Disclaimer:
My personal profile can be found here.
I am no professional educator, nor am i some anti government personnel. I am apolitical and i am pro singaporean.
this post have some comparison with foreigners and i assure you, i love foreigners too.
I believed in meritocracy, so even if you are a foreigner, and good, you deserve a place in our local university.
Instead, i would want to look at why foreigners are mostly better than us, Singaporean. Is our education system really that praiseworthy?
Now that we are in post GE2015, and that I would like to comment a bit about Education, which was brought out in several speeches by oppositions.
I have absolutely no intention to criticise the education system, but i would like to share my education route and hopes that more should be done so we can be "industrial ready"
(1996-2001)
I spent 6 formative years in Ai Tong School, one of the best primary school during my time.
Being there would mean endless remedial lessons, enrichment classes both weekdays and weekends, and my parents were pressured to provide me the best basics to excel. This in turn pressured me to study like crazy, which made my first few years of my life being quite miserable.
During Primary 4, i was streamed into EM2, but my parents insisted that i opt for EM1, which again, started another nightmare time for me.
Though EM1 meant that i will have to study Higher Chinese, the pace of teaching in EM1 classes are also a lot harder. Ended up, i was the 2nd last in the cohort.
PSLE came and i didnt do too badly, scoring 224/300.
(2002-2005)
When i entered Mayflower Secondary School, my life changed. Things werent as pressurising as Primary school, though things are definitely a lot of difficult. Failing subjects became norm and we were not being condemned when we fail. Doing badly doesnt mean the end of the world.
I guess my character was formed in such an environment where i slowly made friends that would ended up growing up with me.
In Sec 2, I didnt do well again.
So in Sec 3, i was placed into what people called the last class of Express Stream, with subjects like
Combined Science (Physics/Chemistry)
Arts
Maths
English
Literature
Social Studies (History)
Chinese
I didnt do well either. When O levels result came, even before i see the result, i asked my teacher if it is good or not.
I remember vividly that she replied that it wasnt bad, but its nowhere near good.
(2006-2009)
So at 17 years of age, i have to make a decision to affect my entire life. My results is bad enough so i dont have a choice of going JC. But being able to make it to Polytechnic was a bonus, since in Secondary School, my results have been bad.
I chose BioElectronics in Singapore Poly.
3 years in SP was fun, with us growing into our teenage years, flirting with opposite sex and suchs. It also meant more freedom to do things that we loved, with less controlling parents.
During secondary days, i wasnt allowed to play computer and i even got into a fight with dad for playing computer.
But in Poly, with my own laptop, i gamed as much as i liked, and he couldnt stop me anymore!
I had a bunch of classmates who pushed to go University, and as a result, i was pushed together with the flow, aiming to go into University.
But again in Poly, i was never good enough to be near the A student, settling in the midst of B+ again. And it is only in poly that you started to feel the competition from foreign students.
They are not only smart, but they are also hardworking. However, this isnt something that actually surprised me. Because some of them are older than me, having to retain because of language proficiency. Hence, i believed their experience would have made them want to strive harder.
If hardwork is something that they have more than me, i would have gladly concede in this meritocratic education system. But sometimes, when i talk to them, they told me that some of the stuff taught are something they have learnt since during their younger days.
Here i am, in one of the world's "best" education system, but yet, what we have learnt are something others from other countries have learnt since young.
This gave us an unequal footing in poly.
During my days, the influx of foreign students are still minimal, but as times goes on, it became really apparent that the foreigners are indeed better than Singaporean student, and the reason was not simply because they are more hardworking or smarter. It is simply because their education background are far more superior than us.
The time came and with a GPA of 3.50 flat, i made it to NTU, to study Computer engineering.
(2009-2011)
But before that happens, the 2 years that my governement want of me came.
(2011-2014)
When i was matriculated into NTU, i have a hungry vision to do well, to study and struggle as much as possible to be the very best, that no one ever was.
After 2 weeks of school, i realised that it is near impossible for me.
We are exempted for 1 year due to being posted into University from a Polytechnic.
I was exempted almost all electives, and only have to study purely Cores.
But i soon realised that such exemption not only shorten my education time, but also shorten my life in the process of it.
Doing 6 cores subjects and having to excel in it is too hard. It isnt impossible since some people are definitely doing it. But having served 2 years and forgetting a lot of my previous education have made it harder.
The university also judges our grades on a bell curve. It is not the case that where you score 80/100, you will get an A grade. A bell curve system would meant that only a top 10-20% will be given an A. So imagine being in a cohort of 100 person, only 10-20 people will get A, despite how many of us scores higher than 80points. And this is also the reason why university never release your final exam scores to students.
