Equity vs. Quality: Singapore's in a league of its own
Yesterday at an educational conference in Singapore, World Edulead 2019, Professor Pasi Sahlberg, an educational researcher from Finland, shared about equity (fairness) in education systems around the world.
At one point in his presentation, (he was using OECD PISA results to compare countries), he asked the conference hall of about a thousand school teachers, school administrators, and education ministry officials from Singapore and abroad, he asked us to turn the person next to us and predict where our country would fall on a graph that plotted student achievement against equity of outcomes.
And by equity of outcomes, meaning that how much students could achieve regardless of family socio-economic status. A measurement of how much your family's SES determines or doesn't determine your educational achievement. A measurement of the extent to which kids from poor families are able to beat the odds stacked against them.
I turned to the person next to me and predicted that Singapore would probably do really well in terms of academic achievement (we are tops in PISA - tests in English, Maths and Science).
And I thought, maybe we wouldn't do that fantastically in terms of equity, after all we all know (although that data is not publicly available) that students in Normal stream, in "neighbourhood schools" tend to come from lower SES families, while students in Express stream, in "top" schools tend to come from high SES families.
We know that richer families have the disposable income to spend on private tuition, enrichment classes and educational resources.
But I still believed while we would not be fantastic in terms of equity, we still shouldn't fare too badly, considering how much we spend on public school education so that all our govt schools are well resourced, our teachers and principals centrally hired and trained, our curriculum kept up to date and responsive to the changing needs of the 21st century.
And on top of that, our network of school subsidies, bursaries and financial assistance ensures that no child is denied an education because the family cannot afford it.
More at https://www.domainofexperts.com/2019/04/the-easy-lie-of-meritocracy-in-education.html
Yesterday at an educational conference in Singapore, World Edulead 2019, Professor Pasi Sahlberg, an educational researcher from Finland, shared about equity (fairness) in education systems around the world.
At one point in his presentation, (he was using OECD PISA results to compare countries), he asked the conference hall of about a thousand school teachers, school administrators, and education ministry officials from Singapore and abroad, he asked us to turn the person next to us and predict where our country would fall on a graph that plotted student achievement against equity of outcomes.
And by equity of outcomes, meaning that how much students could achieve regardless of family socio-economic status. A measurement of how much your family's SES determines or doesn't determine your educational achievement. A measurement of the extent to which kids from poor families are able to beat the odds stacked against them.
I turned to the person next to me and predicted that Singapore would probably do really well in terms of academic achievement (we are tops in PISA - tests in English, Maths and Science).
And I thought, maybe we wouldn't do that fantastically in terms of equity, after all we all know (although that data is not publicly available) that students in Normal stream, in "neighbourhood schools" tend to come from lower SES families, while students in Express stream, in "top" schools tend to come from high SES families.
We know that richer families have the disposable income to spend on private tuition, enrichment classes and educational resources.
But I still believed while we would not be fantastic in terms of equity, we still shouldn't fare too badly, considering how much we spend on public school education so that all our govt schools are well resourced, our teachers and principals centrally hired and trained, our curriculum kept up to date and responsive to the changing needs of the 21st century.
And on top of that, our network of school subsidies, bursaries and financial assistance ensures that no child is denied an education because the family cannot afford it.
More at https://www.domainofexperts.com/2019/04/the-easy-lie-of-meritocracy-in-education.html
