?

Perhaps there had been a mistake? Sure, I had been a straight-A student, but in my competitive primary school I hadn’t ever been top three in my class—or even top five. I once did so badly (or thought I did so badly) for spelling that I faked my mum’s signature on the result. I didn’t know what half of the questions in the entrance test to the programme were even asking. What does getting into the GEP mean? Who will I meet? What opportunities will I get? But mostly: what does this say about me? 

The toast, forgotten in the corner of my mouth, soaks up the weight of possibility. 

Fast forward eight years, in my second year at Princeton University in the US, I read that the GEP is to be replaced with a different, more inclusive programme. I feel a strange sense of nostalgia. In writing, I am trying to make sense of all those years ago: was the GEP a good thing? Did it fulfil what it set out to do? And, in hindsight, how big a deal was it anyway? 

In the late 1970s, Singapore’s economy was slowly shifting from manufacturing to more knowledge-based industries, and needed the human capital to match. In 1978, a team led by Goh Keng Swee, then deputy prime minister, produced the eponymous Goh report that introduced streaming, among other transformative changes to the national education system. From this report was born the GEP, a specialised programme for “intellectually gifted” students. The first intake was in 1984. 

The GEP was conceived with two possible entry points. One was for students who did well in the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE): they were invited to sit for a selection test to enter the GEP in secondary school. The other, through which I entered, was at primary three when students took tests in English, maths and general ability, with a focus on pattern recognition. Those selected were sent to one of the primary schools—there were nine during my time—that offered the GEP, and placed in separate classes with specialised teachers and an advanced curriculum. 

This was intended to meet students’ “cognitive and affective needs”, that is, nurturing their intellectual, social and emotional growth. Goals listed on the website of the Ministry of Education (MOE) included “higher level thinking”, “productive creativity”, “individual excellence”, but also “strong social conscience” and “responsible leadership”. Students were introduced to complex maths topics and additional English subjects, taught research skills through enrichment project-based programmes, and afforded the privilege of going on an overseas trip.

Lee Kuan Yew’s government unveiled another social engineering project in 1984. The Graduate Mothers’ Scheme (GMS), that gave pre-primary and primary school entrance priority to children of mothers who had gone to university. The GMS was discarded in a year, after a historic electoral backlash saw two opposition politicians being elected for the first time since the 1960s. But the GEP was incredibly popular from its very inception. Parents of 87 of the 100 primary school students selected in the first year took up the offer; the next year, an even higher proportion—117 from 125—signed up. By the mid-1990s, there were more than 800 “gifted” students from primary four to primary six, enrolled in four schools. Each cost the state S$4,300 (nearly S$7,000 today). Eventually, nine primary and seven secondary schools came to offer GEP classes. 

The programme’s popularity was understandable. It virtually guaranteed a student’s entry into an “elite” secondary school, which presumably increased the odds that they’d enter a premier university. In brand conscious Singapore, which parent could resist an Oxford or a Harvard? My class made a homogenous beeline to “branded” schools, many through academic Direct-School Admissions (DSA), a programme which allows students to get into secondary schools even before PSLE: Raffles Girls’ School, Nanyang Girls’ High, NUS High…

Of course, the GEP wasn’t necessary for such a route. Many of the people I met in secondary school and Junior College (JC) were also from the GEP; but more weren’t. One of my JC classmates had qualified for the GEP, but had decided against it. We had both still ended up in the same Humanities Programme class at Raffles Institution. Still, it did help. Many of my 20 GEP classmates ended up in elite overseas colleges (Princeton, MIT, Oxbridge); others in top local universities, enrolling in courses ranging from maths to medicine.

Part of me expected that the GEP would unlock some latent genius. Reality hit soon enough. My first year in the programme ended with a 67 percent in maths. In hindsight, this was not bad, but at the time it was catastrophic for someone used to getting As. While my classmates were topping the level (and later the country with their PSLE scores), I was considered average—on a good day.

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