All Schools are GOOD Schools

[laughingcat]

Chenonceau:

verykiasu2010:

[quote=\"Chenonceau\"]

We are all together in a very hot room. Minister Heng sits there coolly looking at us and says \"It's not hot. It's all your perspiration.\"

:rotflmao: :rotflmao: tak boleh tahan...

Seriously though... if there is substance, form will come. If there is real change (substance) in the way schools and students are managed, the words (form) of parents will depict the new reality of - All Schools are Good. If there is form but no substance, the form will crumble. If there is no substantive change (substance) in the way schools and students are managed, the words (form) of even a Minister will crumble under scrutiny.

And when his words crumble, the Minister's sincerity is called into question. At least to my eyes.[/quote]Then my advice.......action through votes. :evil: :siam:

[mum_sugoku]

atutor2001:

mum_sugoku:

Hi. Just wish to share my experience here: My DS was in P6 last year. I noticed that for maths word problems, he tended to give a 1-line solution with no explanation, for eg,

(Question from an assessment book): Mr Phua can employ 4 workers to paint his house in 15 hours. If he decides to employ another 2 workers for the same job, how much time can he save?

While the book's worked solution showed 6 working steps to reach the answer of 5 hours, what DS did was:

time=> 15 -((15x4) /6) = 5
He saves 5 hours.

I told him to write down the workings \"properly\", but he said he had been doing that (giving 1-line working) all along and his maths teacher had never marked him wrong. Since I'm unfamilar with pri-level maths (and the marking scheme), plus he had been getting good grades in maths, I just let him carry on with his preferred method lor .. Anyway, he did manage to score A* for maths in PSLE.

(PS. DS has never had tuition for maths and I was incapable of coaching him in maths, so whatever he knows, he had learned it entirely from his school teachers. Kudos to them!)

Thank you for sharing your son's PSLE experience. It is a good reassurance to parents who believes in those silly instructions from some teachers. Some parents don't believe that there is no mark deduction for working, as long as final answer is correct. What the teachers have been telling the kids is that if the marker doesn't understand your working methods (i.e. non model), then there will be zero working mark when your answer is wrong. End of the day, if we hope to earn \"charity marks\" i.e. the answer is wrong, it is important for our presentation to be clear i.e. defining what we are doing for each step.

I also notice that your son's Pri teacher has not imposed any restriction on this working method which is good.

However, your son will face difficulty in sec school if did not show the steps. He will lose marks for incomplete presentation, which many are facing now. Hope his sec teacher is very strict enforcing the requirements for working steps from sec 1 and he should be fine by sec 4. Sorry, maybe he is in IP. Anway, they still need to follow proper presentation for their school exams.

Thanks for the advice . Ya I'm aware of the risk of giving 1-line solution and had actually compelled DS to \"break\" the solution up initially. However, the move had not only slowed him down, somehow he tended to make more careless mistakes (and get the final answer wrong) than before. So I've no choice but just let him did it his way.. Fortunately, his sec school maths teacher has insisted on them showing their step=by-step workings clearly and so he has started doing so .

[mum_sugoku]

verykiasu2010:

yes, not all schools are equally good, not all principals are equally good, not all teachers are equally good and passionate

some parents sneer at popular schools as being 'elite' or 'exclusive', some will say all kinds of things in the name of calling for justice for the less fortunate and under-achieved.....some are simply presumptious in making comments

between the good and the bad in the school system is a whole spectrum stretching from one end of rainbow to the other end

no system is perfect, as long as it is left to human to run and operate, until such time when every policy and direction is run by robots.

Mr Heng must recognise that some schools are more popular for some valid reasons, for which he should not brush aside and say all schools are good and parents must change perception of neighbourhood schools. The fact is, some neighbourhood schools are just better than other neighbourhood

my two kids eat sleep breathe the same through out their life thus far, equal scolding and equal love, same schools, same system, different results, not bad, but different. We are part of the normal distribution.

Ya. Even within the same company/organisation with staff of similar academic qualifications/experiences, it would still be unlikely for the staff to have similar performance/output, not to mention different schools.

