Tan Kin Lian - Perspectives Review of the education system
Over the past decades, there were several major attempts to review and improve the education system. They were usually taken when a new minister takes over the responsibility.

As far as I knew, the purpose of these "improvement" measures was not clearly expressed. After all, we have an education system that produced the top students in many international rankings and that was the case for many years.

In spite of the top rankings, I suspect that the underlying concerns were:

a) The education system is stressful for many students and their parents.
b) It is costly for parents to send their children for tuition and enrichment classes
c) Perhaps there is a worrying proportion of the students, maybe 30% who leave school with poor results.

The problems that I identified above does not affect all students. Perhaps half of the students and their parents can cope with the financial and other burdens, and are happy with the outcome.

I am concerned about the other half of the students who did not do well.

The outcome of the past educational reviews will produce a somewhat standard solution - we need to make our education system more flexible to cope with students of different ability and background.

None of the recommendations came out with the approach that I personally favor, and that is, the education system should aim to achieve an adequate standard (and not a high standard) and that the competition should be removed from the education system.

Let me illustrate my approach with this example. We require a person who drives a vehicle on the road to pass a driving test. We do not aim to find out who has better driving skills than others.

Our education system should produce young people who are educated, and should not aim to find out the top students through a competitive system.

I believe that a competitive education system produces an outcome that is, on balance, bad for society. I acknowedge that it has its good points.

I am also aware that this problem is not faced by Singapore alone. It is faced in China, Korea, Japan and many other Asian countries.

This is a view that I hold personally. I am aware that many people do not agree with my view. But I wish to express this personal view anyway. I also welcome messages of support.

Tan Kin Lian

Add Comment

---