Again, foreign students are doing better as a whole.
I am not against them being here in university. Rather, I just felt that we are really weaker as compared to them because of how shortchanged we are when we follow the Singapore Education system.
A good example is to have a classmate being our peer tutor for one of my math module. He have done bridging course in NTU and scored almost full marks for the math module. Instead of having him being exempted, he was required to take the module again, making him qualified to be a peer tutor while having to take the module at the same time. Usually peer tutor are selected when they gotten A for that module. But he was a special case.
From my conversations with him, we realised that he have done such maths during his time in China, in Secondary school. And according to him, these math are considered easy to most students who came from China, which proved to be true, as my Chinese classmates tend to not come for the lessons, and yet scored very well for that particular math module.
2 years are not helping either. 2 years of NS would mean we practice math lesser, but work out physically more. A friend of mine who signed on did well in math type of modules. He came back to school after 1 year of NS as he signed on. With less rust to his brain, he indeed do better. But being a scholar would also mean that it isnt a fair comparison.
Another gripe point that even my professor have brought up is that Polytechnic wasnt teaching enough.
During my poly days, there are some harder "stuffs" being taught, and my lecturer would say that it will not be tested as it is too difficult for our level, and says that it would be taught more in university. He would then briefly go through and forget about it.
Fast forward to University, my professor would then lament that he dont have enough time to teach through everything, and briefly go through the portion that was skipped in Poly days, stating that we were supposed to learn them during our days in a lower education system tier.
Ended up, we were lost after lectures.
Does it affect our foreign students? Some of them are affected like us, but majority of them have no issues with it since it was something they learned since young.
I am not saying that i represent the entire graduating class. But i do feel that there are unfair advantage towards the foreign students.
Yes i get it that by merit they are better and hence they deserve their class of honours and their position in the university. I also know that they are extremely hardworking and whine less than us in many aspects.
But have we really questioned why are they always better than us? is it really true that our students are not working hard? is our "world class" education system really good?
i honestly doubt so.
Without strong foundations, we would definitely lose out as times goes by, as the lack of basics would compound and snowball into an inability to comprehend some theories or solutions, causing us to be weaker than those who have better basics.
Modules dependency would then cause us even more trouble. if you are good, you will do better at the advanced module. but if you are bad, both your modules will suck.
One of my prof once told me before:
all the Polytechnics requested the university to give exemptions. But the quality of our foundation is so bad that many stuffs are to be retaught in university. With such short teaching period to teach more stuffs,students are the ones who will suffer as they are forced to absorb like sponge, and in many situations, ended up memorizing instead of appreciating the information they were supposed to learn. this would then cause us not to know when we should apply what we have learned, ending with many equipped with Degree, but mostly not knowing how to solve problems with it.
This is especially true, as surveys have stated many with Engineering degrees are not doing Engineering anymore.
And just in case you asked, I graduated with 2nd Class Lower Division in NTU, Computer Engineering.
(2014-now)
Now being in the industry, working for a year already, i have realised that many stuffs i learned in my 16 years of education are pretty redundant.
I have done 2 internship, but none of it have prepared me enough for the real working life that i am expecting.
As interns, we were guided most of the time, and whatever we were asked to do are pretty menial, which in my opinion, are jobs that will take us 1 day, but a full timer 1 hour to finish.
Now that i am working, and we have an intern attached to us to learn, i honestly feel that i am shortchanging him. Things that are assigned to him are jobs that require a lot of manpower, and yet doesnt require any thinking. We want to teach, and yet we have no confidence in the intern's aptitude. I think this is because we came from the same educational route, which is why we know just how underprepared are these graduating class of students are.
One of my most interesting experience is that i was scolded for not knowing SQL. Being a graduate from Computer Engineering, working in software development and yet have no knowledge in SQL was a joke to my team lead. But its true! I wasnt taugh SQL in poly and uni because my Poly thought uni will teach it, and my uni taught i would have learned such basic stuffs in poly.
It is not difficult to self learn this, but it just showed how "industry ready" we are.
Like what i have previously stated, we have a lot forced down our throat, but are we really able to apply them in real life scenarios? Given my 1 year of working experience, i have a lot of difficulty appreciating whatever i have learned in school being implemented in work.
So much for being promoted to top 30 university.
I would sincerely hope a revamp in education syllabus to teach enough so that we can be university ready, industry ready.
if our foreign students from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar and even Malaysia are having better education background and basics than us, shouldnt we change the way we teach Primary and Secondary schools?
there is no point getting so much accolades for our education systems only to have our employers retrain us from scratch to get some work done.