[janet88]

Our Education Minister has been sent overseas to America to study more policies. He is sitting up there. We are down here sweating and pulling our hair out over the kids’ education. Does anyone in education ministry understand what we are going through ?

Kids wake up at 6am to go to school. They are not taught methods to handle tough syllabus. After school, they have to attend tuition in order to pass exams. Should this be the case ?

[laughingcat]

Actually i am not keen in Minister going overseas just to look at policy making. Sometimes they are too high up and therefore cannot see or feel the ground.


Rather i would prefer the teachers be expose to different exposure. See how other experienced teaching profession conduct the teachings.

While i don’t understand that why schools in SGP can’t adopt co-teaching between native English teachers and non-native English teachers. I believe it can contribute to the improvement of teaching quality of native English teachers, many of whom cannot achieve a desirable quality of teaching of English in SGP primary schools largely due to lack of training in professional teaching.

That’s my humble opinion only. Just take it that i am ranting.

[beanbear]

janet_lee88:

Our Education Minister has been sent overseas to America to study more policies. He is sitting up there. We are down here sweating and pulling our hair out over the kids' education. Does anyone in education ministry understand what we are going through ?

Kids wake up at 6am to go to school. They are not taught methods to handle tough syllabus. After school, they have to attend tuition in order to pass exams. Should this be the case ?

It's hard for people who are doing policy-making to appreciate what parents are going through if they keep holding onto the mindset that \"Parents are Kiasu so they make children have a lot of tuition. There is nothing wrong with the system - we are trying to give children a holistic education but the parents keep over-emphasizing on marks\".

I keep asking myself : why is it that almost every parent I meet sings the same song - the standard is too high, system is crazy, children are tested beyond their ability. Every education officer I've met so far thinks Parents are the crazy ones, pressuring their kids to excel. So both parties are blaming each other.

What is the objective data that both Parents & Policy-Makers can look at? Yes, we can offer data such as $820mil spent yearly on the tuition industry. Maybe someone can even churn out numbers that tell us what's the average number of hours a student attends tuition. What is the piece of data that will tell us there is something wrong with the system?

I suspect people from MOE HQ does not know what REALLY happens at schools. What is the objective data we can surface to demonstrate that schools test beyond what they are taught? This data must be large enough so that MOE doesn't think parents are exaggerating or making up stories. For eg, policy-makers do not see the level of difficulty of exams set at school - it's left to schools to customize so every school decides their own level of difficulty and they do not need to account to the policy-makers if they set a paper that's unfair or too difficult. Schools do not need to show to policy-makers for them to verify if the level of difficulty is too much. It's all done internally. THe levels of vetting is done by different heads + vice-principal in charge of exams. Policy-makers do not see the number of times schools subject students to failure. These numbers are NOT TRACKED by policy-makers. Schools do not need to report to HQ that for CA1, we failed 60%, for SA1, we failed 50% of students, etc etc. Yet from anecdotal evidence from parents, we do know that students are failing by large numbers. Failing is the new norm. Schools start to fail students as early as Primary 2 by setting papers far beyond their ability and beyond what they are taught. But do the policy-makers know this piece of data? No because it's all done internally - the principal is not going to tell the Superintendant that many students fail for the school exams. Why would I tell my boss that my students are failing exams set by my school? At the end only the PSLE results are accounted for. Are principals held accountable for damaging students' confidence by failing them young and frequently? No. Is this sort of abuse reported? No. Schools don't see it as abuse.

[Chenonceau]

beanbear:

janet_lee88:

Our Education Minister has been sent overseas to America to study more policies. He is sitting up there. We are down here sweating and pulling our hair out over the kids' education. Does anyone in education ministry understand what we are going through ?

Kids wake up at 6am to go to school. They are not taught methods to handle tough syllabus. After school, they have to attend tuition in order to pass exams. Should this be the case ?

