The Magic Number : 6.9m

It is interesting to read about the debate on that magic number, 6.9m, as population of Singapore.  Interesting not in the least because I myself am an import - the result of the early stages of the policy currently being debated - as I was given a scholarship to study here in Singapore (I swear I made no sex videos nor did I disparage Singaporeans by calling them names).  A GLC was made to do national service to pay for my education, so I did not burden the tax payer.  I interned with the organisation that sponsored my studies where my reporting manager for some reason singled me out amongst my cohort while explaining that the ultimate hope was that we would sink our roots here.  "Maybe one day you will marry locally and become a dutiful wife," I recall him saying.  Although to date, I can't confirm if it was beautiful or dutiful - I bristled at both adjectives.  Well, I did marry, became a citizen and have two Singaporean children who proudly hang their flag out, come August. My son discusses the anticipated NS with his friends in school.  My daughter recently declared for a planeload of passengers to hear as we touched down at Changi, "I LOVE Singapore!”

Yet even I am beginning to feel there are too many foreigners in Singapore.  Without offending the PRs whom I count as my friends - while I rejoice that GV now shows Hindi movies, I am also alarmed when I hear so much Hindi in Raffles Link, I have to remind myself I am not back in Pune.  I too was enraged by the Chinese service staff at a Subway who scowled at me - presumably because she could not understand what I was asking for and I was not speaking Mandarin.  While some of my friends who are PRs feel a little miffed (ok, postively enraged) at the almost xenophobic tone this discourse seems to take at times - the point I am trying to make is, if a naturalised citizen like me can feel this way - try and view it from the point of view of a Singaporean.  This view point is what the government needs to be cognizant of too. 

What saddens me the most is the way the government has introduced this whole debate.  It seems to me that it is a major PR debacle and I cannot wrap my head around the fact that the best and brightest of the land could not foresee it.  Firstly, the PM had only 20 months ago apologized to the electorate for getting things wrong on matters pertaining to housing and transportation vis-à-vis the virtual explosion in population.  Clearly, this white paper could have been presented as a blue print to address the issues that arose from that mis-step on the government’s part and to highlight that they have also learnt from their past mistakes and have now incorporated a plan to anticipate future population growth.  This is what every Minister is now trying to repeatedly convince us of – why then lead with the 6.9m number? Had they not lead with the number, Singaporeans could well have recognized the need for a number for planning purposes and would have then put the number in perspective and focused on the real news that there will be a concerted effort to ease transport and housing woes.  There are two conclusions I can draw from this – the government and our mandarins in the Civil Service are so woefully lacking in EQ that they could only think of this White Paper as a means of CYA (cover your a**, in corporate parlance) in case the population does hit the target they used for planning purposes. In that scenario, they could say – I know Singapore is very crowded and trains are congested, but I already told you in 2013 that we are probably growing to 6.9m. So live with it.  The other, which most people would like to believe, is that the government has already decided that 6.9m is the target for 2030 (planning purposes, my a**, they might add sotto voce). Planning for infrastructure development while simultaneously increasing the load on it sounds to Singaporeans very much like business as usual despite the sound bites of "We understand your pain." Both conclusions point to a severe disconnect between the government and the citizens of Singapore which cannot be good for the country.

