In a recent issue of Time magazine, it highlighted the ridiculous situation in South Korea, home of Samsung, where a policing force has been set up to ensure that cram schools, hagwons, would not function beyond 10.00 pm. South Korea has enacted laws to that effect. This policing force would patrol the streets and raid hagwons that keep open past 1.000 pm. The country’s school and university examinations are deemed to be so important for South Korean children that cramming themselves till very late at night is expected of South Korean students. It was reported that teachers in the mainstream schools there have also resigned themselves to having students sleeping in class because they know these students go for such cram schools after the normal school hours. An industry has also flourished to provide these sleepy students with accessories to enable them to sleep better in class! Interestingly, these cram schools have not declined but have just moved a portion of their activities on line where their clients can buy, for example, additional assessment sheets.

In Singapore, the Sunday Times highlighted a new development in the country’s infamous tuition industry. This multi-million dollar industry has traditionally focused on school students who attend additional private tuition classes in addition to their already long school hours and mammoth amount of homework from school. But the Sunday Times report that these tuition centers now have a new breed of students. These new students attending these tuition classes are parents of school-going children. They joined these tuition classes for parents so that they can learn how to support their children in the latter’s learning!

Yet recently, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore announced some reforms, through the Minister of Education, Heng Swee Keat, in the education system. Among these changes, they announced plans to reduce homework to reduce the notoriously high stress levels in Singapore schools. From the Sunday Times report, it sounds like too little, too late.

The South Korean and Singapore experiences show that legislative measures and half-baked attempts to control stress through reduced homework is not likely to work. This is because these two largely Confucian heritage countries (CHCs) still have as their focus in their education system, high stakes examinations which decide largely the fate of students academically and from the employment point of view. As long as these examinations play such an important role, no real change will take place with regards to amount of homework or additional tuition classes.

But unfortunately perhaps for these countries, their education administrative elite is probably made up of people who came through such a system and is unable to envisage anything else. They begin to believe the increasing number of students doing well in these examinations is testimony of their systems’ success at education. Their belief is further given credence by books like Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”. Should schools all over the world jump on this testing bandwagon too? If they do, don’t they realize the effect of such a choice?

Heng Swee Keat, Minister of Education, Singapore

At the Ministry of Education (MOE) Work Plan Seminar, Singapore’s Minister for Education, Heng Swee Keat, announced that the MOE will move towards an educational system which is more “holistic and balanced”. According to a report from the Today Online website today, it is announced that:

“To achieve a more student-centric culture, a review will be conducted to determine which practices are too achievements-driven, as well as those which generate too much administrative work, bogging down the teachers. These practices will be refined or done away with entirely, where possible.”

The MOE will also “create a new Character and Citizenship Education framework” in response to request from parents to “place a greater emphasis on character-building among the children.”

My initial impressions of this brief announcement is that this new reform will not make much of a change with regards to reducing stress except perhaps for teachers and school administrators by reducing their administrative workload. No mention is made about making changes (much less removing) the high stakes examinations focus of the Singapore education system.

This the main cause of much of the stress that is in the system. School administrators, teachers, students and parents are affected by the outcome of the students’ performance in these high stakes examinations. No mention is made of the removal of the school ranking system either. In short the changes are only cosmetic at best, and at worst it shows that the country is still stuck in its 19th century factory-like schooling system abetted by an Imperial China-style examination system.

Perhaps more interesting is that the lack of real changes reflects the reluctance by the Minister’s bureaucratic advisors in the MOE themselves to rock the boat. Despite claims in the past, of the need to make changes to meet the demands of the 21st century, little has been done except for an expensive cosmetic infusion of money into a massive MasterPlan for IT in Education (MPITE), that has still to show any significant result with regards to how teaching and learning is done differently in Singapore schools. Underneath that ICT gloss, Singapore schools are still stuck in the 19th century.

What do you think of these changes that the Minister has just announced? Let us know your thoughts on these planned changes for the Singapore education system.

Dear Minister of Education,

I read that you have been deluged with lots of feedback to improve the education system and the work load of teachers in Singapore schools. I have only one suggestion to make:

Get rid of the high stakes examinations system!

Thank you for your attention.