PAP MPs have step up to say schools are good, tuition is not necessary.
In fact a few days ago, new paper featured a number of PAP MPs saying their children do not havee tuition. It is not clear if they are exceptions or their childten are exceptionally bright or they are more than.qualified to help their children succeed without tuition...of course for an.MP.even.if their children don't do.well the overseas tertiary education.route is always available for them because they can easily afford it.
Fact is there is a $2B tuition industry that is growing every year.
There are many students who are highly intelligent self motivated students that do not need tuition but the rest do better with tuition. Why is this so:
1. Ordinary students have weakness in certain subjects e.g. Chinese,maths. Weakness In maths shows up because the bar has been set very high to differentiate students who are better.
2. Clasroom size of 30-40 students limit individual attention. 1 to 1 tuition, you go down exactly to what the student misunderstood or does wrongly and spend time to explain and correct.
3. Due to streaming plus high level of competition, any student with reasonable potential but slack off can end up in normal stream where it becomes harder to climb back up due to being surrounded by academically less incline students and slowed pace of teaching.
4. Good tuition can boost a student's performance significantly. In areas like listening comprehension, oral exam, Singapore maths techniques, ....the are systematic ways to improve scores.
5. Tuition makes the biggest difference in average children - this is what I found. Those who are below average and already tryjng their best not much you can do, they are better off in a slower stream. For the highly intelligent and hardworking, best to leave them alone. In small cases , highly intelligent held back by certain issues like game addiction, family problems, laziness, or have distracting time wasting hobbies they can also do poorly.
There is no point to set standards so high then tell people it is not to go for tution. Competition for places in elite schools like NUS High is intense. Because of the elitist nature of the system the best teachers and more teaching resources go to the best places ......causing further widening of the divide...
Education being an equaliser in Singapore society is not quite true. Parents with more resources and can spend more money and time on their children can influence outcome greatly. Children in poor families lose out even if they have the same level of talent beczuse their parents have no time and money to aid them. The system with its high level of competition, early testing and streaming of students ...all serve to amplify the effects of the income gap and extend the inequality to another generation. We should take a leaf from the Finnish system where the primary focus is to help weaker students by allocating more resources to help to do better....e.g. shrinking the
class size for weaker students.
The growth of the tuition industry shows the inadequacy
of our education system to prepare our students for
the stringent exams they design.
Students in Germany and finland where
the system focuses on aiding weaker
students, the need for tution is very.much reduced.
In the end the outcome of our high pressue
education system is poor. we have one of the.fewest if not the fewest number of students to university level ...30% cpmpared with 60-70% in aome OECD countries. The PAP gives out large nunber
of scholarships to children of foreigners.rather than educate.locals to.highest levels.
if you visit the post graduate dept of our universities singaporeans.are not
only minority but have disappeared completely from many faculties post graduate programmes...
that is an extremely poor outcome.for the high pressure system
we put our children through when at the.end of the day they take from.Vietnam, Phillipines, Indonesia and malaysia to fill these positions
In fact a few days ago, new paper featured a number of PAP MPs saying their children do not havee tuition. It is not clear if they are exceptions or their childten are exceptionally bright or they are more than.qualified to help their children succeed without tuition...of course for an.MP.even.if their children don't do.well the overseas tertiary education.route is always available for them because they can easily afford it.
Fact is there is a $2B tuition industry that is growing every year.
There are many students who are highly intelligent self motivated students that do not need tuition but the rest do better with tuition. Why is this so:
1. Ordinary students have weakness in certain subjects e.g. Chinese,maths. Weakness In maths shows up because the bar has been set very high to differentiate students who are better.
2. Clasroom size of 30-40 students limit individual attention. 1 to 1 tuition, you go down exactly to what the student misunderstood or does wrongly and spend time to explain and correct.
3. Due to streaming plus high level of competition, any student with reasonable potential but slack off can end up in normal stream where it becomes harder to climb back up due to being surrounded by academically less incline students and slowed pace of teaching.
4. Good tuition can boost a student's performance significantly. In areas like listening comprehension, oral exam, Singapore maths techniques, ....the are systematic ways to improve scores.
5. Tuition makes the biggest difference in average children - this is what I found. Those who are below average and already tryjng their best not much you can do, they are better off in a slower stream. For the highly intelligent and hardworking, best to leave them alone. In small cases , highly intelligent held back by certain issues like game addiction, family problems, laziness, or have distracting time wasting hobbies they can also do poorly.
There is no point to set standards so high then tell people it is not to go for tution. Competition for places in elite schools like NUS High is intense. Because of the elitist nature of the system the best teachers and more teaching resources go to the best places ......causing further widening of the divide...
Education being an equaliser in Singapore society is not quite true. Parents with more resources and can spend more money and time on their children can influence outcome greatly. Children in poor families lose out even if they have the same level of talent beczuse their parents have no time and money to aid them. The system with its high level of competition, early testing and streaming of students ...all serve to amplify the effects of the income gap and extend the inequality to another generation. We should take a leaf from the Finnish system where the primary focus is to help weaker students by allocating more resources to help to do better....e.g. shrinking the
class size for weaker students.
The growth of the tuition industry shows the inadequacy
of our education system to prepare our students for
the stringent exams they design.
Students in Germany and finland where
the system focuses on aiding weaker
students, the need for tution is very.much reduced.
In the end the outcome of our high pressue
education system is poor. we have one of the.fewest if not the fewest number of students to university level ...30% cpmpared with 60-70% in aome OECD countries. The PAP gives out large nunber
of scholarships to children of foreigners.rather than educate.locals to.highest levels.
if you visit the post graduate dept of our universities singaporeans.are not
only minority but have disappeared completely from many faculties post graduate programmes...
that is an extremely poor outcome.for the high pressure system
we put our children through when at the.end of the day they take from.Vietnam, Phillipines, Indonesia and malaysia to fill these positions
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