They may not 'fit cookie cutter requirements' but the ministry is more than willing to take them in and nuture them to become teachers, Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said yesterday.

'Let's take him or her in and groom them to be teachers. We are investing more in professional development than any other country in the world.'

Already one out of every eight, or 12 per cent of new teacher recruits are mid-career entrants, who join the profession 'brimming with enthusiasm', he added.

He was speaking to reporters after the Taman Jurong Community Club open house yesterday morning.The minister, who will be addressing over 5,000 teachers at the Teachers' Mass Lecture at the Singapore Expo today, noted that professional development, including for mid-career workers, would be among the ministry's priorities.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had hinted in his Teachers' Day Rally speech last Thursday that details on the steps MOE would take to make teaching an attractive career would be out in a few days.

Elaborating on the need to develop first-rate teachers, Mr Tharman said that professional development would ensure teachers were able to reach new peaks. He also disclosed that he is likely to take up the issue of remuneration and rewards.

'That's something we do from time to time - make sure we have a good sense of the market benchmarks, make sure that we keep adjusting teachers' remuneration. Not just things like starting pay but really along the way,' he said.

The MOE wants to retain good teachers and recruit more, so that they will have more time and room to focus on their role as educators.

MOE, he said, was on track to reaching its 30,000-strong teaching force by 2010. Today, there are around 27,000 teachers.

'Then, we allow teachers to focus on what they feel they can do best,' Mr Tharman said.

Children in primary and secondary schools have been winning top awards in major international mathematics and science competitions. This is evidence that we do place a lot of emphasis on mathematics and the sciences.

What is more pertinent to ask are 'Why are our award- winning kids not winning Nobel prizes?' and 'Where have all these kids gone to after all these years?'

The problem and the answer lie with our education system. Our system has been very good at churning out engineers to man the manufacturing plants of multinational corporations. Unfortunately, our system does not encourage creative thinking. You don't win Nobel prizes for manning manufacturing plants.

Back in the 1960s and early 70s, superiority in the sciences would give a country the competitive advantage and I believe our education system was geared towards that. It was necessary then.

In today's flat world, where any new discovery and invention can be copied and transmitted across the world in nano-seconds, superiority in the sciences gives no advantage. Take, for example, our brilliant engineers in Creative Technology. They developed the MP3 technology but was beaten in the game by Apple. When Creative came out with the first MP3 player, Apple was not even in the game. Within a few years, Apple with its iconic iPod has captured more than 70 per cent of market share worldwide.

That goes to show that having more engineers is no longer a winning formula. Apple conquered the market not because of its technological superiority but through its marketing genius.

Singapore will never be able to produce as many mathematicians or engineers as China or India. If only 1 per cent of their people are engineers or mathematicians, they will have more engineers and mathematicians than the entire population of Singapore. Out of this, you can bet there will be some who would be Nobel Prize calibre.

As we can never beat them in the sciences, we will have to be superior in other areas. The two most important areas are creativity and language. And language is the one advantage we have over many others. Our ability to speak English and a second language, such as Malay, Mandarin or Tamil, allows us to be the link to the world.

Even though I am amazed by how fast the Chinese are learning English, they can never beat us at it. Language skills is something that you lose very quickly if you do not practise it often enough. In China and India, you don't very often get the opportunity to speak English.

There are many things the Education Ministry should change but not its emphasis on both first and second language.

The one area that we should change and put more emphasis is to encourage more creative thinking in class. We need to create more Steve Jobs in our schools. We need our kids to be out-of-the-box thinkers. And first and foremost, we need to stop putting them into boxes. Mathematicians and engineers are, unfortunately, not known to be great creative thinkers.