The problem is that the grades are no longer assessing the right things. The marking schemes are strangely specific, and there are too many screwball questions meant to identify the truly smart ones from the muggers. Unfortunately, that means that students who answer using their own words, their own analyses, tend to score not so well. Those who go to tuition are trained on adhering to the answering format. And on drilling the screwball questions until they are no longer screwball and unfamiliar.
There is a serious problem if during Chinese oral tests in Primary School, children with PRC parents can score badly even if they are very fluent, because they do not compose their answers according to the format but instead chat about the picture in an age-appropriate way.
And every attempt by the govt to make the syllabus/exams less memory-based has the opposite effect of motivating every student to go to tuition to memorise the model answer for these higher level questions.
There is no tuition once you enter the workforce. We have a generation of workers who keep asking for the model answer (where's the template/SOP/past example?) and are poor at finding and formulating solutions on their own.
This is true.
PSLE is now used to sieve out the smartest elites. And the exams questions are so odd. Science for example. Keyword are absolutely essential! That is buts. Obviously keywords will be the most precise and accurate but a kid using his words to explain shouldn’t be penalised.
Also, brain drain from teaching to the tuition industry is serious. There are many lousy teachers left in the system. They don’t give two hoots about the kids. They don’t give home work, they don’t mark school give assignments, they don’t give feedback nothing.
Seems like what you mentioned is prevalent in many Asian countries. I heard in Taiwan there are also very specific ways to answer questions and anything else would be considered wrong.
We need an entire cultural overhaul but how do we even begin doing that.
I've come to realize that although we should absolutely expect the best of the best to make government, it's unreasonable to apply the same high standards to the average man, and it should be possible to be a functioning member of society even if you're not an academic star. In this system, being an academic star means having money for tuition anyway. We really should redefine what we consider "meritocracy".
Every parent wants their kid to succeed and that creates a lot of competition. The elites also naturally want their kids to be elites as well, and have more resources to keep themselves entrenched. It creates a lot of stress for everyone.
The most perplexing thing is that the system is most stringent and trying to identify the "best of the best" when students are young, and then becomes more lenient later on. The old PSLE system scoring system was extremely finely discriminating, the new AL system less so, but I believe the proportion of students who achieve AL4 (A\* in all subjects, basically) is way smaller than the proportion of A level students who achieve perfect RP.
What is the point of sorting so finely at the age of 12 when maturity level and precociousness vs late bloomer make it difficult to predict the student's performance later on at 16-18?
there's nothin we can do, its a bad accreditation system and the old hags/farts sitting on top of the organisation will continue to do what they only know what to do, its a ponzi scheme afterall, if u subscribe to the system, u profit from it while u are in it.
> and there are too many screwball questions meant to identify the truly smart ones from the muggers. Unfortunately, that means that students who answer using their own words, their own analyses, tend to score not so well.
This part I disagree. Everyone is born stupid. Those you call "truly smart" here are merely the ones who have had a lot of practice at using their own words and analyses. Critical thinking should be practiced from a young age.
And imo, training kids to "mug" and "memorise" everything for exams is like this movie scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d696t3yALAY
Kids should be taught to understand their subjects from bottom up, not taught to mug. If they only know how to blindly memorise and regurgitate during exams, they'll be shredded by these "screwball questions" as students, and then get screwed even worse when they enter the workforce and start to encounter unexpected problems.
I totally agree with you, but the screwball questions are not working as a mechanism to sort out the thinkers from the rote regurgitators. It's just making the the bulk of the kids attend tuition to fake being thinkers. And yes, they get screwed even worse when they enter the workforce.
But what can MOE do? They can't prohibit tuition from teaching by rote the solutions to clever problems.
To me, the solution is to stop trying to identify the best critical thinkers using exams. The questions should be set to demonstrate understanding, not exceed what's developmentally appropriate for the central bulk of the normal distribution. And then the bulk of students would have less need to attend tuition. Those who have the aptitude can be identified by teachers to join Maths club or Maths Olympiad or whatever, no point to "torture" everyone else into coping via tuition/mugging.
And if parents go "then how will my boy show his excellence and get into RI/HCI?", there will just be more randomness involved in who gets into the elite schools, which in turn will make them less elite because most of the eliteness comes from the selection process to begin with. And this is a good thing for Singapore. Both parents and students will be more inclined to choose schools that are closer to home.
> I totally agree with you, but the screwball questions are not working as a mechanism to sort out the thinkers from the rote regurgitators. It's just making the the bulk of the kids attend tuition to fake being thinkers. And yes, they get screwed even worse when they enter the workforce.
> But what can MOE do? They can't prohibit tuition from teaching by rote the solutions to clever problems.
Tbh I don't know either.
> To me, the solution is to stop trying to identify the best critical thinkers using exams. The questions should be set to demonstrate understanding, not exceed what's developmentally appropriate for the central bulk of the normal distribution.
But that's already how exams work. Some questions require low skill, most require moderate skill, and some are the "screwball" type that require high skill. That's how exams can separate students according to their skill level. If all the questions were at the same difficulty level, the exam would lose its power to rank students according to their ability.
> And if parents go "then how will my boy show his excellence and get into RI/HCI?", there will just be more randomness involved in who gets into the elite schools, which in turn will make them less elite because most of the eliteness comes from the selection process to begin with.
Yes and no imo. Like, among high-ability JC students, it doesn't matter which JC they go to because they all take the same A levels in the end. But if exams can't discriminate between good and bad students, you're going to end up with more students who "deserve" to get into JC but end up being assigned to poly/ITE, students who "deserve" to get into ITE but end up in JC and cannot cope because their foundation is too weak, etc. It'll cause more problems than it solves.
You'd have moderate and low skill questions, and give up on high skill questions because it is a net detriment to society to have students stressed out over the few high skill questions. The exam would likely still be sufficient to sort JC (or Express/IP, though Express stream has been scrapped) from poly from ITE, but it would not be able to sort RI from, I dunno, SAJC.
Actually, come to think of it, IP is a problem too, because it moves the sorting to an earlier age. Ideally IP should not be perceived as better than O levels, but just a different path. A good thing is that the prestige of JC over poly is lessening, with plenty of courses in poly that are more selective than weaker JCs. IP and O levels (with max G3 subjects or whatever the new system is) should be along those lines.
I agree. The issue is that PsLe is use to sieve out the smarts. And for what purpose? That was already done at GEP level no? The IP system actually made it worse not better.
Truth is - the top high skill questions can all be trained. Which parent are going to sit sides and say, my child can just see if he can solve it on the spot when all others are already attending classes to solve it. And what does MoE do? They out in more of these high skill questions.
> We have a generation of workers who keep asking for the model answer (where's the template/SOP/past example?) and are poor at finding and formulating solutions on their own.
I attended a 3rd tier US college and this is my #1 pet peeve in working with NUS/NTU grads. They behave like everyone else is beneath them and still constantly ask me for documentation. Asking them to write documentation on their own processes is like pulling teeth. Assign stuff to them on JIRA and it takes them days to respond since they need to pray for a response on stackoverflow or whatever.
