I wonder what MOE will do to help the underprivileged children…


Research elsewhere has shown that in the early schooling years, parental involvement is relatively more important than say, who your peers are. So, if that’s true in Singapore and the choice of school is more important with the change, and supposedly children from lower incomes and underprivileged households do not receive as much parental involvement as the higher income families, who is going to help these kids figure out their choices? Will children from a certain income stratum be left behind by the system?

ChiefKiasu:

This is a good analysis. The new system does demand excellence in every subject, which in my opinion will increase stress more than it reduces. And for those who say that it is good because there is no need to count decimal points, consider the fact that Secondary schools will still have COPs. So it is now getting 4 points vs getting above 255 t-scores. Which measure would you consider to be more narrow?

My feeling is that the new system will actually intensify the cookie-cutter education culture and create more average joes than truly outstanding individuals.

My personal approach to education is that all children are born intelligent. That sense of curiosity, that spark of questioning how a toy works, that initial years of life convinced me of this view.

Of course that intelligence level could be measured by different yardsticks and hence you might rank them differently based on different yardsticks. The new banding is but a different yardstick and so when we try to draw concordance between the two yardsticks, we will naturally see different rankings for specific cases.

But the overall picture in terms of academic merit offered by the two schemes would conceivably be quite similar. I doubt anyone would view a 8-pointer as not being a good student (well, we shouldn't). It's a student with an average score of between 85-89. That's an accurate picture of the student's average proficiency level in all subjects. They are 12 year-olds, I think \"specialization\" at such a young age is...for a lack of a better word, \"uncalled for\". We have the DSAs, the GEP for the exceptional mathletes.

I think with this new banding, the signal I'm receiving is thus: \"even if you are a scientist or a mathematician, we want you to be able to have a general level of proficiency in terms of linguistics, you'll need that in the future to be able to communicate your ideas\", and similarly for a child who's great with the languages, \"We want you to be able to understand and analyze data and maybe work with the scientists/techies in the future\". I think to be able to form good and sound arguments, you need to have a strong foundation and be proficient in the 4 subjects. You look at articles of Forbes, Fast company on the kind of talent the Silicone Valley is looking for: it's someone with both good hard and soft skills. I see the goal of PSLE as a means to assessing the proficiency levels (though I don't understand why some questions are so badly worded and convoluted).

So I see the benefit of the banding. I understand that banding is gentler when you don't have to fight over a percentage point (or basis point for the finance people out there). I see the balloting as forcing a parent's hand to look at our child and understand her intelligence when it comes to a choice of school. The child's unique and as a parent, being a primary caregiver, I need to look at her strengths and weaknesses objectively. I need to find a school that suits her and not blindly sign her up for enrichment classes based on word of mouth or fear of being or looked upon as a bad parent if I don't. I need to respect her need for a childhood and that her intelligence could be nurtured through meaningful explorations. She may need more time than others to get to that proficiency level (maybe not 6 years, maybe a little longer).

But I also need to find out as much as I can to avert that balloting situation. And we face that risk unequally.

What I don't like with what MOE has released so far, is that balloting stage and the lack of info with regards to the simulation they had done. Well, I've reiterated that too many times. *stepping down from the soap box*.

sushi88:

Every parent wants their kids to have a uni-bound education. Next is they must go to top schools to ensure this uni-bound dream comes true for sure albeit all IP schools+their JCs are supposed to work on that. So the trigger is IP scheme or the dream of a uni-bound education?

The above context doesn't mean anything. There's no change in behavior, and therefore, no trigger to speak of.

sushi88:

There is nothing wrong with the introduction of the IP scheme but what is wrong is the way we responded to it and we cannot put the blame squarely on the programme. We assume all our kids MUST and CAN go the direct uni-bound way and hence compete fiercely in that direction. However some kids are suitable to go the poly way or ITE way to find their forte or sometimes those paths are also stepping stones for them to eventually end up in the uni...albeit later but still good if they excel. Speed is not the essence in education for everyone but a suitable path is, as we can see our kids speeding to high stress now.

I'm not blaming the IP program. And yes, we can look at the range and variation of COP among schools and not concentrate on one school. I'm saying that the perhaps the program induced certain behavior and to understand behavior or to ameliorate undesirable outcomes, we need to understand the triggers of these behaviors. The converse is true also, if we can't confidently attribute any of the behavior back to any scheme(s) then we don't slay the cow.

jetsetter:

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Do high scorers still do that nowadays, i.e. go against the tide and apply to a school that they deem better in their eyes, regardless of its prevailing ranking and prestige? If you look at the highest COP column, some did qualify for a higher-ranking sec sch, e.g. SAP stream, but they chose not to ...

