As private institutions, madrasahs do not receive full Government funding and are only "loosely regulated" by the Ministry of Education. Madrasahs are individually run by their self-appointed management committees, and are thus conferred significant autonomy to develop and select their own curriculum time, teaching methodologies, educational materials and their own teachers. As a consequence, the structure and pedagogy of the madrasahs often greatly differ from the conventional educational system in Singapore, and even amongst themselves
Structure
Today, there are six full-time madrasahs with approximately 4,400 students and 220 religious teachers in total. They have a combined annual intake of about 400 students.
It was recognised that it was not "efficient or effective for each madrasah to have primary and secondary or even pre-university classes", given the small number of students entering the madrasahs each year. Accordingly, in January 2009, the Joint-Madrasah System (JMS) was implemented to further improve the quality of madrasah education in Singapore. The JMS includes three of the six full-time madrasahs. Under the new system, Irsyad will provide only primary education while Aljunied and Al-Arabiah will only offer secondary and tertiary education. Accordingly, Irsyad will become the feeder primary school to Aljunied and Al-Arabiah. Aljunied will specialize in religious schooling, while Al-Arabiah will specialize in academic, secular schooling. Under this system, students are thus afforded "more choices" to excel in what they desire, be it in religious studies or in academic learning. The system would also offer a "broad-based", "multidisciplinary and integrated curriculum", which has been described as "a major paradigm shift in madrasah education." Facilities of madrasahs under the JMS have been upgraded to support the revamped curriculum, thus allowing for more enrichment programs beyond the classroom and madrasah. A S$2 million fund has been allocated to the JMS for the recruitment of new teaching and administrative staff. The JMS is expected to be fully implemented by 2015.
Upon graduation from the tertiary level, the most outstanding students often choose to pursue undergraduate studies at the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. Others may opt for enrollment at the International Islamic University Malaysia or Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, among other overseas universities. When graduates return, most end up as religious teachers at full-time or part-time madrasahs. Others find jobs that deal with Muslim affairs in government institutions such as MUIS or the Syariah Court. A handful of students who attend local universities or polytechnics would go on to obtain careers in their respective professional fields.
Pedagogy
It must be noted at outset that different madrasahs provide different pedagogies and juggle both religious and secular subjects in differentiated ways and with varying degrees of success--there are no uniform approaches or common curriculum. Madrasah Alsagoff and Madrasah Aljunied, riding on their reputation as excellent institutions of religious education, "have kept as much as seventy percent of the curriculum time for religious subjects, including Arabic, while English, Malay and Mathematics remain at the periphery." In contrast, madrasahs such as Wak Tanjong, Al-Maarif and Irsyad provide roughly equal emphasis to religious and secular subjects.
In recent years, madrasahs have been increasing curriculum time for English, Mathematics, and Science to match the time spent on these subjects in mainstream schools. To accommodate both, the school day at Irsyad Zuhri Al-Islamiah is three hours longer than at the mainstream schools. It is accepted that such an orientation, however, will compromise to a great extent the emphasis on religious education and values in madrasahs. In spite of fears that the madrasah identity would be lost, such improvements in the students' knowledge repertoire have, in fact, added to the attractiveness of madrasah education.
Irsyad said it was in talks to export its widely commended madrasah model to madrasas in the Philippines and Thailand.