The next issue that arises is of the perennial bogeyman of economic decline should immigration policies be tightened.  Even mothers stop threatening their kids with the imaginary Pontianak when the child is older.  What I am dismayed about is that I am told time and again that if we curbed immigration then wages would go up, costs would increase and businesses would suffer.  Singapore’s economy would stagnate and even decline and we would all be doomed.  ST tells me of the numerous Chambers of Commerce that have written to protest curbs in importation of foreign labour.  Khaw Boon Wan threatens that should an increase in the foreign labour quota not be increased – then the 200,000 flats promised will not be built.  Who will suffer then, he asks?  Ok, lets analyse this.  Firstly, everybody recognizes that foreign labour is required for certain sectors like construction.  Can one not believe that despite a cap on foreign labour the flats could still be built, if priority was given to allocating work permits to the sectors that require them?  Could we not believe that it should be made more difficult for retailers to hire Chinese salesgirls (even though I have met some lovely ones in my shopping experiences) who are cheaper than Singaporean salesgirls?  Yes, the business will suffer due to the higher costs of hiring the Singaporean – but is it ok for the Singaporean salesgirl to not find a job that pays her a decent wage so that the Singaporean retail business can continue to profit?  What are the other cost factors that are impeding this Singaporean retail business from hiring a higher cost local? High rents? Cost of training staff? Productivity lags? How can we alleviate these expenses to make it possible for the Singaporean company to pay the higher wage and yet continue to flourish?  I feel I have not been given enough information on the alternatives and why they need to be discarded, for me to make an informed decision to support the government.

Here we need to acknowledge the fact the while we have fanciful schemes, I am not sure how far these schemes trickle down to the intended targets.  We cannot expect that just because we have these schemes they will reach the intended target and thereby work.  What is being done to improve productivity amongst SMEs and given the fact that they have largely operated independent of government aid thus far – what is being done to reach out them?  Please give me more information on these matters, so that I am convinced that enough is being done to address alternatives – and despite that, I need to support the 6.9m number.  Otherwise, one can only be reminded of how during the hustings Minister Mah Baw Tan repeatedly assured us that there was sufficient housing to meet Singaporean demand – yet his successor admitted to exactly the opposite and is now on a drive to provide housing to meet pent up demand.  Am I to always believe that the government has got it right, in face of facts telling me otherwise?  Mind you, I am not saying that I do not think this government can’t get it right – but there has to be some effort to win back my unwavering trust.

Let’s talk about MNCs and the impact wage increases will have on them.  Companies have been leaving Singapore steadily, despite our attempts to keep wages down through import of cheaper labour.  Can we effectively stem this tide?  Apart from labour we have become an expensive locale with respect to other costs as well.  Once tax holidays and other incentives expire, it would be foreseeable that these MNCs would move to the source of this cheap labour we keep trying to import.  Should we have not anticipated this trend to re-align our strategy about what industries attract and what type of incentive structures we provide them?  Is it not analogous to the housing scenario of we know what we are doing, there is nothing to be changed. Trying to feed MNCs through a tap of cheap labour is a strategy that is bound to fail at some time in the future – unless we keep subsidizing their operations with tax credits and other incentives.  Why can’t this spend be used to give credits to SMEs to employ more Singaporeans at higher wages? 

The other trend in MNCs and major companies is the importation of foreign talent at higher levels – in increasing numbers than the cheap labour that has been discussed previously.  While acknowledging the irony of me being one such “foreign talent” imported into Singapore and trying not to alienate my PR friends who possibly fall in this category, let me try and make my point.  Some banks in Singapore are known to be literally teeming with PRs from the Indian sub-continent – so much so that hiring managers at one point were given instructions not to hire from that demography to ensure diversity.  I can’t help but wonder if there really is such serious lack of talent in Singapore that these banks cannot function without importing PRs to do Relationship Management jobs.  I have great respect and admiration for the intelligence and drive of the people from the sub-continent, but really before their entry en masse into the Singaporean banking scene – it was on the strength of work done by Singaporeans within and outside the banking industry that made Singapore attractive for banks to locate regional/global offices here.  So what changed – why did the talent that was present in Singapore before suddenly vanish?  Ok, let’s say the advent of a new global era for the banks required talent that was hitherto absent amongst Singaporeans.  Does that mean that Singaporeans are not even trainable in this arena – that for the 20 years that these banks have operated in Singapore they could not have a structured training program to ensure that there is a big enough pool of Singaporeans to fill these positions at potentially lower cost than an expatriate and to reduce reliance on imported, even if top notch, talent.  Perhaps the argument is that global operations need multicultural talent - agreed. But why is there a surfeit of non Singaporeans in country level positions in these banks?  This might be a contentious point, but I can’t help but empathise with some people who lament that hiring often gets done on cliquish lines – because of course, comfort and the lack of cultural differences might make it easier for birds of a feather to flock together.  While I do not wish to paint of picture of a conspiracy of sub-continental takeover – one does wonder if enough is being done to show no suitable Singaporean exists for a job and on lines of what Inderjit Singh mentioned – it should be made mandatory for the companies to start doing so. 

