sushi88:

Pen88n:

[quote=\"ChiefKiasu\"]

So, by that token, kiasu parents like t-scores? and unkiasu parents don't? Majority of Singapore parents are unkiasu? Or maybe unkiasu parents don't even know or care what is happening and think that removing t-scores means removing PSLE completely. Yay! I also want. :celebrate:

I think the scenario is more likely to be: kiasu parents try to learn and understand what the new grading system is like - then they come to the conclusion that it may not be a good idea to remove T-score afterall. Un-kiasu parents leave it to MOE and believe that new grading system will be better in accordance to what MOE said without questioning what exactly is the new grading system and how it works in detail.

Please refer to the thread starter's(superkiasudad) post.
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum ... it=t+score

iirc, it is kiasu parents in this forum who want the t-score to be abolished...consistent with superkiasudad's sentiments....his posts showed that he looked forward to scrap T-scores but unfortunately his kid would not be able to benefit from this change.[/quote]This is what I remember too. Lucky are those kiasu parents who have already moved on with their kids now in secondary schools while some of us unlucky ones have to bear with consequences brought by those. :spank:

sushi88:

Busymom:

What you have written is well and good, but what if DSA academic is removed and instead DSA leadership is introduced? Then leadership would be the only criteria for that group of students, no? Aren't there some schools which currently have DSA leadership? :?

The short answer is if MOE insists in emphasizing DSA via leadership quality as an option, then explain to us why such DSA is required by the schools, i.e. the rationale? If there is no requirement by the schools especially top schools, it is clearly just a subjective ticket for schools to suka suka admit anyone they know or like.... what meritocracy?

To answer the question in bold, I ask you one.
Do you know why today such schools who admitted kids with leadership qualities need them?

Erm, I don't have the answer.. The school lacks student leaders? Or they want to groom student leaders? :scratchhead:

A photo that I got from someone before on nygh DSA 2015 shows that they had 3 DSA categories and the 2nd category is called Academic / Leadership.

pirate:

3Boys:

...then affiliation priority how?

I copy from P1 registration last time...

Give them 2 ballot tickets instead of one. :evil:

Then distance from school, how? Also do the less than 1km, between 1 and 2 km and more than 2km? :rotflmao:

sleepy:

Just curious... are there really that many parents complaining about t score and proposing to abolish t score?

Or is it another misinterpretation by the government? :evil:

Some years ago, the edu minister at that time suggested reducing weightage of mother tongue on t score
probably due to parents complaining about the difficulty of studying Chinese

Did i remember correctly that caused an uproar and that idea was scrapped completely?
Eventually it remains status quo

:hi5:

I was just about on the same topic.

Yes, it caused an uproar.

dimsum:

pirate:

[quote=\"Pen88n\"]

Then might as well drop MT then - since it is a 2nd language and not featured in your proposed equation :yikes: :faint: :siam:

:imanangel:

If it is gg to be L1R2, first thing i will do is to drop my child\"s Chinese enrichment. His maths and science are stronger than Chinese and he probably spends 60% of his study time on Chinese alone.[/quote]Same here, definitely a lot more time spent on Chinese alone.

Wait, by introducing this change, we practically adopted the ex ex MOE minister's suggestion to reduce weightage for MT. And willingly too. :yikes:

sushi88:

bggb:

[quote=\"sushi88\"]Why learning lab? Behaviour learning begins at home.


To be candid, why worry so much about leadership being taken by the girls at schooling age?
Look around the cabinet and management of the many corporates, are there more women in the leadership positions or men? Things fall into place eventually.

We spend too much of our time fighting all the wrong battles.

As parents with boys in coed primary schools, we are just asking for equal opportunity and fairness to be given to boys in the leadership roles. This is even more important now if “leadership” is being considered in secondary school admission. If there are 7 to 8 prefects in a class, why only 1 or 2 are boys? Why every year, only girls are chosen be head prefect? Why the need to have the same girl playing the dual roles of prefect and monitor at the same time instead of giving the opportunity to another student to learn and pick up the skill?

At least in my child’s class, I know of some boys who are well behaved and relatively good in their studies but no opportunity! It is definitely not about education at home but a need for boys to attend some courses to teach them how to behave appropriately to create an impression and score points, just like the girls.

