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HER son is only six and he's already having Chinese reading classes.
The academic enrichment class is just one of the many activities he has in his schedule.
There's also taekwondo, swimming, rugby, music and art - all after-school programmes which Mark's mum Karen Soh believes is good for him.
The37-year-old medical doctor and mother of three doesn't think she packs her child's day too much. She has a five-year-old daughter and another nine-year-old son.
Dr Soh said she will continue with the list of activities even when her son enters Primary 1 next year.
And even if he doesn't need to sit for the Primary 1 year-end examinations, she may add academic programmes to his already packed schedule.
She said: "I'll cut down on non-academic activities and replace them with academic ones, if I sense that he needs more help for academic subjects."
MP's concern
That's exactly what Madam Halimah Yacob, MP for Jurong GRC,is worried about.
That by scrapping the Primary 1 year-end exams by 2013, parents may put greater pressure on their children by putting them through additional after-school programmes.
She raised this issue in Parliament yesterday.
Senior Minister of State for National Development and Education Grace Fu replied that she appreciated parental involvement in their children's education.
She added that the Education Ministry's focus is towards a holistic education.
"We're trying to make our education richer and more effective for the children," she said.
She felt that this could be done by creating new and multiple pathways for children, according to their different strengths and abilities.
Primary 1 pupils who do not need to take the year-end exams will be assessed in other activities such as the keeping of journals and drama.
Even so, Madam Halimah told The New Paper after the Parliament session yesterday: "I'm not sure if the Ministry has gone far enough.
"The idea about holistic education is the right one but I don't think removing exams in the first year is going to change much.
"My concern at this point of time is that we may not see the intended result."
Feedback
She said she asked the question after receiving feedback from parents and teachers.
Parents, she said, were worried about how their kids would cope with future exams, such as streaming and the PSLE.
So it didn't matter even if the Primary 1 examinations were scrapped.
"(The other exams) will result in parents putting in extra effort to put their kids through tuition to prepare their kids," she said.
Dr Soh said the after-school programmes for her children are meant to give them a holistic education, not to pressurise them.
And she's not alone.
Madam HY Lim, 38,who is self-employed, also packs her Primary 1 daughter's schedule with enrichment programmes.
This is in spite of her daughter's school having already scrapped the Primary 1 year-end examinations.
The seven-year old has English creative writing on Mondays, piano lessons on Tuesdays, swimming classes on Thursdays, Chinese creative writing on Fridays,and taekwondo on Saturdays.
She also had art enrichment classes, and speech and drama lessons during the school holidays.
Madam Lim believes that these classes are necessary, and good for her child.
"The buffet of classes can develop my child where the school can't," she said.
For example, she said, the creative writing classes were for her child to be "continually exposed to language".
Speech and drama was to build her child's self-confidence, and taekwondo for her to let out her frustrations.
Dr Soh added that taekwondo lessons taught her child discipline. She also believes that the sport helps relieve stress.
This article was first published in The New Paper.
