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Taking steps back?

Jman888

By Jman888,
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Jman888

Jman888

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It took 30 years to build a mindset for what it is today (kiasu, competitive, result, awards, numbers, etc), now they want to go back to basic.

 

How long do you think it takes to reverse the mindset and parents will REALLY don't have to worry about which school to go to, less tuition for the children, focus on non academic activities or on the special talents?

 

MOE scraps secondary school banding system and cuts awards

By Monica Kotwani | Posted: 12 September 2012 1158 hrs

 

SINGAPORE: The Education Ministry has scrapped the secondary school banding system, as part of efforts to ensure that "every school is a good school".

 

The banding system, which was introduced in 2004, categorises secondary schools into nine bands.

 

Band one consists of top schools, with a cut-off point of below 11 for the average aggregate grades in the GCE O' Level examination.

 

The Ministry of Education (MOE) will also reduce the number of awards it gives out to schools.

 

One of them is the Masterplan of Awards, which will be removed from 2014.

 

The number of performance measures in the School Excellence Model will also be dropped.

 

Education Minister Heng Swee Keat announced the changes at the ministry's annual Work Plan Seminar on Wednesday.

 

Mr Heng explained why his ministry is changing its mind about these awards, which were designed to help schools plan and evaluate their programmes.

 

"Both have led to much administrative work for schools, and fuelled public perception that schools are chasing awards," said Mr Heng.

 

"Having studied this for over a year now, we will make a major change. We will instead have a clear, simple framework to achieve and recognise school excellence."

 

Instead, the ministry will focus on recognising best practices in niche areas, such as teaching and learning, as well as students' all-round development.

 

It will set aside S$55 million over five years to enable every school to build its own niche.

 

Mr Heng also touched on homework and tuition.

 

"MOE can do our part not to contribute to the need for tuition. Our schools and examinations must not be run on the basis that students will have tuition," he said.

 

"Some parents complain that our teachers tell the students to seek answers from their tuition teachers. If this is true, we must put a stop to it."

 

"This is not to say tuition and extra support are not useful for some students," added Mr Heng. "But excessive tuition can be harmful. If they over-learn, they become bored in class."

 

- CNA/xq/fa

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Jman888

Jman888

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won't happen , the real world will be a harsh killing ground for them.... Anyway i think it is too ingrained to be able to do anything about anymore

 

 

if it takes 30 years, then it will take another 30 years to change [;)]

 

the bigger part is on how the school (no more grading, result focus) and teachers (better teacher in weaker school).

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Neost

Neost

6th Gear

seriously, first step is to have smaller class size so that teachers will have more time per student. And weaker students should have lower teacher-student ratio.

 

If teachers still have to face 30 to 40 monkeys day in day out, all these policies changes will not have the intended impact.

 

As please hor, what is important is the actual teacher-student ratio in classroom; Please do not count in those on GEO/SEO scheme who are holding appointments in schools and HQ but not really involve in classroom teaching to compute the ratio.

 

 

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Jman888

Jman888

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Good move.

Winds of change ... more to come.

Good set of younger ministers we are getting know.

All for change - for the better, for our next generation.

Kudos!

 

 

hope parents can be patience enough to see the result but the concern will be some jumping ones who only want the BEST.

 

If it works, it may not see it on your children but probably your grandchildren [rolleyes]

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Timbuktu

Timbuktu

Clutched

The next change will have to be MOH re public hospitals, beds, waiting time and doctor-population ratio.

 

They're now building more public hospitals, renting beds as interim, setting up more medical schools at NUS, NTU and new unis built, created (US-alike) MD program at Dukes-NUS, more polyclinics and homes for the aged, lower health care costs (a la Obama-care), ICU opt-out, raising standards of palliative treatment and care.

 

Again good move in the right direction, good for our next generation.

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Happily1986

Happily1986

5th Gear

hope parents can be patience enough to see the result but the concern will be some jumping ones who only want the BEST.

 

If it works, it may not see it on your children but probably your grandchildren [rolleyes]

I read somewhere before, i think it was in a commentary column written by former Head of Civil Service, Ngiam Tong Dow. He mentioned that tweaking education policies a different ball game to tweaking fiscal policies. The latter, you can feel the impact/feedback and finetune through positive/negative feedback loops about 1 or 2 Quarters later. However for education policies, it is not so soon for you to see the effects emerge. More often than not, you need to wait till the affected cohort graduate from their academic career and move into the workplace then you can compare with previous (unaffected) cohorts to see whether the policy is good or bad. A ballpark figure for that waiting time is 50 years.

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Happily1986

Happily1986

5th Gear

The next change will have to be MOH re public hospitals, beds, waiting time and doctor-population ratio.

 

They're now building more public hospitals, renting beds as interim, setting up more medical schools at NUS, NTU and new unis built, created (US-alike) MD program at Dukes-NUS, more polyclinics and homes for the aged, lower health care costs (a la Obama-care), ICU opt-out, raising standards of palliative treatment and care.

 

Again good move in the right direction, good for our next generation.

 

Long overdue move. The bed to population ratio has remained stagnant for a good many years while the population started to increase significantly from 2002. Even if the number of patients warded has not seen an appreciable increase, the healthcare system is evidently showing signs of strain.

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Silver_blade

Silver_blade

Turbocharged

I hope the next to change is streaming. What's wrong mixing the good and not so good students together...allowing everyone to look out and help each other? The good can attended 'special' classes (if they want to learn extra things or something more advance) after the usual school hours and the no so good can get help in remedial classes. Give everyone X-number of chances to re-take their PSLE if they fail.

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Happily1986

Happily1986

5th Gear

I hope the next to change is streaming. What's wrong mixing the good and not so good students together...allowing everyone to look out and help each other? The good can attended 'special' classes (if they want to learn extra things or something more advance) after the usual school hours and the no so good can get help in remedial classes. Give everyone X-number of chances to re-take their PSLE if they fail.

 

you can rename streaming or tweak it anyway you want but you cant discard the labelling. the negativity does not lie with streaming but the labelling. streaming is just a system, the conceptualisation did not cater for labelling to be included. so where does the source of this labelling come from?

 

harsh societal norms and expectations

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Tom_kkh

Tom_kkh

1st Gear
(edited)

so long they advertise those achievers from which school and the percentage of passes, it will never ends. parents will have their own sets of top school.

 

i don think they are getting to the root of so call school "branding"

Edited by Tom_kkh
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