The Knowledge to Decide

Spire Singapore collaborated with the Singapore Children’s Society for the fifth consecutive year, in support of AmCham Singapore’s Corporate Community Day (CCD) 2015. This is the eighth year in which Spire has been participating in the CCD program, which aims to promote corporate volunteerism. Spire Singapore took beneficiaries of the Singapore Children’s Society to an ice-cream making session. The children were excited to have the chance to create their own flavors and decorate their creations, while picking up a useful and fun skill. We were honored by the visit of Ms Mary-Gardner Coppola from the US Embassy, who joined in the ice-cream making session. Ms Coppola interacted with the beneficiaries as well as the staff and volunteers of Spire Singapore and the Singapore Children’s Society. She and Mr Japnit Singh, Spire’s Senior Director, had a great time judging the ice cream creations. Their conclusion? All were magnificent. Spire is proud to support the wonderful...

Singapore celebrated its golden jubilee as one of the world’s developed economies. Following the death of founding father Lee Kuan Yew and the current global economic headwinds, can economic momentum be maintained? Japnit Singh, Senior Director, Singapore and India, of Spire Research and Consulting shared his insights in China Daily – Asia Weekly. Singapore has successfully built a strong foundation for its economy with human development indicators such as education, life expectancy and per capita income on a positive high. Singh cautioned that the nation needs to focus in order to take bold and productive political decisions without becoming complacent. Moreover, it would be interesting to see if the next generation of political leaders would take difficult decisions with the same firmness and transparency as the founding fathers have done in the past. Singapore’s GINI coefficient – calculated as the ratio of income of the top 20% of population with the bottom 20% –...

In mid-2014,  Spire Research and Consulting  collaborated with global education service provider Pearson for the second time, to conduct a study of 5,145 teachers in schools and higher education institutes across 247 cities in India. The study revealed that teachers ranked skill and personality development as the most important area to focus on for improving learner outcomes. The Pearson-Spire study revealed that nearly 50 percent of students who had entered a classroom lacked the academic, vocational and cognitive skills requisite for that level. This implied that most learning environments were failing their students. In spite of these sobering findings, most teachers (79 percent) still perceived a noted improvement in India’s learning environment over the past decade. These improvements were noted to have come about through the practical exposure gained by teachers, teaching combined with technology, teacher training on new methodologies as well as an improved cur...