Tuition

Last Wednesday, Minister Heng Swee Keat announced a slew of measures to reform the educational system. In particular, I was most pleased with his assurance that school’s would only set questions on the presumption that the students hadn’t attended tuition. This would go some way in assuring parents that they don’t have to join the tuition rat race, to give their children the edge. But this announcement by the Minister alone cannot do to reduce our nation’s obsession with tuition. I
To solve this problem, I believe it is first important to realize that desire of tuition largely arises from a justified desire for greater personalized attention. Hence rather than consider this fixation on tuition as a product of our “kiasu” culture, we would be more effective in reducing the tuition craze if schools tried to offer greater attention to the individual needs of students. With this in mind, I have 3 suggestions to make;
1)In many universities, professors have designated office hours where students can come and meet them if they have any doubts or are keen to discuss on certain issues of interest. It would be good idea to formalize such a system in our national schools as well. This would assure parents that there exists a system in the school to
2) Teach less, Practice More in class
In the current model, a lion share of classroom time is allocated to teaching of concepts.
3) Involving Parents http://sglinks.com/pages/4630708-singapore-call-relearn-teach-children
The Todayonline published a piece entitled “A call to relearn how we teach our children” which described how schools like Changkat Primary School were conducting workshops for parents to enable them to better help their students. Often what leads many parents to send their children for tution at least at the Primary school stage, is a sense of inaduacy. These workshops can be expanded, enabling parents to offer the children help.