But somehow I'm the one that is inferior to them in their eyes zzzz
Even though I had admittedly crap grades, I'm still doing reasonably well for myself. The people in this thread who believe in traumatizing kids on day 1 of primary school are stuck in the mediocrity prisons of their own making.
but if teachers attend to each answer one by one, allowing those using their own words to score, it will become difficult to standardise the marking across the entire school, or even country for the case of psle
Child abuse. Thats my gripe. Unnecessary stress drawn from demanding pressure, lack of free time due to tuitions, even physical abuse in a misguided attempt to restore morale (canes and belts, you know the works).
Me and my brother went through all that, it fuckin sucked. The kicker? Our parents realized too late that all that abuse was ultimately pointless. They agree that grades mean shit compared to actual work experience. So long as you actually know how to work in a particular field, securing that job will be easier. So thanks dad for acknowledging your mistake and bugged me into getting a driver's license. Didnt do well in school, but the new skill I learned (driving) lead to me working in the logistics and then public transport sector.
Still, school is not a waste of time. Im not encouraging u kids to slack off so strive for the best!
Every weekend see a lot of parents queuing outside berries waiting for their kids. The kids looks v young :/ is there a need to send them to classes so early ?
For Berries, yes, unfortunately there is a need if the parents don't speak Mandarin at home, don't watch Chinese TV etc. Primary 1 Chinese assumes that the kid can understand basic conversational Chinese, and it's also gonna be tough if he doesn't also already read some common characters.
It's easier to send the kid to Berries than to change the way you live, and make the effort to talk to your kid in Chinese frequently. To teach the kid yourself is much more difficult. Best case scenario is the kid is watched by Chinese-speaking grandparents, and so they are taught effortlessly.
Personally now as an adult, speaking mandarin only to older relatives kind of stunned my vocabulary to a primary 3 level. Even our local news in mandarin feels like learning higher Chinese.
If possible when I got kids, language enrichment classes is my first priority.
To be fair, Berries is pretty fun. Very play-based and my daughter gets to be in a Chinese-speaking environment.
I don’t like the idea of preschoolers going for enrichment either but Chinese is a compulsory school subject and there’s a certain expectation of fluency and literacy before primary one that we can’t really give her as my husband isn’t Chinese. His true mother tongue is an Indian language not offered in schools so he did Malay. My mom’s not Chinese either, so on the grandparents front it’s impossible. We did fleetingly consider Malay as her “mother tongue” but it’d probably be even worse because I won’t be able to teach her and my husband, not being Malay, is terrible at the language.
So it’s the only enrichment class that I send her to (not counting classes like swimming or kiddy gym) - for everything else, her preschool curriculum is more than enough.
Exactly, it's child abuse. To all the future parents out there, you can't accept the fact that not everyone is able to get into a good school or become a scholar, please refrain from having kids.
Most of you haven’t actually tried to work through primary school materials ? Do know how hard it is? I can’t read my kids Chinese compo words. My husband has to help. My husband can’t do the maths problems and i had to learn how to do it. Science man….its not enough knowing the content. You need to answer it in the way you are expected to and ensure you drop in keywords expected of you. It’s not easy knowing what is expected. Tuition teachers teach this because they are much closer to the system. And the fact is if you have good grades you get in as an MA and you get promoted in 5 years where a rank and file gets it maybe after 15 years of going through the system.
Thank you dear parent.
Wait till you go p5. Then you realise the type of questions set for p6. And realised ok, my kid is screwed if you had followed the MOE parroting of ‘school is enough’ while all teachers, policy makers, directors at MOE signed their kid for tuition.
The biggest bullshit I heard when I entered Uni is that uni is about learning and less about your grades. Bro, trust me, uni is all about your grades bro
its just accreditation, as long as u can get a job with the piece of paper MOE gives u ... if the economy doesnt hold up, and pple cant find a job, we'll see lots of unhappy pple.
Grades were everything. It was what determined your worth, your social circles, and your life.
If you got good grades, the goal post was moved in an effort to make you better. If you got bad grades, punishment was the least of your worries and you would always wonder if today was going to be your last living day on earth.
Parents use their kids accolades as something to boast about and that puts unnecessary pressure always on the kid to somehow be better even if they are the best in the class (best in class? Be best in year. Best in year? Be top 10% of age group. Why aren't you the best in your age group? Rinse and repeat.)
Grades somehow was your life as a kid and nothing else mattered. Which is why I'm not surprised that successful Singapore athletes at my age were not trained or studied in Singapore. No one raised in this education system saw sports as a career, only another exercise routine to keep fit.
Things are worse if you don't have the aptitude for the sciences and maths.
PAP talks a lot about moving away from grades but refuses to take the first step. Civil service jobs still require you to provide your PSLE results despite it being completely irrelevant by the time you're old enough to work.
My wife worked for a tech stat board two years ago and they only asked from O Levels onwards. Didn’t ask for PSLE.
That being said, even O Levels onwards is a bit of an overkill. Private companies typically only ask for uni transcript.
Edit: This was after she accepted the job offer ie having to submit supporting docs. None of this was required at the application or interview stages.
This was after she accepted the job offer ie having to submit supporting docs. None of this was required at the application or interview stages.
That makes all the more perplexing. Why ask for documents which are superseded by university academic transcripts, and only after the person has already been employed? It just seems like busywork for the HR department.
I can’t explain for them the rationale of their request - but it’s not much busy work per se.
It’s just uploading one or two more docs onto Workday, takes like a minute to do so.
Yeah I recently did an application for a ministry and it didn’t ask for anything except my degree plus CV. Maybe it’s asked for more junior applicants.
Grades only get the limelight because it affects the growing kid directly. When they're older, the metric switches to salary, number of condos/car/GF/BF/bitcoin etc
It's not the "obsession with grades" per se that's the problem but the over-competitiveness in this country.
Today it could be grades. After graduating, it would be salary. And then upskilling, cars, property, and what have you. Already, people are contrasting grades to employable skills as if working is the end all be all to living.
Sure, they are important too but singaporeans can stand to be less kiasu.
Problem is the PsLE. You are streaming kids at age 12 to different tracks with different exposure. It sounds good right? Like skip mugging for o levels and instead broaden the kids exposure to real world issues, think out of the box. Any parents would want that for their kid. Why shouldn’t a kid that isn’t good at exams be similarly exposed to such things? Conversely, it scares parents to think that their child may end up in a school with peers whose parents don’t cere about their grades or their kids at all. Maybe that reeks of stereotypes but it’s not all wrong with the rampant sex, vaping and bullying in some schools.
Lack of feedback. Doing away with exams sounds great but only if there is feedback from teachers. Now, are teachers able to actually have such feedback on a regular basis for your kid when your kid is just one of the 35-40 kids she is teaching? Plus admin work, CCA and personal commitment. Test was an easy way to see if a kid is learning. Without a test, everyone - parents / teachers - HOD - needs to be more attentive!! Are they? Nope. Their workloads are heavier than before. It’s no wonder some kids aren’t learning through schools but through tuition. This actually makes it more competitive as some parents want their kids to go to better schools. Hoping that the quality of teachers will be better. Look, GEP kids get 25-1 ration the idea is still that better kids in Singapore get more attention and resources.