Talking about cabinet, majority of the ministers/ ex-minister were from all boys’ school. No?
Why is that so? Why so few from coed schools? The answer is obvious. Boys are being discriminated and hardly an opportunity for them to take up the role.

This is all true account of what is happening in my child’s school and not make-up stories. If MOE officers/ press visit some of these schools and check it out, you know what I mean! Having said this, using “leadership” to enter top secondary schools should be scrapped unless we are advocating biasness and “connection”.

Some present/ ex ministers that I know of:
Teo Chee Hean – SJI
Tharman Shanmugaratnam – ACS
Ng Eng Hen – ACS
Ong Ye Kung – Maris Stella
Tan Chuan Jin – ACS
Goh Keng Swee – ACS
Vivian Balakrishnan – ACS
Lim Swee Say – CHS
Gan Kim Yong – CHS
Tony Tan – SJI
George Yeo – SJI
Mah Bow Tan – SJI
Lee Yi Shyan – Maris Stella

:?

I can appreciate your concern about scrapping leadership as a criteria to enter secondary school. It is just the suggested means of going to TLL for another course that irks me. There must be something the kids can learn the ropes on their own, and leadership is one of them. If a family has many kids, actually it is the best learning ground, the ones who lose out are at times the single-child families, if they have no extended family to mingle with even.

So back to leadership at primary school. Frankly and personally, I am not in favour of a child entering DSA via leadership to gain admission into a coveted secondary school. To me, the primary school is just a good playground for children to learn some ropes of leadership but they are by no means true leaders yet. Also, there are different age kids in primary schools and some being older get leadership positions, should that be a birth right since they are born earlier? Thirdly, for any leader I know, they must be good in something...otherwise what leadership to boast about? So being good in something means good in sports, music, academics etc and leadership is only a side outcome of what they excel in to bring about the leadership capabilities to go on to the next step.

To me, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TALENTED IN BEING A LEADER WITH NO OTHER TALENT as far as DSA is concerned. Gift of the gab, gift of a special talent and gift of networking etc...collectively makes one a leader.

I cannot think of a leader I know who has no other special talent other than just leadership...in fact they are more often or not...multi-talented.

So the girl whom Jetsetter mentioned about getting into an IP secondary school because she was made a leader, I thought her contribution to the school was sports? She won many sports title for the school right? So the DSA looks at her talent first and having a leadership role, just acts as a bonus between two kids who are good in sports and one has leadership and one without... So leadership is like a secondary criteria, not a primary one. And frankly, even if a child has a leadership role but the sports talent is weaker than the other sports person, the talent of the sports person would be desired first. Leadership only features when ALL BEING EQUAL, it is an added bonus. But still I want to qualify again, primary school leadership roles are playground roles, nothing really substantial yet. It is a good playground for kids to try their hands at leadership so I like it when a primary school tries to find a leadership role for EVERY student in a class to lead in something for them to have the experience and grow with it. I am also not for a student given 2 or 3 leadership roles and some have none.

So I agree...leadership SHOULD NOT be a main application criteria for DSA, it is meaningless...you don't need to admit a head prefect from a primary school and try to groom this head prefect to be the next head prefect for the secondary school. In fact, for top schools, every year, tons of head prefects will likely enter the sec schools via PSLE results. It is the exceptional academic one they want to find first via DSA, then if he/she is a head prefect, it is just a bonus.

The list of ministers you have listed, are you telling me they all went into their secondary schools via affiliation assuming you are listing their primary schools? If they did, then the leadership roles in all-boys primary school is also not critical to them since DSA is not exactly required, not because there is no discrimination in all-boys school.

