INVESTIGATING THE SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF SAFE MANAGEMENT MEASURES IN A MADRASAH IN SINGAPORE AMIDST COVID19

Abstract

COVID-19 had impacted the world in significant ways. Countries all over the world had to resort to lockdowns and in Singapore, the Circuit Breaker was implemented to curb increasing local transmission of the virus in Singapore. As a result, schools were closed and had to adapt to Home Based Learning (HBL). As Circuit Breaker ended on 1 June 2020, schools were allowed to reopen in phases across phases 1 and 2 of the three-phased reopening approach adopted by Singapore. In light of this, safe management measures (SMM) were introduced in schools following the guidelines provided by Ministry of Education (MOE) and Ministry of Health (MOH).

However, there has been no guide on how to successfully implement SMM and the guidelines provided were brief without considering the situational context or constraints of individual schools. Hence this research aims to investigate the successful implementation of SMM and the factors contributing to the success in the implementation of SMM. This study further aims to present a framework of lessons learned from the SMM implementations by looking at the experience of a single case study of a Madrasah in Singapore. Using a case study research design, interviews, site visits, observations and a survey questionnaire were used to investigate driving factors behind the success of the SMM implemented in the Madrasah. In this study, Forms of Engagement used by teachers were focused on as the driving factors to be investigated. The standard hypothesis used for each form of engagement was that the form of engagement increases the percentage of students at the conscious competency level. These hypotheses were tested in this study using qualitative and quantitative analysis of the survey questionnaire.

It was found that each driving factor had varying levels of significance in contributing to the successful implementation of SMM and some Forms of Engagement were more effective than others. It was found that constant reminders to students, setting a good example as teachers, and leveraging on school values were more effective than others.

However, the limitations of this study must be acknowledged as the study was only conducted within a short period of time and is limited to a single case study only that is not representative of the school population in Singapore. Despite the limitations, this study acts a recommendation for future larger scale research.