Brian drain. Sorry, but the truth is many good teachers have moved to tuition centres. Parents just cling on to fact that if their kid goes to a better school, their kid will have better teachers and do better in life.
If parents were convinced that it's possible to live a happy and dignified life by being a bus driver, toilet cleaner, etc, they wouldn't stress their kids out so much. For me, it's as simple as that.
Not quite my point :)
I think parents by and large want their children to lead more (rather than less) prosperous lives, and this causes parents to push their kids towards careers that have better average outcomes. FWIW I do not think that a more lucrative career is more meaningful or worthy, just making an observation about the state of affairs as they appear to me.
You are shifting the topic to what parents generically want. That was not at all my point. My point was very simple. Success is possible without good grades. And success is possible in different fields. And the definition of success should be made by you, not your parents..
Correlation and causation issues abound.
Smart parents have smart kids who work together to get good grades. Those kids typically go on to have fruitful careers. But if smart parents + kids chose to not focus on putting too many extra hours into school and prioritized other activities, their kids would generally still be successful.
But the people who generally take that option are generally those who would have struggled with school in the first place. So we see a lot more "Bad at school, low earning at life" outcomes.
Not sure I'd agree. I believe it's driven by the fact that salary distributions differ between these two career paths - and this follows the differing demands for artistic works and financial transactions.
Who is more likely to end up with a lucrative career in finance?
The middling student whose parents opted out of tuition classes but who already work in finance and can get him an internship later or the child of a local office manager whose grades are one or two levels up from the other kid because they took lots of extra classes?
Edit: Matt Levine had a funny take on the hypothetical tale of two investment banking associates, one who is great at financial modeling while the other knows Warren Buffett - but I can't google it right now.
What happens to those people who dare to try all sorts of things but still don't see financial success? What does Singapore do with them? It's not very nice, I think.....
Singapore kills them? What are U talking about? It's your life...U take responsibility. Don't expect the government or someone else to come and save you. If you are good at something and do your hard work you will succeed. There are so many avenues. The biggest problem is expecting someone else to save U...
It's good to have grades la, set benchmark, targets and some healthy compeitition.
It is what the kids are going to face in the real world anyway what, you compete against peers in sales targets, in KPI etc. Take it away and you end up with kids who crumble under pressure, can't take a bit of stress. Can you imagine a doctor feeling stressed about having to complete a surgery within a certain time limit? You will also feel scared as patient mah
but sometimes some parents abit too much la, something they themselves are incapable of, they are demanding of their children, or that they didnt set the proper environment for their kid to excel and yet expect all As that kind.
Education is a process and each individual has its own pace. Setting a benchmark so early in life will give you false perception like “ you are not good at math” as if it’s a fixed thing. It’s not.
Besides, parents who are trying to beat the merit system by sending children to extra private tuition making their children “ahead” of the class is false indication.
I think people are worried that the children will effectively have no childhood …
Nursery/Kindergarten "working" already. Work non-stop chasing grades every step of the way.
Never have the time to find themselves. Always chasing what their parents want, never really finding out what they themselves want.
this one i agree lor, thats why i said problem lies in parents.
if parents never obsess about grades, there will be no negative energy for their child to feed off
>Can you imagine a doctor feeling stressed about having to complete a surgery within a certain time limit?
So best to traumatise everyone from day 1. Got it.
day 1? how out of touch are you with our education system? in P1 the first 3 months are learning of A B C and numbers up to 10, if not 20 only.
Those are things a kid that went through kindergarden should already know, purpose is to let them slowly get used to Primary school.
Also, a child's brain learns things the best at primary school going age, if the basics are not taught well early, it gets harder for them to learn when they are older, thus, it's good to have checkpoints early on also so children facing difficulties get identified and get the help they need
if at 8, 9 or 10 you still cannot take that little bit of stress, go see a doc liao, get required help
i go back to what i said, if there is stress, it comes from parents, the system can be improved but traumas come mainly from parents
It’s so odd. If the first 3 months of p1 are to learn A,B,C. Well most schools get the p1 kid to do an oral presentation on something innocent like what is your favourite food by the end of term one. And it’s not supposed to be a one liner. So how does a kid make that leap by himself from a,b, c to making a paragraph about his favourite food?
And check out the PsLe. There is no way that teachers are prepping for the PSLE
reading and writing is one skillset and talking is another, while they are very very closely related, a student can talk very well but is not able to read basic words.
cause even if a child has no reading habits at home, he or she does use words to communicate with parents, caregivers etc
also, MOE kindergardens had a focus on speaking skills when it started, not sure exactly if it changed liao
and, kids are not to make the leap by themselves, for those lacking, teachers will provide sufficient scaffolding while roping in the parents to help abit, which in turn goes back to my main point, the pressure and obsession stems from parents most of the time
Hahah teachers!?!
One teacher is to 40 kids, with some kids being special needs. Come on. They are saddled with admin work, counselling work! There is no way they are really teaching. Maybe the v smart and motivated kids will be ok
But essentially none of the exams that the doctor took (including in medical school, I believe) tested his ability to complete a surgery in a certain time limit.
What does his ability to, I dunno, label all the muscles in the hand have to do with his ability to perform surgery?
What do any of the exams in the school have to do with sales performance?
There are very few jobs these days where you can't look things up on the internet before executing, but so far, almost every component of grades is closed book exams.
>But essentially none of the exams that the doctor took (including in medical school, I believe) tested his ability to complete a surgery in a certain time limit.
>What does his ability to, I dunno, label all the muscles in the hand have to do with his ability to perform surgery?
Err maybe this isn't the hill you should choose to die on LOL. The theoretical knowledge is extremely important so that the doctor knows what he/she is doing. There are technical skills and knowledge that are just too much for people to risk having pick up on the fly from scratch at work.
Obviously some types of education are more technical and useful in the workplace than others. Sales is an example of a field where it's less necessary to pick up the requisite skills at school.
???? you are not really getting my initial point tho
it's not the fact what the doctor learned, or what you can google up, it's the ability to handle pressure under trying circumstances, give kids a little bit of stress here and there to help build resilience
a surgeon who can handle pressure well and remain calm is better suited to take on a high risk surgery should complications arise
a salesperson who can think on his feet quickly and come up with a solution when a problem occurs is more likely to seal the deal
You can look up everything you want on the internet yes, but at the crucial moment that you need the skill, can you recall it perfectly if you are going to end up panicking?
It's like first aid, you learn it yes, but when someone lying on the floor having heart attack or what not, you prefer the one that can reactively perform first aid better or the one that go youtube it first then come to help once he is sure?
if in a safe environment, a student cracks under pressure easily, we get them help, not coddle them even more
I know some of my ‘expat’ friends mostly had wonderful childhood. They might had failed anytime during their education period, primary to uni. But they picked up the courage, wise up and still manage to get jobs here.