:?

This is interesting. If the COP didn't change much from the 80s till 2001 (since the way T-scores are calculated weren't changed since 1973 and only some minor tweaks to letter grades was made), we can check if there was a sudden uptick in COP for hot schools starting from 2004 (DSA, IP etc...) can't we?

jetsetter, where did you find the COP info?

I mean, if we can confidently infer that the increase in COP for schools like Nanyang Girls' were attributed to the introduction of IP/DSA, then we can confidently say that the policies have somewhat changed parents'/students' behavior and those \"new initiatives\" of not revealing top scorers etc are really quite ineffective....

It certainly suggests to me that parents/students do not like taking standardized exams. And anything to avert that (enrichments, DSAs, IPs (to avert O Levels), affiliation) all points to the same direction of behavior.

grimm:

As for your last point - I speak only for myself but if the tables were turned and my son can only go to my alma mater and nowhere else, I'm pretty ok with that because that's the only place I want him to go, no matter how well he does.

grimm, I know some alumni truly love their school tradition. I don't mean to hurt with my posts.

I just want to point out what implications the new policy would bring. Affiliation is ingrained into our education culture, but how does one define affiliation? Is it a birth-right? Should it be? Right now, status quo, given what we have, the government is saying \"Yes\" with its policies. But I think most of us know, deep within us, it shouldn't be. It's a privilege.

lee_yl:

Talking about Smart Nation, why can't MOE anonymise their data and make it available to 3rd-parties for mining and analysis? This way, more insights could be gathered as we leverage on crowd sourcing to refine a key policy.

True that. Except I feel the 10% is more like at least 4000. That, to me is a large number.

I know I'm flogging a dead horse here. But we know that some groups are likely to not facing balloting (e.g. 4-pointers and perhaps affiliated schools depending on how it finally pans out), so the chance of balloting for these groups are close to say, 0%, then the chance of balloting has to shift to some other \"groups\". For these groups, it will not be a 10% chance. MOE is not addressing this. The journalists are not investigating this. But this is important info.

grimm:

Why can't you pick non-affiliated school then? I'm curious why are non-affiliated so keen to get into affiliated schools? The alumni are keen to send their children because they want their children to to have the same experience they did, tradition, good cultural fit etc.

It's not about a battle of whether non-affiliated primary school children should stay out of affiliated sec schools. In any case, shouldn't we try to work toward a culture of integration and be an inclusive society? I'm merely pointing out a potential immunity.

Imagine the tables are turned against the affiliated pri school children, that certain choices are barred because of school affiliation. Parents of children attending affiliated schools would be up in arms too.

floppy:

grimm:

Easy, don't choose RI, don't have stress now or later

Most of the time, it's much ado about nothing.

I get it that some people sees RI as their dream school and it's either RI or nothing. But take a step back and ponder, what is wrong with the alternate 5 point school aka 2nd choice? It's not exactly the end of the world yet we somehow make it seems like the poor child is heading to some backwater secondary school in a 3rd world nation.

It's really not about the choice of RI. Scratch RI and replace that with another school-another band with the same scenario of being sandwiched between two bands...

Irrelevant:

Minister says: less than 10% of kids will face the ballot.


Since not all schools are created equal, not all schools require balloting. Imagine if just 20% of the schools (almost certainly the popular ones) require balloting, does than imply that 50% of all those applying for such schools would face balloting? Life become just a gamble?

Can I add on to that ... Imagine a child who came from an affiliated pri school versus another. Same scores, same ability. Now imagine that MOE allowed an arbitrary discount (to be decided by the affiliated school), and the child that came from an affiliated primary school gets in without balloting while the other one would have to compete for fewer spots left (because well, there are these affiliated children ahead of her) so the odds are even worse for those children whose grandparents or great grandparents did not have the 20/20 foresight of enrolling their parents/grandparents into an affiliated primary school...

So the kid from the affiliated school probably escaped balloting at P1 registration and would escape balloting at secondary school... Anecdotally, parents (alumni or otherwise) hate balloting. But now, conceivably, only a select few would have immunity...