There are difficult issues to be settled in this regard - no one is denying that.  My husband describes how it is difficult to hire Singaporeans to work in the building materials industry - despite the offer of higher wages.  They even approached former convicts under the Yellow Ribbon project - who declined these jobs.  Some objections are as frivolous as "Wah, the place so ulu one. I don't want to travel so far to work." But can this be a reason for us to perennially turn to foreign labour to bridge the gap?  My husband says yes, no choice.  But would a better transport network eliminate this frivolous excuse of insurmountable distance.  Maybe Sugei Kadut IS really difficult to travel to from Tampines - hence maybe the objection is valid.

Have we really examined the underlying reasons for people's lack of interest in certain jobs - apart from the expedient one of Singaporeans are spoilt and lazy and do not have fire in their belly.    

Clearly there will be trade-offs and discomfort if policy decisions were realigned - but the current argument seems to the citizenry to be that - "Look everything else will be too painful for businesses and our economic growth - so ultimately it’s you lot that needs to bear with higher cost of housing and the great MRT rush hour crush."

For the average Singaporean who is being jostled at the Jurong East train platform as he rushes back to the home he can barely afford, to coach his child with the homework which the tuition centre that he sends her to doles out in addition to her school work, it seems to be too high a price to pay.  He will naturally get more ‘spoilt’ as he is not certain he sees the effects of the GDP growth he is expected to make this sacrifice for reach him as directly as it does the PR he possibly reports to.  Who, by a virtue of the fact that he is a higher educated import, earns more and lives in a condominium and he sends his son to an international school on a long term visit visa so that he has the option to send him back to his home country before the NS call comes through.  Or the housewife, who when her child is in full time school wants that sales assistant job, but merely due to the fact that she needs to be paid CPF she is more expensive.  I say this not to paint people, Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans alike, as evil, good, nasty, lazy, stupid etc – but just to say that sometimes one needs to try and understand where the frustration comes from.  In formulating policies, as much as policies need to be intelligent, the government needs to understand the frustration of the populace.  And maybe sometimes the government needs to make hard decisions to set aside its cherished KPIs – to listen.  As Inderjit Singh said in his speech, maybe the government needs to take a breather.  There may be hardships that arise from this breather, but maybe Singaporeans would then feel that they are valued enough in this country to work hard, to innovate – to look for that fire that their fathers and grandfathers had to bring the country to where it is right now.  Today they probably feel merely as tools to meet the KPIs of Singapore Inc.  If we cannot compete with NY or London as a top notch city if we did this, perhaps we need to reconsider Ngiam Tong Dow’s words to even review if we want to compete with the top tier cities in the first place. http://newshub.nus.edu.sg/news/1301/PDF/HYPE-st-12jan-pD17.pdf

I say this also because my experience of Singapore has been a pleasant one.  I have never felt unwelcome here. I would like to believe that when Singaporeans complain about the influx of foreigners they do so because they are tired of not being listened to.  

Raffles or Bust

Sir Stamford Raffles went to some school in Hammersmith till the age of 14 and then joined the East India Company. One biography describes him as mostly self-educated. Yet the educational institutions in Singapore that bear his name are the ones eagerly sought out by parents for their offspring. It is amazing how most of the quotes attributed to parents in recent newspaper articles on the review of the PSLE revolve around the ability (or inability as the case may be) of their children to enter RI or RGS with the present system. I hope the conversations that MOE is having about the PSLE review is not centred on this narrow focus of entry to the top schools.