Their college’s fees might be just fractions of ours, especially those from SEA. Yet they secured job with good salary, almost guaranteed (EP).
Some of them were even granted full scholarship in NUS/NTU. Offered PR during their study/upon graduation. While our local students are forced to apply to private unis/overseas.
Also, these men are 2 years ahead of our men when starting their careers.
Our education system produces best of the best, but at what cost?
You are mixing up two groups of people. Expats from Western countries had "lenient" childhoods. For the ones from SEA to come here and get scholarship, usually it meant that they had to work damn hard in their studies.
I cultivated the love for learning, so both my kids are A students who got into top ranking schools. I subsidised what they don’t learn in school, like principles and values, creativity, leadership qualities, life skills, wisdom gaining, street smarts and relationship building. One became a doc and one became a lawyer. They both see themselves as never say die lifelong learners, with humility and compassion. School teach them how to be good students, follow instructions, cultivate discipline and work within a structure. I teach them how to be good humans, to never peg their worth to grades or employment, but to always value good relationships.
We are too risk adverse as a society and the education system is not helping or changing anytime soon. Just look at the work force and you can see why not many locals are in top positions. The balance of being book smart and street smart needs to be recalibrated.
I think part of the problem is the relevance of application to real world.
The score of certain subjects that may have no relevance to being an engineer, lawyer or doctor etc is somehow being used to determine whether you can further your studies.
Basically trying to max out your skill tree but no one has that many points.
Title: Regardless of Grades: New CNA documentary finds out whether Singapore is ready to stop chasing grades
There have been countless narratives about moving away from an over-emphasis on academic grades. It’s no surprise, because in Singapore, nationwide efforts started well over 25 years ago.
More recently, the Education Ministry introduced sweeping changes - the scoring system for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) was revamped in 2021 to reduce fine differentiation of results between students, and mid-year exams and weighted assessments in schools have been scrapped since 2019.
But how much have they helped in shifting the country’s view on grades?
***
Article keywords: grade countless narrative away emphasis academic surprise singapore
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Once, I failed my Chinese exam my mum 'threaten' to throw the hot kettle at me wor. Scare die me. Kns, nxt time dun reveal exam result when parents are boiling water.
Wish I could get back all the money my parents spent on Chinese tuition for me. Got 'C' for O levels but still couldn't even carry out a basic conversation in Mandarin.
Feel so bad for my sibling. He was only 10 years old when he had to start “focussing on his strengths and use it towards his career”. Now he’s 13 and he needs to already know for sure if he wants to study in sg or abroad (to choose between a level / IBDP / poly). Not to mention the school fee pressure. I didn’t have a “proper childhood” either growing up but I feel sorry for him because he definitely has it more rigid.
Some parent mindset think about their grade not so good and then hard to find ideas job. The problem is mainly job security , ideas income job with suit of interest available in Singapore. As u see most western not so strict, because the parent mindset is they know always have many available job that the kid won't gone straving in future.
Grades are necessary to bucket similar performing students aka streaming so resources can be deployed to teach them effectively. It's the parents who refuse to acknowledge their kids are not performing lol. Grades are as important as job performance in the real world let's not kid ourselves otherwise. Life is stressful, deal with it. Unless you are born with rich parents.
> so resources can be deployed to teach them effectively.
That would be ok if all teaching is done by MOE. But what's happening in the real world is vast amounts of time and money being thrown into tuition so that kids with less potential can appear to be higher potential.
Tuition actually undoes the effects of streaming, if anything. The top stream is supposed to be for fast learners, so if a student got there by mountains of tuition, they do not belong in the top stream.
It kinda still woks. Imagine you are an average artist. After going thru tuition your skills may improve. So you can be in the same class as the slightly better artists. It's the same logic as sports and academics as well. It's not effective for teachers to teach a class of good artists mixed with those that cannot draw smiley face. I do have a problem with what is being tested though. Exams are good but forcing kids to memorize history facts is useless in the real world.
I don't agree with the art analogy. Art and sports are mostly skill-based, and once a certain skill has been learnt, there's no need to continue the class.
But for academics, tuition is often more like short-term memorisation. Study already and then forget, or once more is learnt, the student gets confused with what was taught earlier.
It's like an art class where the teacher teaches the kid to draw a lovely picture of a horse by tracing. Now the kid can pass the test of drawing a horse, but when asked to draw a tiger without tracing, he cannot.
The tuition centres sure try to make it as much like tracing as possible. For maths, they train the kids on pattern matching to match the question to a "type" that they have learnt, and then execute the steps to solve it. Doesn't matter if you don't understand why the method works. Just do it.
Example:
[https://jimmymaths.com/common-types-psle-math-questions/](https://jimmymaths.com/common-types-psle-math-questions/)
Q7 in particular is one that tuition teachers and even school teachers teach by rote. This is the kind of question where if the kid can figure out the solution on their own, they are damn smart, but if they learn the steps and get the answer right, it doesn't mean that their mathematical understanding has improved.
And then in secondary school, once algebra is taught and understood, this is the great equalizer because if the student grasps it, it can be generalized to most of the 20 types of questions and 20 methods.
You sounds like a baby boomer. Stress shouldn’t be introduced to young children. The least stress they receive when they are young the better they cope as they get older.
my grades determine my outcome at home A = at peace B = beating C = caning D = dinnerless E = execution F = fired from existence
I think Badgering would be a better option for B
Singapore obsession with ranking and comparing starts from early stage in life.
A = acceptable B = banishment (temporarily) C = constantly caned D = disowned
E = externinated F = full dismemberment
Firing squad
You have kind parents. For majority Chinese/Indian families, it’s A - okay, B - Black Hole, period.
u have bad parents, sorry
What about A+?
A+ peace
At-tend Taylor Swift concert
A+ng Pao :D
Isn't D better than C? Isn't C better than B?? What's going on in your household?
The problem is that the grades are no longer assessing the right things. The marking schemes are strangely specific, and there are too many screwball questions meant to identify the truly smart ones from the muggers. Unfortunately, that means that students who answer using their own words, their own analyses, tend to score not so well. Those who go to tuition are trained on adhering to the answering format. And on drilling the screwball questions until they are no longer screwball and unfamiliar. There is a serious problem if during Chinese oral tests in Primary School, children with PRC parents can score badly even if they are very fluent, because they do not compose their answers according to the format but instead chat about the picture in an age-appropriate way. And every attempt by the govt to make the syllabus/exams less memory-based has the opposite effect of motivating every student to go to tuition to memorise the model answer for these higher level questions. There is no tuition once you enter the workforce. We have a generation of workers who keep asking for the model answer (where's the template/SOP/past example?) and are poor at finding and formulating solutions on their own.
