THOUGH he lived a stone's throw from his school, Telok Kurau Secondary School student Muhammad Taufiq Abdul Rahman was often late for class.

Most days, he only attended school because if he did not turn up, he would have to explain his absence to supervisors at the children's home where he lived.

But last year, the 16-year-old found a reason to go to school. Telok Kurau introduced electives such as hairstyling, beauty therapy and hospitality for academically poor students, in order to keep their interest in learning alive.

Since it introduced the programme, called the School Within a School System (Swiss), Taufiq has maintained a perfect attendance and punctuality record.

Swiss is among a slew of programmes that schools have used to good effect. Last year, the dropout rate hit a low of 1.5 per cent, or fewer than 1,000 students - two years earlier than the target date of 2010.

The target of a 1.5 per cent dropout rate was set by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in 2006, when the rate was twice that.

Yesterday, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Education and Home Affairs Masagos Zulkifli said the Ministry of Education (MOE) would continue to support programmes such as Swiss, and modify them if necessary to keep the dropout rate low.

He said: 'We will look at and review the programmes over time, get feedback from the ground.

'If we need to increase the funding, if we need to increase the number of programmes, we will.'

Swiss, a Telok Kurau Secondary initiative offered only to Normal (Technical) students, complements wider efforts like the time-out programmes (TOPs).

In the latter, at-risk students are given a 'time-out' by withdrawing them from the mainstream curriculum and giving them a modified curriculum, cutting the focus on academics in favour of developing social and affective skills.

In January, MOE agreed to give $12,000 to each school that wanted to run TOPs. So far, about 80 schools have applied for funding.

In addition to TOPs, schools which have been identified as having higher attrition rates are also being given additional full-time counsellors to support students at risk of dropping out.

For Telok Kurau, these efforts have brought its Normal (Technical) stream dropout rate down to zero.

Students like Taufiq say the programmes have made a big difference.

The Secondary 4 Normal (Technical) student now looks forward to going to school because of the hairstyling electives.

Once a prime candidate to drop out of school early, he now has a newly piqued interest in class, and plans to continue his education at the Institute of Technical Educaation before going on to a polytechnic.

His friends, too, are more enthusiastic about school, he said. 'Normal (Technical) students are not that good at school work, but classes like these help us feel like we are good at something.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.