I cannot exactly put a finger down on the discrimination for boys in leadership roles in co-ed schools because everyone's experience is different in different co-ed schools, since schools are run differently and students' population background are also different. So if this point cannot be factually proven, I rather not use this as a point on discrimination as discussion. Whatever I have stated above shares your same concern to DSA via leadership without touching discrimination. In other words, I agree with you if your kid has a special talent in something, he should not lose out to a girl who is going to DSA using head prefect leadership as a DSA criteria and with no other special talent.[/quote]What you have written is well and good, but what if DSA academic is removed and instead DSA leadership is introduced? Then leadership would be the only criteria for that group of students, no? Aren't there some schools which currently have DSA leadership? :?

pirate:

I am not going to have more children now that they are capping my tax relief to $80,000 a year. :stompfeet:

Not referring to tax relief per se, but I have so many friends/colleagues realising that it's so expensive to raise a child after they have had one. They are the better educated lot, who cannot imagine not giving the best to their offspring. They stopped at one.

And of course there are those who decide being dink is even better.

Dnls_mum:

Busymom:

Sorry to say, this doesn't make sense to me. So those with more kids rightfully should have less relief per child as compared to those with just 1 kid even if they are earning the same income? Why don't they cut the relief per child instead of hiding behind only 1 out of 10 working mothers would be affected?

Which is more equitable?

starlight1968sg:

Earn more pay more, earn less pay less

I agree that earn more pay more. That is the right principle. But why target working women with more kids? That is baffling.

At the risk of being flamed, I'd say my take on this and run far far away :siam:
i think whoever that came up with this new policy is very very smart :salute: :salute:
1. Progressive tax means tax those who earn more, more heavily than those who earn less. To implement this to the true spirit of a progressive tax structure is to tax the really high income more by eg taxing those who earn $1m and above up to 25% or even 30%. But to do this will really infuriate the rich :stompfeet: . This will be political suicide.
2. By capping the total relief, only 10% of working women will be affected. These are not necessarily only high income, but those with more kids. But these are generally women who are doing reasonably well in their career, not the tycoons or big CEOs etc. But what the government gets out of it is (a) more tax revenue, and (b) the ability to tell the people that they are taxing the high income more and they have implemented a progressive tax structure. The result? The masses are happy that the perceived high income are being taxed more, and the real high income who should be taxed more are not really affected, and only a small percentage of taxpayers/voters (10% of working women) are unhappy. The women just became the sacrificial lambs here to achieve a greater good.

Cutting relief across the board will not work as it will upset ALL women! And more importantly cannot be deemed progressive tax.

So to me, the new policy is never meant to be equitable. It is meant to give the impression of a progressive tax structure being implemented. Once you see it this way, it makes a lot of sense. Otherwise it actually runs contrary to all other policies on bringing up birth rate and asking those who can afford it to have more kids, and seems strange. :siao: :siao:

I am just as baffled as you are, and wonder why some choose not to see the inequity of it. No one has explained why it is perfectly alright for the 1-child working mother to get an income relief of up to $50k per child as opposed to a 4-children working mother who gets a relief of $20k per child.

4 children requires less effort (both monetary and non-monetary) to bring up as compared to 1 child? :?

I do wonder, had the relief per child being cut instead (regardless of the number of children), would some still say earn more pay more?

I for one, wouldn't kick a fuss on it.

In fact, to encourage a higher birth rate, shouldn't they give a higher relief per child for the second or third child, akin to the baby bonus system?

Now, I am going to be flamed for sure for suggesting this. :lightrod:

Sorry, Funz, I wasn't saying that you agreed to whatever that you thought that I thought.


It was a lazy way to go back to the discussion on WMCF and saying that the proposed absolute cap doesn't make sense.

Having looked at my post again, it looked like I was addressing you, but I wasn't. My apologies if it has given others a wrong impression of your post.

:imsorry:

pirate:

dimsum:

pirate, we are not referring to only GEP schools. for ALL schools, higher % of prefects come fr the top classes. So good results = got leadership capabilities?

Significantly more girls than boys chosen to be prefects in coed schs. Why? As they are really more guai. But does guai = good leaders? U can take a look at Pei Chun sch thread. One mummy wrote a pretty long post on this biasness.

So how? Choose prefects and monitors from the naughty ones? :scared:

But don't get me wrong hor. Personally, I feel that using \"leadership\" as a criteria for admission to secondary school is BS.

Computerized balloting is better and more transparent.

You'll be surprised how the naughty ones could become well behaved when made the monitors

And there are those who know how to impress teachers but disliked by majority in class who are made prefects. Well, no one would know of course, except those from the class.