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. :)”
