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With the ever-pressing twenty-first century demands, such as the need for new knowledge generation and application, schools today are aware of the necessity to change their structures, processes and practices to be relevant. In Singapore's centralized education system, the Ministry has introduced several decentralization initiatives in the hope of promoting flexibility and innovation within schools. One such initiative is the Integrated Programme (IP). IP schools are expected to redefine existing educational structures, redesign teaching and learning processes and reshape classroom practices to generate diverse learning experiences. This paper describes the case of one school that has embarked on the IP to shed light on the processes involved in curriculum innovation. Our findings reveal three significant processes: negotiating the programme with the school's vision, finding common ground for buy-in and investing in preparation time. These are instrumental in the development and enactment of IP by teachers and school leaders. These findings and their implications are deliberated on, providing ways that schools can shape and sustain curricular innovations.

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A variety of programming models, both part- and full-time, have been designed to provide gifted children with appropriate instruction to fulfil their needs and potential. In January 1993, The Chinese High School, an independent school in Singapore, started on a pull-out gifted program where students are selected to attend a challenging, differentiated and enriched curriculum in Mathematics, Science and Computer Science. Interesting enrichment activities carried out in the programme included a Mentor Link programme and a creative computing camp. The strength of such a programming model is that while the gifted students are provided with opportunities for rapid progress and challenging activities within Mathematics, Science and Computer Science, they also have the opportunities to study and interact with their regular classmates and to be leaders in their regular classes. The pull-out gifted programme, as set up in Chinese High, was able to combine the advantages of both full- and part-time programmes. This paper presents the characteristics and activities of the pull-out programme.

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