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Establishing a school-based drama programme: supporting non-specialists to plan and teach a drama programme

Drama in schools came to prominence in Singapore in 2005 when the Minister of Education announced that drama could be offered as a formal curriculum subject and, subsequently, as a means of teaching and learning English Language (Shanmugaratnam 2005, 2007). Since then, a number of schools have initiated their own school-based drama programmes. However, many schools in Singapore do not have teachers formally trained in drama or drama education. Prior to my taking up a post in the government-run boys school for students aged 13 to 16 (a post that provides the context for the exploration here), the planning and teaching of a schoolbased drama programme had been outsourced to external suppliers. However, the annual cost incurred was substantial and not sustainable in a long run. Yet, the English department felt that the drama programme was too important to be abolished, as there was evidence from observations of student behaviour, quality of students’ work and student feedback that many of the desired outcomes for education in Singapore, such as collaborative learning and confidence-building, were nurtured over the course of the programme. Although opportunities are present for in-service teachers to train themselves in drama and drama education, these platforms often cost a substantial amount of money. Given the lack of funding, it was never possible for the English department of the school to send teachers for such training. I was appointed as coordinator and teacher at the start of 2013 and my task was to look into the continuity of the drama programme and possibilities of enlisting teachers in the English department to conduct this programme in the future, without the use of external suppliers. As part of my response to this brief, I conducted some research with English teachers in the school: the research focused on reflecting with teachers on the challenges of facilitating drama lessons as non-drama specialists, and using these reflections as a stimulus for generating a model for in-service mentoring and support.