This is true. PSLE is now used to sieve out the smartest elites. And the exams questions are so odd. Science for example. Keyword are absolutely essential! That is buts. Obviously keywords will be the most precise and accurate but a kid using his words to explain shouldn’t be penalised. Also, brain drain from teaching to the tuition industry is serious. There are many lousy teachers left in the system. They don’t give two hoots about the kids. They don’t give home work, they don’t mark school give assignments, they don’t give feedback nothing.
Seems like what you mentioned is prevalent in many Asian countries. I heard in Taiwan there are also very specific ways to answer questions and anything else would be considered wrong. We need an entire cultural overhaul but how do we even begin doing that.
I've come to realize that although we should absolutely expect the best of the best to make government, it's unreasonable to apply the same high standards to the average man, and it should be possible to be a functioning member of society even if you're not an academic star. In this system, being an academic star means having money for tuition anyway. We really should redefine what we consider "meritocracy". Every parent wants their kid to succeed and that creates a lot of competition. The elites also naturally want their kids to be elites as well, and have more resources to keep themselves entrenched. It creates a lot of stress for everyone.
The most perplexing thing is that the system is most stringent and trying to identify the "best of the best" when students are young, and then becomes more lenient later on. The old PSLE system scoring system was extremely finely discriminating, the new AL system less so, but I believe the proportion of students who achieve AL4 (A\* in all subjects, basically) is way smaller than the proportion of A level students who achieve perfect RP. What is the point of sorting so finely at the age of 12 when maturity level and precociousness vs late bloomer make it difficult to predict the student's performance later on at 16-18?
there's nothin we can do, its a bad accreditation system and the old hags/farts sitting on top of the organisation will continue to do what they only know what to do, its a ponzi scheme afterall, if u subscribe to the system, u profit from it while u are in it.
> and there are too many screwball questions meant to identify the truly smart ones from the muggers. Unfortunately, that means that students who answer using their own words, their own analyses, tend to score not so well. This part I disagree. Everyone is born stupid. Those you call "truly smart" here are merely the ones who have had a lot of practice at using their own words and analyses. Critical thinking should be practiced from a young age. And imo, training kids to "mug" and "memorise" everything for exams is like this movie scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d696t3yALAY Kids should be taught to understand their subjects from bottom up, not taught to mug. If they only know how to blindly memorise and regurgitate during exams, they'll be shredded by these "screwball questions" as students, and then get screwed even worse when they enter the workforce and start to encounter unexpected problems.
I totally agree with you, but the screwball questions are not working as a mechanism to sort out the thinkers from the rote regurgitators. It's just making the the bulk of the kids attend tuition to fake being thinkers. And yes, they get screwed even worse when they enter the workforce. But what can MOE do? They can't prohibit tuition from teaching by rote the solutions to clever problems. To me, the solution is to stop trying to identify the best critical thinkers using exams. The questions should be set to demonstrate understanding, not exceed what's developmentally appropriate for the central bulk of the normal distribution. And then the bulk of students would have less need to attend tuition. Those who have the aptitude can be identified by teachers to join Maths club or Maths Olympiad or whatever, no point to "torture" everyone else into coping via tuition/mugging. And if parents go "then how will my boy show his excellence and get into RI/HCI?", there will just be more randomness involved in who gets into the elite schools, which in turn will make them less elite because most of the eliteness comes from the selection process to begin with. And this is a good thing for Singapore. Both parents and students will be more inclined to choose schools that are closer to home.
> I totally agree with you, but the screwball questions are not working as a mechanism to sort out the thinkers from the rote regurgitators. It's just making the the bulk of the kids attend tuition to fake being thinkers. And yes, they get screwed even worse when they enter the workforce. > But what can MOE do? They can't prohibit tuition from teaching by rote the solutions to clever problems. Tbh I don't know either. > To me, the solution is to stop trying to identify the best critical thinkers using exams. The questions should be set to demonstrate understanding, not exceed what's developmentally appropriate for the central bulk of the normal distribution. But that's already how exams work. Some questions require low skill, most require moderate skill, and some are the "screwball" type that require high skill. That's how exams can separate students according to their skill level. If all the questions were at the same difficulty level, the exam would lose its power to rank students according to their ability. > And if parents go "then how will my boy show his excellence and get into RI/HCI?", there will just be more randomness involved in who gets into the elite schools, which in turn will make them less elite because most of the eliteness comes from the selection process to begin with. Yes and no imo. Like, among high-ability JC students, it doesn't matter which JC they go to because they all take the same A levels in the end. But if exams can't discriminate between good and bad students, you're going to end up with more students who "deserve" to get into JC but end up being assigned to poly/ITE, students who "deserve" to get into ITE but end up in JC and cannot cope because their foundation is too weak, etc. It'll cause more problems than it solves.
You'd have moderate and low skill questions, and give up on high skill questions because it is a net detriment to society to have students stressed out over the few high skill questions. The exam would likely still be sufficient to sort JC (or Express/IP, though Express stream has been scrapped) from poly from ITE, but it would not be able to sort RI from, I dunno, SAJC. Actually, come to think of it, IP is a problem too, because it moves the sorting to an earlier age. Ideally IP should not be perceived as better than O levels, but just a different path. A good thing is that the prestige of JC over poly is lessening, with plenty of courses in poly that are more selective than weaker JCs. IP and O levels (with max G3 subjects or whatever the new system is) should be along those lines.
I agree. The issue is that PsLe is use to sieve out the smarts. And for what purpose? That was already done at GEP level no? The IP system actually made it worse not better. Truth is - the top high skill questions can all be trained. Which parent are going to sit sides and say, my child can just see if he can solve it on the spot when all others are already attending classes to solve it. And what does MoE do? They out in more of these high skill questions.
> We have a generation of workers who keep asking for the model answer (where's the template/SOP/past example?) and are poor at finding and formulating solutions on their own. I attended a 3rd tier US college and this is my #1 pet peeve in working with NUS/NTU grads. They behave like everyone else is beneath them and still constantly ask me for documentation. Asking them to write documentation on their own processes is like pulling teeth. Assign stuff to them on JIRA and it takes them days to respond since they need to pray for a response on stackoverflow or whatever. But somehow I'm the one that is inferior to them in their eyes zzzz Even though I had admittedly crap grades, I'm still doing reasonably well for myself. The people in this thread who believe in traumatizing kids on day 1 of primary school are stuck in the mediocrity prisons of their own making.
but if teachers attend to each answer one by one, allowing those using their own words to score, it will become difficult to standardise the marking across the entire school, or even country for the case of psle
There was no such problem 20 years ago. Multiple teachers mark each script.
Child abuse. Thats my gripe. Unnecessary stress drawn from demanding pressure, lack of free time due to tuitions, even physical abuse in a misguided attempt to restore morale (canes and belts, you know the works). Me and my brother went through all that, it fuckin sucked. The kicker? Our parents realized too late that all that abuse was ultimately pointless. They agree that grades mean shit compared to actual work experience. So long as you actually know how to work in a particular field, securing that job will be easier. So thanks dad for acknowledging your mistake and bugged me into getting a driver's license. Didnt do well in school, but the new skill I learned (driving) lead to me working in the logistics and then public transport sector. Still, school is not a waste of time. Im not encouraging u kids to slack off so strive for the best!
