Sg education system - Give a pat on the back

RECORD PSLE SCORE
Singapore's education system works
By Koo Tsai Kee, For The Straits Times

THIS year's Primary School Leaving Examination results are heart-warming. Natasha Nabila Muhamad Nasir, a Malay girl from a working-class family attending a Christian school in a Gifted Education Programme class, tops the nationwide exam in grand style. Her score of 294 is a record that will remain for some time to come.
While her results are remarkable, the messages behind her achievement are familiar ones. Singapore is a place where everybody can do well. The elites do not have a monopoly on success. And success is not entrenched in the old establishment.

The first message is clear. The elites' children do not have a monopoly on good grades. The elites - having attended 'good' primary schools themselves - may cash in on their affiliation points and enrol their children in their old schools. But at the end, it is intelligence and, above all, diligence and motivation that produce good grades.

Every year, I see top PSLE students coming from working-class families. They worked themselves up from neighbourhood schools to GEP schools and then on to good secondary schools. Natasha is one such example. Our system gives them a chance for upward mobility. The system doesn't ask where you live and where you come from. It only asks if you are capable and willing to scale the peaks of excellence. The best schools are those that open the gate as wide as possible to the ablest and the most determined regardless of race, language, religion or wealth.

Money cannot buy intelligence, nor pedigree ensure clever children. Sure, money alone can buy some advantages; and pedigree can indeed give the child a head start. But the random nature of reproduction has shown that successful parents do not always have clever children.

The GEP has been much maligned. Changes are always welcome. But without the GEP, many outstanding students from working-class families in neighbourhood schools would not have been able to move to the good schools. They have no affiliation points to use, they cannot afford to live near good schools. In that sense, the GEP is a gold standard for transparency in enrolment. Only the motivated and intelligent need apply.

However, if parents think the GEP is a gift, they are mistaken. It is true that GEP students as a group do very well, but it is also well known that some fall by the wayside. The reason is clear. GEP students - however intelligent - do not have a passport to good results. Some GEP students could have come in by chance. Others may not be suitable for the academic rigour, while yet others find their interests elsewhere. Everybody has to prove themselves once again at the PSLE. The competition is re-set every few years.

In my daughter's primary school, 17 pupils obtained over-270 marks in this year's PSLE. Of the 17, only 10 came from the GEP, the rest came from mainstream classes. But what is noteworthy is that eight out of the 10 GEP students who scored over 270 marks had come from neighbourhood schools.

The second message is the multiplying strength of diversity and social harmony. Children of all races and religions, across economic profiles, study together happily in the same environment. St Hilda's Primary did not pre-qualify only Christians. If it did, it would have lost Natasha. Nor is the school exclusively for members of the establishment and the rich. Natasha's father is a technician and her mother a full-time housewife.

And our system doesn't bankrupt families' savings. Tuition fees are so low they are even affordable to poor new immigrants. Scholarships allow them to go to the best universities.

The third message is that the system works. If it didn't, if it only produced exam-smart kids, then how does one account for the success of modern Singapore? What fuels this metropolis? The answer is smart Singaporeans. With limited natural resources and limited human resources, it is the quality of the people that matters. Quality education delivers quality people. Nothing else does.

Sometimes, news can be misleading. A headline in The Sunday Times told of how the international school United World College beat top local schools at The Arena debating competition. That attracted attention and created a noisy chatter. But no headline noted that UWC was beaten in another school debate series.

But really, headline news does not matter to most people. What really matters is how the average student performs. The average is the centre of gravity of our system. In the Natasha story, her score of 294 is outstanding, but it is the average score of the average PSLE student that vindicates our system.

Here, it should be noted that the average literacy level in Singapore is very high. And the average Singapore student has consistently done well in international benchmarking tests. This is the system which many international educators have been trying to approximate.

It is a system that works. It delivers the Singapore dream.


The writer is Singapore's Minister of State for Defence. This article, however, is written in a personal capacity.