kkan99:

Marzuki, I am very surprised at your comments abt GY. I live close to the school and my neighbours are parents there. They are ok with the school, teachers and the Principal. Honestly, I have seen the changes in the school and am glad that a neighbourhood school like GY is making progress in their PSLE result. Shouldn't we be gracious, give GY a pat on the shoulder and cheer them on?

Hi kkan99,

I am only sharing the feedback of what I heard from the teachers and parents. It seemed so long ago that I heard good things about the school, though I see lots of good feedback postings in the forum.

I am happy for the school if it is really progressing well and living out its potential. I certainly hope that the enrolment will rise to least what it used to get when it was an old and quite run down building. While the school has done well to improve the score for a very small cohort of PSLE students in one recent year, I think it should not lose sight of the bigger picture. The school has undergone some upgrading and now, with further major upgrading, with the neigbouring popular schools cutting back on enrolment due to the one session policy by MOE and more people are shifting into Bishan, it is common sense to believe that enrolment numbers of GY will naturally go up even if there is little effort from the school.

I am only writing based on the feedback I received from a few parents, what I overheard from teachers' negative feedback about the principal and my analysis of the school enrolment and performance based on the favourable changes in MOE policy, the upgrading of the school and the increased in population in the estate.

If the enrolment numbers don't rise, I think some serious and honest soul searching needs to be done. Very urgently, the principal needs to address the ground concerns of these disgruntled teachers instead of spending time teaching students. Leave the job of teaching to the teachers so that she can concentrate on school management and motivation of the teachers. After all, there are already so few students doing PSLE and if the Principal needs to neglect other duties to teach, I think the system in the school is not working well.

I shall not write further on GY as enough has already been written and I would rather say niceties like what some forumers are doing. Niceties are good motivators and people are happier when you pat their back. Besides, I have a preference to support GY because it is the only government school in that part of the estate. At the same time, I am also a realist who cannot help but to call a spade a spade and will not sugarcoat my words. I hope to see GY succeed and can truly pat GY from the bottom of my heart when I see this - high enrolment numbers, high morale from teachers, happy students, supportive parents and Strong PSLE results from a large cohort of motivated students year after year.

Cheers to GY and all GY supporters in this forum!

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Wow! You got quite a piece of news here! :shock: Anyway, this year, my child is also in the 'tutoring' group of the Principal in gyps! And i was looking though some of the work that she gave, its of quite a high standard. So i supposed its more of a publicity work ba.....

Anyway, back to the school, i supposed as long as the school is moving forward, children are happy learning and making friends, i think how the Principal is like, is not too big a concern right? :xedfingers:[/quote]

How come our news so different? I heard one set of news from a few parents and overheard from teachers and I hear a different set of news from online community. If the Principal is really teaching the class consistently and spending a lot of time with them to prepare for PSLE, I think probably some parents whose children that are not in PSLE cohort probably don't know. In my mind, the principal need not do that. Her job is to manage the school and make sure that the teachers under her charge deliver high quality teaching. If she is spending time teaching at the expense of motivating the teachers to do a good job, I think she is not using her position and her time productively.

I deduced from the negative feedback about the principal as a signal that morale is an issue in the school. Disgruntled teachers cannot deliver good quality education. I hope that the principal will spend time talking to her teachers to motivate them. This would also help to dispel the perception that she is unapproachable and useless. I certainly hope to see the school grow and become more popular.

joyfulsally:

Oh dear...from what I know, when the previous P left, GY had to move out to Ang Mo Kio for Prime. Hence, the school could not attract students. But GY did not go downhill! In 1 year, GY PSLE results went up. It has never improved so much before. It became some schools with Good Progress award. If you have talked to the P, she is definitely not useless!

This is what I heard from the teachers' conversation. When I shared with my neighbour that forumers said that GY got good results in one year and the Principal did some teaching. My neighbour informed me that the good result in one year that GY had was not representative because the cohort was very small and this impacted the average score of students. I shared that some parents from the forum was pleased with the principal Principal teaching students directly and interacting wth them. Was shocked when they shot back that staff told her (a parent) that this was a publicity stunt because principal was unapproachable and out of touch. Don't know how true this is because some parents in this forum are happy with the school and principal but I hear different things from other parents. However, this is a small group that I heard from and they may be influencing one another and hearing stories from some disgrunted staff. Recently, I also read a good report about GY in newspaper where a parent chose GY over branded schools. Maybe, there are some good things that the school is doing after all. Most disturbing was what I overheard from the two staff talking about their principal behind her back.

I hope GY will be able to get more students when they move back to Bishan and become as good as or better than the yesteryears when the previous Principal was there.

After the previous Principal has left, GY has not been able to attract students and the school had been going downhill. I was helping my neighbour to pick up her boy from the school when I overheard a conversation between two teachers at the school. One of them is a Malay teacher telling an arrogant Chinese female teacher (who acted damn fierce when I saw her later telling another staff off and literally talking down to students) that the new Principal is not approachable, very useless and totally not hands on. In fact, they had so much bad things to say about the Principal’s leadership including citing examples. I can’t recollect the examples but the conversation seemed very real and I was really shocked by what I heard.

Although I have a house at Bishan, I am going to register my child at Woodlands primary school (near my mum’s place). Heard that the Principal is a very capable lady and schools under her charge grow.