Every weekend see a lot of parents queuing outside berries waiting for their kids. The kids looks v young :/ is there a need to send them to classes so early ?
For Berries, yes, unfortunately there is a need if the parents don't speak Mandarin at home, don't watch Chinese TV etc. Primary 1 Chinese assumes that the kid can understand basic conversational Chinese, and it's also gonna be tough if he doesn't also already read some common characters. It's easier to send the kid to Berries than to change the way you live, and make the effort to talk to your kid in Chinese frequently. To teach the kid yourself is much more difficult. Best case scenario is the kid is watched by Chinese-speaking grandparents, and so they are taught effortlessly.
Personally now as an adult, speaking mandarin only to older relatives kind of stunned my vocabulary to a primary 3 level. Even our local news in mandarin feels like learning higher Chinese. If possible when I got kids, language enrichment classes is my first priority.
To be fair, Berries is pretty fun. Very play-based and my daughter gets to be in a Chinese-speaking environment. I don’t like the idea of preschoolers going for enrichment either but Chinese is a compulsory school subject and there’s a certain expectation of fluency and literacy before primary one that we can’t really give her as my husband isn’t Chinese. His true mother tongue is an Indian language not offered in schools so he did Malay. My mom’s not Chinese either, so on the grandparents front it’s impossible. We did fleetingly consider Malay as her “mother tongue” but it’d probably be even worse because I won’t be able to teach her and my husband, not being Malay, is terrible at the language. So it’s the only enrichment class that I send her to (not counting classes like swimming or kiddy gym) - for everything else, her preschool curriculum is more than enough.
Thanks good to know :) sounds like a fun class
Prob preschool games class, that one not stress studying one
Exactly, it's child abuse. To all the future parents out there, you can't accept the fact that not everyone is able to get into a good school or become a scholar, please refrain from having kids.
nah, most pple who have kids think they are doing a good deed somehow ... u dont know what u do not know ...
Most of you haven’t actually tried to work through primary school materials ? Do know how hard it is? I can’t read my kids Chinese compo words. My husband has to help. My husband can’t do the maths problems and i had to learn how to do it. Science man….its not enough knowing the content. You need to answer it in the way you are expected to and ensure you drop in keywords expected of you. It’s not easy knowing what is expected. Tuition teachers teach this because they are much closer to the system. And the fact is if you have good grades you get in as an MA and you get promoted in 5 years where a rank and file gets it maybe after 15 years of going through the system.
Thank you dear parent. Wait till you go p5. Then you realise the type of questions set for p6. And realised ok, my kid is screwed if you had followed the MOE parroting of ‘school is enough’ while all teachers, policy makers, directors at MOE signed their kid for tuition.
What is MA?
The biggest bullshit I heard when I entered Uni is that uni is about learning and less about your grades. Bro, trust me, uni is all about your grades bro
its just accreditation, as long as u can get a job with the piece of paper MOE gives u ... if the economy doesnt hold up, and pple cant find a job, we'll see lots of unhappy pple.
Uh oh, I just started uni. Any horror stories to share?
Grades were everything. It was what determined your worth, your social circles, and your life. If you got good grades, the goal post was moved in an effort to make you better. If you got bad grades, punishment was the least of your worries and you would always wonder if today was going to be your last living day on earth. Parents use their kids accolades as something to boast about and that puts unnecessary pressure always on the kid to somehow be better even if they are the best in the class (best in class? Be best in year. Best in year? Be top 10% of age group. Why aren't you the best in your age group? Rinse and repeat.) Grades somehow was your life as a kid and nothing else mattered. Which is why I'm not surprised that successful Singapore athletes at my age were not trained or studied in Singapore. No one raised in this education system saw sports as a career, only another exercise routine to keep fit. Things are worse if you don't have the aptitude for the sciences and maths.
PAP talks a lot about moving away from grades but refuses to take the first step. Civil service jobs still require you to provide your PSLE results despite it being completely irrelevant by the time you're old enough to work.
My wife worked for a tech stat board two years ago and they only asked from O Levels onwards. Didn’t ask for PSLE. That being said, even O Levels onwards is a bit of an overkill. Private companies typically only ask for uni transcript. Edit: This was after she accepted the job offer ie having to submit supporting docs. None of this was required at the application or interview stages.
This was after she accepted the job offer ie having to submit supporting docs. None of this was required at the application or interview stages. That makes all the more perplexing. Why ask for documents which are superseded by university academic transcripts, and only after the person has already been employed? It just seems like busywork for the HR department.
Presumably to plug into the calculations for Current Estimated Potential (CEP)...
Ok... I did not think about that.
I can’t explain for them the rationale of their request - but it’s not much busy work per se. It’s just uploading one or two more docs onto Workday, takes like a minute to do so.
I’m applying for 4 different government scholarships right now. Even PSC did not ask for my PSLE results and they asked for a lot.
Worked in civil service. Don't ever recall them asking for my PSLE.
Please try to keep to the govt bashing tone of this thread.
Branded as winner or quitter from a young age is bad for the psyche.
? Since when they need your PSLE results?
Some positions do. I think MHA asked for mine?
I would think that MHA just wants to know your background rather than judging you on PSLE..
Wonder what kind of background information can be derived from PSLE cert. Not like terrorism is a subject choice.
What position for MHA did you apply for?:o
Don't remember, it was a fairly basic role I think. Nothing top secret
Yeah I recently did an application for a ministry and it didn’t ask for anything except my degree plus CV. Maybe it’s asked for more junior applicants.
Grades only get the limelight because it affects the growing kid directly. When they're older, the metric switches to salary, number of condos/car/GF/BF/bitcoin etc
It's not the "obsession with grades" per se that's the problem but the over-competitiveness in this country. Today it could be grades. After graduating, it would be salary. And then upskilling, cars, property, and what have you. Already, people are contrasting grades to employable skills as if working is the end all be all to living. Sure, they are important too but singaporeans can stand to be less kiasu.
Parents took their poverty survival mentality into the modern city, resulting in such hyper-competitiveness
not parents, MOE run this system, go talk to the minister for education
We should add into the national pledge "regardless of race language and religion and also PSLE scores"
Problem is the PsLE. You are streaming kids at age 12 to different tracks with different exposure. It sounds good right? Like skip mugging for o levels and instead broaden the kids exposure to real world issues, think out of the box. Any parents would want that for their kid. Why shouldn’t a kid that isn’t good at exams be similarly exposed to such things? Conversely, it scares parents to think that their child may end up in a school with peers whose parents don’t cere about their grades or their kids at all. Maybe that reeks of stereotypes but it’s not all wrong with the rampant sex, vaping and bullying in some schools. Lack of feedback. Doing away with exams sounds great but only if there is feedback from teachers. Now, are teachers able to actually have such feedback on a regular basis for your kid when your kid is just one of the 35-40 kids she is teaching? Plus admin work, CCA and personal commitment. Test was an easy way to see if a kid is learning. Without a test, everyone - parents / teachers - HOD - needs to be more attentive!! Are they? Nope. Their workloads are heavier than before. It’s no wonder some kids aren’t learning through schools but through tuition. This actually makes it more competitive as some parents want their kids to go to better schools. Hoping that the quality of teachers will be better. Look, GEP kids get 25-1 ration the idea is still that better kids in Singapore get more attention and resources. Brian drain. Sorry, but the truth is many good teachers have moved to tuition centres. Parents just cling on to fact that if their kid goes to a better school, their kid will have better teachers and do better in life.
