The Straits Times today reported that Singapore’s Education Minister Heng Swee Keat, claimed that “nobody has suggested abolishing examinations” when he announced that the Ministry of Education (MOE) is finally undertaking a review of its high stakes examinations policy. That is very strange indeed. Readers of this blog know that I have been calling for the removal of high stakes examinations for quite some time (click this as just one example). A quick search on Google, using the search terms, “high stakes examinations in Singapore” will find at least two of my postings in the first page of the search result page. Do any variation of these terms on Google and you may even find up to three of my postings that criticize the use of high stakes examinations in Singapore. I am not highlighting this just to show how good my SEO ratings are. I am just merely pointing out that on the internet, you will find many complaints about the Singapore school high stakes examinations system and also calls for its removal. It is simply amazing that these are not seen by Singapore’s Minister of Education.

You may now wonder if the Minister of Education actually uses the Internet or even read, much less, consider views aired on the internet. This is the minister of the MOE that has been globally recognized and lauded for its massive MasterPlan for IT in Education (MPITE). This is also the same MOE that has been pushing for 21st century learning.

Minister for Education Heng Swee Keat was responding to a query from a Member of Parliament (MP) about the the need for a review of the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) as it is known to be a major factor in the high stress levels in Singapore’s schooling system. The MP also said that the high stakes examinations also adds “to the coffers of the tuition industry” which I have also posted about.

In response, the Minister said that the review should not be rushed. He also said:

“Examinations well done serve an important purpose… allowing teachers and parents to gauge the extent of (students’) learning.”

I think the key phrase here is “well done”? What is meant by “well done”? If the examinations only reflect only the kind of assessment of learning that high stakes (largely written) do, is it well done? If these examinations do well in allocating students to their “proper” places in the economy, can it be said to be “well done”?

He went on to say that Singapore has a rigorous system. I agree it does but “rigorous” at doing what? Testing shallow rote-learning and mechanical operations?

Minister for Education Heng Swee Keat also went on to justify the need for caution in the review by citing the failure of a curriculum reduction to reduce student stress levels in Japan. According to the Straits Times report he claimed that education standards fell significantly! I begin to wonder if he knows what he is talking about.

Is curriculum reduction the same as reviewing the need for high stakes examinations? The MOE in Singapore has been doing curriculum reduction for years. Ask any teacher in Singapore. It can be argued that despite that the stress levels has gone up over the years. Again ask any teacher in Singapore. Ask the students and parents too.

And what “education standards” was it that fell in Japan? How did they measure that? Vague pronouncements like this do not help but confuse the issue.

He also cited that the sudden changes in the Japanese education system had led to Japanese teachers and principals complaining that the text books are thicker than before. So therefore, sudden change leads to more stress. My response to this is that the changes are sudden because education ministries are historically slow to make changes. Can we really do this review slowly as we have already wasted so much time?

The MOE is no different. Despite policy proclamations to show it is being adaptive to changes, the MOE is a very conservative organization run and advised by many who themselves were the successful product of the old system. It is hard for leopards to change their spots. The Minister of Education not told of the need to review high stakes examinations by his own officials is evidence of their unchanging nature. This organizational inertia seems to be postponing necessary changes until it is very (too?) late. It may become necessary, therefore, to call for drastic sudden changes to keep abreast of developments in the world. So if there are drastic changes to be made, it is due to this organizational inertia and perhaps the cultural ethos in MOE where speaking up to criticize policy, is to put it mildly, “not encouraged”.

The Minister of Education was then reported to have asserted that “we have a high-quality, strong system”. Do we? Strong and high quality in what sense? I know we are good at management and getting students to mug and ace examinations.

But what does this all mean for our foreign observers who have been praising and even been trying to imitate our examinations system? I wrote some time ago about President Obama calling for America to emulate Singapore. America has now introduced high stakes examinations system. So who is following who now?

What does it mean also for countries in Southeast Asia like in Indonesia, Vietnam and even in mainland China and who has been rushing to get their students to sit for Singapore’s iPSLE, the international version of the PSLE? Aren’t they going to look silly?

“The biggest challenge I see is in time constraint – we need time to build rapport and we also need time to ensure that the students do well.” ~ Daniel Tan, primary school teacher, Singapore quoted in the Straits Times, January 20, 2010.

The above quotation is the response of a teacher in Singapore in response to a lecture by two American psychologists at the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore. The two psychologists, Professors Edward Deci and Richard Ryan from the University of Rochester had delivered a lecture at the NIE on their findings in a 20-year period study on nurturing motivated learners and the effects of testing which had covered covering 15 countries.