There are 2 sets of parents who have an issue with the PSLE. One set possibly well-educated, well-heeled – wanting to ensure they provide their children with a ‘head start’ in a world they increasingly view as ultra-competitive. This group of parents sees entry into a top school at the secondary level at the age of 12 as the ticket to success in life. A good friend once said she believed that if her daughter got into RGS her life was set. That’s it. Job completed. I do not disagree with this view; many leaders in business, politics, and education have indeed studied in these esteemed institutions. Yet, to make one institution a symbol of absolute perfection smacks not only of elitism, but also instantaneously demeans all other institutions whether they merit it or not. A lovely person I know once reacted with a look of such unmitigated scorn, when I suggested the name of a school which was affiliated to her daughter’s school as a possible choice of secondary school. “That’s a no good school,” she almost snarled, totally uncharacteristically. She could have chosen to say "my daughter can aim for a school that would challenge her more", rather than call it a 'no good school'. I had not heard much about discipline problems or truancy in this school. So I believe the branding as no good was due to the fact the T-scores of the girls attending the school was not as stellar as RGS T-scores. I felt for the girls who attended that school – did they deserve to be almost condemned so because of the cut-off point for their school? I felt for the teachers of the school – who wake up every morning and believe they can not only teach their students but also facilitate their growth into responsible members of society – only to have their efforts branded as those of a ‘no good school’.

For one sub-set within this group with academically gifted children, the parents would not want to tinker with the PSLE. They would want to ensure that their children are able to make it to these top schools. They would also like to ensure that the standards in these top schools are not diluted by the influx of less capable students just to ensure diversity. This sub-set is probably alarmed by the talk about relaxing criteria for entering the top schools. Incidentally – there will be children who are self -motivated and naturally gifted to earn themselves a place in these schools. My husband’s colleague’s son made it to RI without a day’s tuition in his life, from a neighbourhood school in Woodlands. Y, his mother, has A-level education and had not coached him on a single Math problem or Science question through his 6 years of primary schooling. All of us were thrilled when his PSLE results were out and we felt he richly deserved his place in RI. Principally, I am not against the idea of PSLE being a streaming exercise to identify the top students and for these academically talented kids to dominate the top schools. Let’s get real - in life and especially education there will be ranking and there will be prestigious institutions which would want to have the crème de la crème. It is only when, taking the lacteal analogy further, we throw out the rest of the milk as being useless (which clearly it is not) that it becomes a problem.

Which brings me to the second sub set within this group – the ones whose children are probably not academically gifted enough to make it to the brand name schools. The problem this group seems to have with the PSLE is simply a petulant one – not fair! I want my child to go to RI – but if he is not in the top 3% of PSLE he cannot. They rail against the DSA system. They rail against the PSLE ranking system. Their solution to the problem is whatever it takes for their child to go to these brand name schools. Whether it is suitable for their child or not is immaterial. This sub-set needs to be patently ignored.

There is another set of parents who have an issue with PSLE – but don’t know or are not sure how to articulate it. This set is the bulk of the heartland parents. These parents believe strongly that education is the means by which to ensure social mobility. They exhort their children to study hard – because if you study hard you will be successful. But primary school exams these days are not only about studying hard to get good marks. Primary 1 students are faced with problem sums. They have to have a good enough grasp of the English language to differentiate between a Math sum that says “Susan shared 24 chocolates with 3 friends” and “Susan distributed 24 chocolates to 3 friends” - the former divided by 4 to include Susan since share connotes Susan had some for herself too! Both my children from English speaking families with tertiary educated parents got this sum wrong in their Primary 1 Math exam. Should a Math sum be so couched to emphasis understanding of English? Problem sums which so dominate Math papers often involve linguistic gymnastics to decipher what information is provided in the sum – some explicitly and some requiring children to infer. Now, set against the background of uneven pre-school education this makes the playing field for primary school children extremely uneven. I am not even talking about children who enter primary school with delayed reading abilities – that is a different level altogether. I was shocked when a Head of Department for Math assured us not to worry about the difficulty of some sums – because most of our children are expected only to answer about 80% of the paper. The balance 20% was higher order sums which not all our children would be able to attempt.