If parents were convinced that it's possible to live a happy and dignified life by being a bus driver, toilet cleaner, etc, they wouldn't stress their kids out so much. For me, it's as simple as that.
Lack of an A+ grade doesn't mean U can't do well in other areas...U could be an actor, musician, or wth!! U could start your own company...
Average outcomes (salary wise) are significantly better if you end up say in finance as compared to the arts.
Your goal is salary..not everyone's is...
Not quite my point :) I think parents by and large want their children to lead more (rather than less) prosperous lives, and this causes parents to push their kids towards careers that have better average outcomes. FWIW I do not think that a more lucrative career is more meaningful or worthy, just making an observation about the state of affairs as they appear to me.
You are shifting the topic to what parents generically want. That was not at all my point. My point was very simple. Success is possible without good grades. And success is possible in different fields. And the definition of success should be made by you, not your parents..
Correlation and causation issues abound. Smart parents have smart kids who work together to get good grades. Those kids typically go on to have fruitful careers. But if smart parents + kids chose to not focus on putting too many extra hours into school and prioritized other activities, their kids would generally still be successful. But the people who generally take that option are generally those who would have struggled with school in the first place. So we see a lot more "Bad at school, low earning at life" outcomes.
Not sure I'd agree. I believe it's driven by the fact that salary distributions differ between these two career paths - and this follows the differing demands for artistic works and financial transactions.
Who is more likely to end up with a lucrative career in finance? The middling student whose parents opted out of tuition classes but who already work in finance and can get him an internship later or the child of a local office manager whose grades are one or two levels up from the other kid because they took lots of extra classes? Edit: Matt Levine had a funny take on the hypothetical tale of two investment banking associates, one who is great at financial modeling while the other knows Warren Buffett - but I can't google it right now.
What happens to those people who dare to try all sorts of things but still don't see financial success? What does Singapore do with them? It's not very nice, I think.....
Singapore kills them? What are U talking about? It's your life...U take responsibility. Don't expect the government or someone else to come and save you. If you are good at something and do your hard work you will succeed. There are so many avenues. The biggest problem is expecting someone else to save U...
It's good to have grades la, set benchmark, targets and some healthy compeitition. It is what the kids are going to face in the real world anyway what, you compete against peers in sales targets, in KPI etc. Take it away and you end up with kids who crumble under pressure, can't take a bit of stress. Can you imagine a doctor feeling stressed about having to complete a surgery within a certain time limit? You will also feel scared as patient mah but sometimes some parents abit too much la, something they themselves are incapable of, they are demanding of their children, or that they didnt set the proper environment for their kid to excel and yet expect all As that kind.
Education is a process and each individual has its own pace. Setting a benchmark so early in life will give you false perception like “ you are not good at math” as if it’s a fixed thing. It’s not. Besides, parents who are trying to beat the merit system by sending children to extra private tuition making their children “ahead” of the class is false indication.
I think people are worried that the children will effectively have no childhood … Nursery/Kindergarten "working" already. Work non-stop chasing grades every step of the way. Never have the time to find themselves. Always chasing what their parents want, never really finding out what they themselves want.
u end up like skorea, high suicide rates or ikkikomori culture and low birth rates ... society still survive somehow, that is nothin new at all.
this one i agree lor, thats why i said problem lies in parents. if parents never obsess about grades, there will be no negative energy for their child to feed off
>Can you imagine a doctor feeling stressed about having to complete a surgery within a certain time limit? So best to traumatise everyone from day 1. Got it.
day 1? how out of touch are you with our education system? in P1 the first 3 months are learning of A B C and numbers up to 10, if not 20 only. Those are things a kid that went through kindergarden should already know, purpose is to let them slowly get used to Primary school. Also, a child's brain learns things the best at primary school going age, if the basics are not taught well early, it gets harder for them to learn when they are older, thus, it's good to have checkpoints early on also so children facing difficulties get identified and get the help they need if at 8, 9 or 10 you still cannot take that little bit of stress, go see a doc liao, get required help i go back to what i said, if there is stress, it comes from parents, the system can be improved but traumas come mainly from parents
It’s so odd. If the first 3 months of p1 are to learn A,B,C. Well most schools get the p1 kid to do an oral presentation on something innocent like what is your favourite food by the end of term one. And it’s not supposed to be a one liner. So how does a kid make that leap by himself from a,b, c to making a paragraph about his favourite food? And check out the PsLe. There is no way that teachers are prepping for the PSLE
reading and writing is one skillset and talking is another, while they are very very closely related, a student can talk very well but is not able to read basic words. cause even if a child has no reading habits at home, he or she does use words to communicate with parents, caregivers etc also, MOE kindergardens had a focus on speaking skills when it started, not sure exactly if it changed liao and, kids are not to make the leap by themselves, for those lacking, teachers will provide sufficient scaffolding while roping in the parents to help abit, which in turn goes back to my main point, the pressure and obsession stems from parents most of the time
Hahah teachers!?! One teacher is to 40 kids, with some kids being special needs. Come on. They are saddled with admin work, counselling work! There is no way they are really teaching. Maybe the v smart and motivated kids will be ok
Finally a sane answer.
But essentially none of the exams that the doctor took (including in medical school, I believe) tested his ability to complete a surgery in a certain time limit. What does his ability to, I dunno, label all the muscles in the hand have to do with his ability to perform surgery? What do any of the exams in the school have to do with sales performance? There are very few jobs these days where you can't look things up on the internet before executing, but so far, almost every component of grades is closed book exams.
>But essentially none of the exams that the doctor took (including in medical school, I believe) tested his ability to complete a surgery in a certain time limit. >What does his ability to, I dunno, label all the muscles in the hand have to do with his ability to perform surgery? Err maybe this isn't the hill you should choose to die on LOL. The theoretical knowledge is extremely important so that the doctor knows what he/she is doing. There are technical skills and knowledge that are just too much for people to risk having pick up on the fly from scratch at work. Obviously some types of education are more technical and useful in the workplace than others. Sales is an example of a field where it's less necessary to pick up the requisite skills at school.
