On 1 March 1973, Goh was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore concurrently with his other Cabinet portfolio. On 12 February 1979, Goh moved on from the Defence Ministry to the Ministry of Education, where his Goh Report greatly influenced the development of Singapore's education system. He himself was described as both a key political and strategic leader responsible for the transformation of the system over thirty years from "fair" to "great", according to a November 2010 McKinsey report. He set up the Curriculum Development Institute, and introduced key policies such as religious education (subsequently discontinued) and, in 1980, the channelling of students into different programmes of study according to their learning abilities, known as "streaming". Goh served two terms as Education Minister, his first ending on 31 May 1980, and his second following the 1980 general election from 1 June 1981 till his retirement. From 1 June 1980 he was redesignated First Deputy Prime Minister upon S. Rajaratnam being made Second Deputy Prime Minister, and served as chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) until he stepped down from Parliament on 3 December 1984 at the age of 66 years. In a tribute to mark the occasion, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew wrote: "A whole generation of Singaporeans take their present standard of living for granted because you had laid the foundations of the economy of modern Singapore."