But then that is also not true. I was determined that my children would be able to attempt at least 10% of the higher order questions. Not getting adequate support tuition wise – I took it upon myself to learn how to solve these sums - spending hours solving them in algebra and then converting that into the model method espoused by Primary school math to teach my son. I could not blame his teacher for not spending this time to ensure all her students are able to attempt more than 80% of the paper. This was not just for Math. For Science I spent time scanning question papers to a parents’ forum and finding out answers to the questions that neither my son nor his Engineer Dad could answer. His Science teacher taught 150 students, and could not possibly ensure that every kiasu parent’s query was answered. See how the playing field gets skewed further. I skewed it. Other parents from the first set of parents skewed it. Of course there are students who continue to obtain marks that are line with historical average for Math and Science – which allows the boffins in their ivory towers at MOE to proclaim that there has been no perceptible increase in difficulty levels as evidenced by the fact that average marks obtained have remained stable. But what about the heartland parent who is at work, who cannot scan papers or solve Math sums using Algebra – whose child’s teacher aims to ensure he can solve 80% of the paper. Can we honestly look the child in the eye and say study hard and you have the same chance as everyone else to do well?

There are two problems with this scenario – firstly, our incessant claim that the system is meritocratic and the outcomes therefore are just. Clearly – the badge of meritocracy gives the system a false legitimacy which will further accentuate the imbalance in the system. Secondly, the damage it does to the children’s self-confidence. Admittedly, this affects some children more than others. But the fact that even some children feel that they have already been intellectually sifted at 12 to be able to attempt 80% of a paper – leads them to believe that they have been slotted into their place in society and should chart their paths from that point onwards. Every country has its prestigious schools and its neighbourhood schools. But only in Singapore would a person, when asked where he went to school, preface it with an apologetic “Neighbourhood school only, lah.” I went to a neighbourhood school in India and I have never hesitated mentioning my school’s name to anyone, it was just a name – it did not define me.

Issues such as these are the ones that need to be attended in the PSLE review. It has more to do with the fact that the testing has become some sort of a competition between those sitting in the ivory towers at the Ministry and the blessed top 10-20% - to see who can get the better of the other. The exams have totally lost their objective in testing the efficacy of learning and become IQ tests in much greater proportion than a “School Leaving Exam” ought to be. Clearly, the number of Maths and Science tuition centres purporting to teach your child magic methods to answer the exam papers should get alarm bells ringing. One does not need to be taught tricks to answer questions if they followed the logic of a teacher teaching a method of solving a sum and the student diligently applying it to get the answer. When I was growing up in India there were many ‘coaching schools’ which promised a bag of tricks for students – but not for primary school. These were catered more towards entrance exams for hallowed institutions of higher learning like the Indian Institute of Technology. The difference was that these students chose to enroll themselves into these challenging exams which have an avowed objective of sifting them intellectually to assess their suitability for attending these extremely competitive institutions of education. They were not 12 year olds who after 6 years of ‘primary’ education are subjected to a test that is supposed to assess how well they have learnt – yet almost evil-ly had the objective that 80% of them would only be able to answer 80% of the paper, no matter how much they slog.

It is not the need for diversity in top schools (with possibly the exception of SAP schools which is a separate issue in itself) that needs to be addressed in the PSLE review - but more a need for getting some balance and sanity into the testing process. Straits Times has been frustrating in only citing parents’ who seem still obsessed with getting their children into brand name schools as the ones thrilled about the review. These parents are the last lot we need to worry about. The discussion about PSLE has to be about how no 12 year old in Singapore, if he/she has worked hard, ought to feel that he is only expected to answer 80% of the paper. It should be about how no committed teacher (and I can vouch the lady who said this was a wonderful teacher) should have to say “Sad to say, the sg education system is for the elites, in my opinion. I hope some bright spark from the ministry will try to bring back the joy in learning and teaching. :)”