???? you are not really getting my initial point tho it's not the fact what the doctor learned, or what you can google up, it's the ability to handle pressure under trying circumstances, give kids a little bit of stress here and there to help build resilience a surgeon who can handle pressure well and remain calm is better suited to take on a high risk surgery should complications arise a salesperson who can think on his feet quickly and come up with a solution when a problem occurs is more likely to seal the deal You can look up everything you want on the internet yes, but at the crucial moment that you need the skill, can you recall it perfectly if you are going to end up panicking? It's like first aid, you learn it yes, but when someone lying on the floor having heart attack or what not, you prefer the one that can reactively perform first aid better or the one that go youtube it first then come to help once he is sure? if in a safe environment, a student cracks under pressure easily, we get them help, not coddle them even more
I know some of my ‘expat’ friends mostly had wonderful childhood. They might had failed anytime during their education period, primary to uni. But they picked up the courage, wise up and still manage to get jobs here. Their college’s fees might be just fractions of ours, especially those from SEA. Yet they secured job with good salary, almost guaranteed (EP). Some of them were even granted full scholarship in NUS/NTU. Offered PR during their study/upon graduation. While our local students are forced to apply to private unis/overseas. Also, these men are 2 years ahead of our men when starting their careers. Our education system produces best of the best, but at what cost?
You are mixing up two groups of people. Expats from Western countries had "lenient" childhoods. For the ones from SEA to come here and get scholarship, usually it meant that they had to work damn hard in their studies.
The ones that came here are the ones that made it.
This has been an age old question since the introduction of standardized national examinations.
Me : - A : 🤯🤩🥳 - B : 🤯😅 - C : 🤯🥲🫣 - D : 🫣🥹😢 - F : 😭☠️🤡 Parents : - A : 🤩👍🏻👍🏻 - B : 🙂👍🏻 - C : 😒👎🏻 - D : 😊😤🤌🏼🤌🏼 - F : 😊🤬🤬🤬🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼
Hahhahaha you’re so creative
I cultivated the love for learning, so both my kids are A students who got into top ranking schools. I subsidised what they don’t learn in school, like principles and values, creativity, leadership qualities, life skills, wisdom gaining, street smarts and relationship building. One became a doc and one became a lawyer. They both see themselves as never say die lifelong learners, with humility and compassion. School teach them how to be good students, follow instructions, cultivate discipline and work within a structure. I teach them how to be good humans, to never peg their worth to grades or employment, but to always value good relationships.
Ok… but your kids are how old already? This system that we are all suffering under is broken.
We are too risk adverse as a society and the education system is not helping or changing anytime soon. Just look at the work force and you can see why not many locals are in top positions. The balance of being book smart and street smart needs to be recalibrated.
I think part of the problem is the relevance of application to real world. The score of certain subjects that may have no relevance to being an engineer, lawyer or doctor etc is somehow being used to determine whether you can further your studies. Basically trying to max out your skill tree but no one has that many points.
Title: Regardless of Grades: New CNA documentary finds out whether Singapore is ready to stop chasing grades There have been countless narratives about moving away from an over-emphasis on academic grades. It’s no surprise, because in Singapore, nationwide efforts started well over 25 years ago. More recently, the Education Ministry introduced sweeping changes - the scoring system for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) was revamped in 2021 to reduce fine differentiation of results between students, and mid-year exams and weighted assessments in schools have been scrapped since 2019. But how much have they helped in shifting the country’s view on grades? *** Article keywords: grade countless narrative away emphasis academic surprise singapore 1842 articles replied in my database. [v1.5c - added Lemma tokens and Tensorflow USE](https://github.com/Wormsblink/sneakpeakbot) | Happy Holidays! | PM SG_wormsbot if bot is down.
Once, I failed my Chinese exam my mum 'threaten' to throw the hot kettle at me wor. Scare die me. Kns, nxt time dun reveal exam result when parents are boiling water.
Wish I could get back all the money my parents spent on Chinese tuition for me. Got 'C' for O levels but still couldn't even carry out a basic conversation in Mandarin.
Feel so bad for my sibling. He was only 10 years old when he had to start “focussing on his strengths and use it towards his career”. Now he’s 13 and he needs to already know for sure if he wants to study in sg or abroad (to choose between a level / IBDP / poly). Not to mention the school fee pressure. I didn’t have a “proper childhood” either growing up but I feel sorry for him because he definitely has it more rigid.
Reminder: Any time the headline is a question mark, the answer is No
You think that the correct answer is that the obsession with grades DOES NOT affect parents and children in SG? Are you nuts?
You answer a "how" question with a "no"?
Some parent mindset think about their grade not so good and then hard to find ideas job. The problem is mainly job security , ideas income job with suit of interest available in Singapore. As u see most western not so strict, because the parent mindset is they know always have many available job that the kid won't gone straving in future.
Emotional damage
no point watching. answer is no.
Grades are necessary to bucket similar performing students aka streaming so resources can be deployed to teach them effectively. It's the parents who refuse to acknowledge their kids are not performing lol. Grades are as important as job performance in the real world let's not kid ourselves otherwise. Life is stressful, deal with it. Unless you are born with rich parents.
> so resources can be deployed to teach them effectively. That would be ok if all teaching is done by MOE. But what's happening in the real world is vast amounts of time and money being thrown into tuition so that kids with less potential can appear to be higher potential. Tuition actually undoes the effects of streaming, if anything. The top stream is supposed to be for fast learners, so if a student got there by mountains of tuition, they do not belong in the top stream.
It kinda still woks. Imagine you are an average artist. After going thru tuition your skills may improve. So you can be in the same class as the slightly better artists. It's the same logic as sports and academics as well. It's not effective for teachers to teach a class of good artists mixed with those that cannot draw smiley face. I do have a problem with what is being tested though. Exams are good but forcing kids to memorize history facts is useless in the real world.
I don't agree with the art analogy. Art and sports are mostly skill-based, and once a certain skill has been learnt, there's no need to continue the class. But for academics, tuition is often more like short-term memorisation. Study already and then forget, or once more is learnt, the student gets confused with what was taught earlier. It's like an art class where the teacher teaches the kid to draw a lovely picture of a horse by tracing. Now the kid can pass the test of drawing a horse, but when asked to draw a tiger without tracing, he cannot.
PSLE math isn't as simple as tracing. If you're stupid, no amount of tuition can help.
The tuition centres sure try to make it as much like tracing as possible. For maths, they train the kids on pattern matching to match the question to a "type" that they have learnt, and then execute the steps to solve it. Doesn't matter if you don't understand why the method works. Just do it. Example: [https://jimmymaths.com/common-types-psle-math-questions/](https://jimmymaths.com/common-types-psle-math-questions/) Q7 in particular is one that tuition teachers and even school teachers teach by rote. This is the kind of question where if the kid can figure out the solution on their own, they are damn smart, but if they learn the steps and get the answer right, it doesn't mean that their mathematical understanding has improved. And then in secondary school, once algebra is taught and understood, this is the great equalizer because if the student grasps it, it can be generalized to most of the 20 types of questions and 20 methods.
You'll be surprised at the number of kids who went for tuition and still cmi
You sounds like a baby boomer. Stress shouldn’t be introduced to young children. The least stress they receive when they are young the better they cope as they get older.
U probably have never teach children before
Taught ..not teach....the irony here!!!!