Then what for we study for those long and arduous years?
Last but not least,
Why do we have low birth rates?
Singaporean Males finishes education at 25 years old, Female 23 years old typically.
Starts Primary 1 at 7yrs old, finish primary at 12.
Starts Express/NT stream of Secondary School Education at 13, finishes at 16.
Starts Normal Stream of Secondary School Education at 13, finishes at 17.
Starts Poly at 17/18, finishes at 19/20.
Starts JC at 17/18, finishes at 18/19.
Female JC students starts Uni at 19/20, end earliest 22/23 for 3years course, 23/24 for 4 years course.
Female Poly students starts Uni at 20/21, end earliest 23/24 for 3 years course, 24/25 for 4 years course.
Singaporean Male starts University at 21/22, end earliest 24 for 3years, 25 for 4years course.
For my case, i studied 6 years primary, 4 years secondary, 3 years poly and 3 years university.
started at 7years old, finished at 25years old, inclusive of 2 years NS.
Poly School Fees
This is the current school fees for Poly Student.
http://www.sp.edu.sg/wps/portal/vp-spws/spws.fsu.financialmatters.coursefeesandfeespayable
My school fees at that time is slightly cheaper. I count it at 2k per year, 6k for a diploma.
University School Fees
This is my school fees for NTU.
http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/oad2/website_files/finaid/tutionFees_1112.pdf
7K per year.
21K debt for 3 years university Degree course.
Before I even start working, i already owed 21+6k= 27k school fees.
This is exclusive of debts incurred for other misc like halls, laptops, materials, and books. It is also exclusive of interests and such. It is a super underrated amount.
A total of 54k if a pair of couple were to get married, just for a super simple calculation of school fees alone.
Lets take a estimate of Singapore Wedding cost from:
http://dollarsandsense.sg/abasicguide-to-the-cost-of-a-singapore-wedding/
And it is 44k at lowest for wedding costings.
54k+44k =98k for 2 to get married.
So if both are graduates and earning an average of 3k/mth.
http://www.salary.sg/2015/graduate-employment-survey-2014-published-2015/
Their per annum per pax is approximately 40k. Let us increase it to 45k for a better more accurate portrayal for those with more bonus, or higher basics.
45K x 2 =90k per year for 2 university working adult.
Their disposable income is a lot lesser, at approximately 72k after 20% CPF.
Even if they are able to save strictly, they will only be able to clear all debts at approximately 2 to 3 years time.
And at age of 28/29, how many babies do you think i will make, and how much more will it cost, while factoring in housing and taking care of the elderly.
I dont believe in free education, and i think the subsidy is really good enough. But if we were to make changes to education, we might be able to graduate slightly earlier, which would give us enough savings to get married earlier and maybe have more babies.
Teach less learn more is good, but can we teach more of relevance, cut down study years, increase yearly study hours, and get ourselves more "industry readiness"??
My suggestion
I believed there are many researches done on how well someone can learn something at a certain age and such. But I really think that 10 years to achieve O Levels is too long.
Can we do it in 8 years?
Once single session Primary school is in place, maybe we can have longer daily education hours and starts to determine a student's strength and weaknesses and interest at an earlier stage.
If a student have aptitude for Math and Science, maybe we can start doing specialist track for the student to aim for Engineering or related track.
If a student is a high flyer, do away with O levels and straight to A levels in 9 years (just like thru train program, just shorter).
Since parents do not have time for students after school hours due to working, why couldnt we have longer teaching hours so as to save cost and opportunities for students to loiter around.
I get it that we would then require more teachers and allied educators, but isnt it for a better Singapore?
Will students feel a lot more stress, since more are taught?
I would believe if we can streamline education syllabus to reflect real life application scenarios, it would be easier for students to appreciate and comprehend.
Cut down the teaching of language.
I dont see a need to learn english for 10 years.
Once you have a certain basics, i believed that we will be able to grasp the rest of the English Language by ourselves.
There are nothing more to learn in English Lessons after Secondary 2, and like math, from Secondary 3 onwards, english lessons are more for practicing how to write compositions and to understand passages.
We can incorporate such learning in Science and Math lessons too!
Some might argued that if we do that, our english command would go downward spiral. But if we were to teach all subjects apart from Mother Tongue in English, I seriously doubt it would cause a big problem.
2 years saved is a lot.
Graduating at 23 would mean that i would be happily married at 26/27 being debt free from education fees and marriage expenses.
I would be younger, healthier to make better babies.
I would also have longer working years to contribute to Singapore.
Regards
Benjamin Chai
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