I will never send my kid to a neighbourhood school |
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I am a trainer who have been around and across Singapore to train students and teachers. All school are good schools? Definitely no. Government schools will rarely surpass the elite, highly established ones. Student population (secondary schools) Better (well known) schools still maintain a higher PSLE score requirement before admission. Literally, a good school will feature smarter kids. When I mean smart, I am talking about how well they cope with studies. They have stronger self discipline and motivation regarding learning as a whole. Which leads to my next point. Government/neighbourhood kids can get really rowdy. Some spouting strings of vulgarities faster than you can even bring yourself to understand them. Very often their intellect are misdirected and they spend their time being an annoyance to the rest of the group. This therefore results in very disrupted learning. Quality of teaching staff Your students are smart, they learn things fast; besides teachers are also specially selected. They are quite often, the best of the bunch or former students (alumni). With prior knowledge of the school culture, these teachers are just adult versions of their students assuming a supervisory role. Government school teachers on the other hand are often swamped with multiple (at times possibly inexplicable) responsibilities and consequently feel less attached to their jobs. Alumni A well known school typically has a huge and largely successful alumni that can be tapped on for resources and networking purposes. Members of these alumni still actively engage the school and organize events on a regular basis. This link-up is a good way for the students to establish an even stronger alliance of contacts for the future. A government school would not have access to such a luxury. Some even merge with other institutions or even shut down altogether, thus resulting in an alumni that is small in size and much more apathetic. Uncomfortable truth So far, there are no top schools which have suffered the terrible fate of being merged or are scheduled to be replaced. Some even set up a separate international school wing where they cater specifically to students pursuing the International Baccalaureate curriculum; many of which end up doing exceedingly well. Government schools secondary and junior colleges alike) do end up on the chopping block. Realistically, the G has said that this is due to dwindling student numbers across the country. But let’s face it, would parents settle for a neighbourhood school instead of a branded one if academic achievements wasn't such an important criteria? If I had children, I am surely sending them to a “well known school”; after all some of them feature physical premises which are both aesthetically pleasing and would also probably make for a conducive learning environment. Needless to say, there will be more facilities offered within their compounds and students will thus be able to enrol in a wider range of co-curricular activities. This goes without saying, if every school is a good school (in sort of like a communist way of saying everyone is equal), then the children of ministers should be placed in neighbourhood institutions. Because if they do not have sufficient confidence in a public school as far as their educating progeny is concerned, we would not want that for our children either. Tldr: top schools are far richer, attract highly intelligent students, are blessed with largely connected and successful alumni, hire better teachers who are more likely to be former students themselves, endear to the public and possess very desirable reputations. Neighbourhood schools tend to be......., well,meh. If the ministers themselves ain’t sending their kids there, I shan’t either. |
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YOU MAY WISH TO READ: Not Every School is a Good School "Every school a good school." True or bollocks? All schools are good schools? Don't believe that shit. |