It's hard for people who are doing policy-making to appreciate what parents are going through if they keep holding onto the mindset that \"Parents are Kiasu so they make children have a lot of tuition. There is nothing wrong with the system - we are trying to give children a holistic education but the parents keep over-emphasizing on marks\".

I keep asking myself : why is it that almost every parent I meet sings the same song - the standard is too high, system is crazy, children are tested beyond their ability. Every education officer I've met so far thinks Parents are the crazy ones, pressuring their kids to excel. So both parties are blaming each other.

What is the objective data that both Parents & Policy-Makers can look at? Yes, we can offer data such as $820mil spent yearly on the tuition industry. Maybe someone can even churn out numbers that tell us what's the average number of hours a student attends tuition. What is the piece of data that will tell us there is something wrong with the system?

I suspect people from MOE HQ does not know what REALLY happens at schools. What is the objective data we can surface to demonstrate that schools test beyond what they are taught? This data must be large enough so that MOE doesn't think parents are exaggerating or making up stories. For eg, policy-makers do not see the level of difficulty of exams set at school - it's left to schools to customize so every school decides their own level of difficulty and they do not need to account to the policy-makers if they set a paper that's unfair or too difficult. Schools do not need to show to policy-makers for them to verify if the level of difficulty is too much. It's all done internally. THe levels of vetting is done by different heads + vice-principal in charge of exams. Policy-makers do not see the number of times schools subject students to failure. These numbers are NOT TRACKED by policy-makers. Schools do not need to report to HQ that for CA1, we failed 60%, for SA1, we failed 50% of students, etc etc. Yet from anecdotal evidence from parents, we do know that students are failing by large numbers. Failing is the new norm. Schools start to fail students as early as Primary 2 by setting papers far beyond their ability and beyond what they are taught. But do the policy-makers know this piece of data? No because it's all done internally - the principal is not going to tell the Superintendant that many students fail for the school exams. Why would I tell my boss that my students are failing exams set by my school? At the end only the PSLE results are accounted for. Are principals held accountable for damaging students' confidence by failing them young and frequently? No. Is this sort of abuse reported? No. Schools don't see it as abuse.

:goodpost:

[laughingcat]

Unless there is an increase in children suicides lah......unless there is an increase in admission to IMH lah.....then it is a wake up call for them bah. Sounds very sad, isn't it. :sad:

[beanbear]

laughingcat:

Unless there is an increase in children suicides lah......unless there is an increase in admission to IMH lah.....then it is a wake up call for them bah. Sounds very sad, isn't it. :sad:

Tracking number of suicides will not lead to wake-up call. Only parents will feel more guilty & broken-hearted. I personally don't think number of suicides will cause MOE to consider the contributing factor is High Exam standards & Testing beyond what is Taught. It will point back to \"It's the parents' fault. Parents pressure the kid to suicide.\"

When you read stories about how abusive prisons' environment can be, there are obviously suicides but that does not cause the authorities to question how they create a system where abuse is thriving. There have even experiments done where they put normal functioning people into a \"prison-like\" environment - just put enough of those conditions and normal people will turn abusive and turn on the \"weaker\".

Our school systems are already creating spaces where abuses are taking place - I don't mean physical - the worst kind of abuses are the deep emotional & psychological scarring that carry on for years and gets passed on to the next generation and the cycle of abuse keeps perpetuating - the origins may be from their childhood where they were made to feel ashamed, unworthy, stupid and insecure. This is a formula for bringing up emotionally broken people. Authorities are in denial that abuse is happening. Parents are afraid to speak up, we feel helpless and we are so busy just trying to help our children stay afloat and prevent them from jumping out of the window.

[janet88]

Authorities up there will never see what’s happening at ground level…how parents are struggling with kids’ CA1 or SA2. The baton is passed to the parents to make sure kids are up to mark, passing exams etc.


During parent-teacher meetings, teachers tell parents how to prepare kids for next term. Should this be the case ? I send kids to school…after 6-7 hours of school, they still have to attend tuition because what they learn in school is insufficient to pass exams. Which parent will have the heart to allow his/her child to fail ?