No surprise that they recommended that students be given autonomy to decide how and what to learn. They also recommended that teachers spend less time on preparing students for tests. They also recommended that teachers build strong rapport with students. So this is what the research says. I will also add that this is not new.

I find the reaction to the findings by the teacher that I have quoted above interesting. He identified time constraint as “the biggest challenge.” My question is why is there a time constraint? Why is studying tied to time? He said that time is needed “to ensure that the students do well.”

Do well in what? The learning and deep understanding of concepts? Surely not as that should not be limited by a time cap. So where did that time constraint come from. Singaporeans will know he was probably referring to the high stakes examinations that Singapore students need to sit for in the course of their student life in Singapore schools.

What has been said at the lecture is nothing new to the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore. I am certain they know that. But why bother with learning from research (and the MOE has been pushing for research-based teaching) when it is continually ignored in favor of administrative convenience? High stakes examinations are an administrative convenience rather than a tool to assist teaching and learning.

The remark also points to the MOE’s continuing love affair with high stakes examinations despite all the evidence to the contrary about the effects of such an approach in schools. When will “doing well” in school refer to a deep understanding of concepts instead of being well-drilled to examinations like the PSLE, GCE O and A levels?

At the end of the day, the remark suggests that all teachers in Singapore know that all that really matters in Singapore schools are the results of these high stakes assessments. All else for the MOE is just a PR exercise for the gullible, both local and foreign.

Below are some quotes pertaining to the importance of numbers for our reflection. Have numbers distorted our perceptions of reality?

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(Francis) Galton is also known as the founder of “eugenics,” a term he coined, which means the science of arranging marriage and family so as to produce the best possible offspring based  on the hereditary characteristics of the parents. He believed that anything could be measured and that statistical procedures, in particular, were the technology that could open the pathway to real knowledge about every form of human behavior. The next time you watch a televised beauty contest in which women are ranked numerically, you should remember Francis Galton, whose pathological romance with numbers began with this idiocy. Being unsatisfied with vagueness about where the most “beauty” was to be found, he constructed a “beauty map” of the British Isles… If this was not enough, he also invented a method for quantifying boredom (by counting the number of fidgets) and even proposed a statistical inquiry for determining the efficacy of prayer.

~ quoted from “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” by Neil Postman

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Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s many recent visits abroad appears to have paid off – the 62-year-old ranked No. 32 in the inaugural list of top thinkers that mattered most this year in the latest issue of the influential Foreign Policy magazine in the United States.

~ quoted from “Anwar listed from among 100 Top Global Thinkers” by Debra Chong, The Malaysian Insider

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Rainer Kalb, a veteran writer who’s spent six years at kicker, once said: “The yearning for grades is a reflex to the debates about school grades in childhood. Now you can once again get upset about what you consider an injustice.” If that’s supposed to mean that the players secretly, subconsciously wish to be graded, it’s rather been my experience that it’s the writers who secretly, subconsciously react to a childhood experience. Now they wield the power to rate and grade and classify, now they are the teachers. WTF.

~ “Making the Grade”, Soccernet by Uli Hesse

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There is a sad joke about a fifth-grade teacher in a ghetto school who asked a grim Negro (sic) boy, during the course of a “science” lesson, “How many legs does a grasshopper have?” “Oh, man, he replied, “I sure wish I had your problems!”

~ quoted from “Teaching as a Subversive Activity” by Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner

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Schools in a nation are viewed as factories of one national industry that produces the product to compete with that of other nations’ education systems, and henceforth should be held to the same standards and produce the same values.Further, schools are considered as businesses and test scores on a few subjects represent their profit margin – the bottom line to judge their performance. As a result, it narrows the curriculum to a few subjects considered essential for competing with others.

~ “Global Competitiveness Reinterpreted: Homogenization vs Diversification” by Yong Zhao

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(Added on)

Singapore had the largest proportions of highly competent students who reached the advanced benchmark in Primary 4 Science (36%), Secondary 2 Science (32%) and Primary 4 Mathematics (41%). For Secondary 2 Mathematics, Singapore’s proportion was the 3rd highest (40%) (behind Chinese Taipei and Korea). [international medians: 7%, 3%, 5% and 2% respectively]

quoted from “Singapore Performs Well Again in Latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007, Press Release from the Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore

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The top student in this year’s Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) is a China national Qiu Biqing, 13, from  Qifa Primary School, who achieved an aggregate score of 290, with four A*s and a Distinction in Higher Chinese.

~ quoted from “Top student in PSLE this year from China”, the Temasek Review

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This post was inspired by my friend, Dennis, whose intelligence is not impaired by his O levels only qualification. He compared the Singapore school system to the English Premier League (EPL).