AT LEAST a third of secondary school students here will have a stint abroad as the Government seeks to cultivate a more global outlook among the young.

The 2012 target is a steep hike over the situation now, where barely 5 per cent of today's schoolchildren have been abroad on a school programme. The move comes months after a similar goal - 50 per cent - was set for university students.

The moves are part of efforts to prepare the next generation of Singapore workers for an increasingly globalised workplace "This idea of global thinking or, more broadly, cultural versatility, should actually start earlier than university," said Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam yesterday at a gathering of global corporate leaders.

Speaking at the Ritz-Carlton hotel on the third and final day of the Forbes Global CEO Conference, he said the stints could include foreign student exchanges, community service and leadership training programmes. The Government has been reforming the education system to prepare young Singaporeans for a future where they are likely to work with international colleagues.

A global mindset will also help them find opportunities outside Singapore. Based on last year?s enrolment, this means about 71,000 secondary school students will get a foreign immersion experience. This is more than three times last year's combined figure of 22,600 from primary and secondary schools and junior colleges. "It's something we are embarking on in quite an aggressive way," said Mr Tharman, who is also the Second Minister of Finance.

"You have to live the experience as you grow up for it to be part of the way you think." Arizona-based Thunderbird School of Global Management president Angel Cabrera said: "A global mindset is a key ingredient. We need to teach people how to turn understanding differences around the world into opportunities."

Mr Tharman also said younger Singaporeans must be intellectually versatile as they may make many career switches in their lifetimes. Indeed, Dr Joseph Aoun, president of America's Northeastern University, noted that educators must prepare students not just for their first career, but also for their second, third and even fourth ones.

"And you cannot predict which careers they will be in," he said. Still, Mr Tharman cautioned against favouring a generalist approach over specialist training.

"There is something in the initial training of a specialist, getting into depth in a discipline, that helps them adapt to new specialisations.

"We will have to groom new generations of serial specialists who can hop on to new specialisations."