Tuition Galore

In today's Sunday Times, 97 out of 100 children polled have tuition outside school. Parents say that their kids benefit from such sessions and that the children find it fun too. Despite the high fees in some cases, tuition has become a necessity in Singapore. No wonder someone coined the term 'tuition nation'.

The article focused mainly on how well private tutors are doing and how popular tuition is among parents (yup, not kids) these days. As an educator reading this article, definitely it is enticing to go into this line. However as a non-educator going through those lines, there's just one big message that is flashing on my mind - Something is obviously wrong with Singapore's Education System!

A short paragraph in the article mentioned MOE's response to this trend - it is up to the parents' discretion to decide whether to have or not to have tuition, BUT all government schools do provide a holistic education to cater to the needs of the children.

What blasphemy! What bullshit / crap is this?!

For goodness sake, if schools are providing effectively what they are supposed to provide, there wouldn't really be the need for such a high incidence of tuition. No doubt the kiasu-ism mentality has some part to play but 97% (if I may generalise) of school going children are hooked up with tuition! Something is obviously not right somewhere. Does the problem lie with the children, the Ministry or the teachers?

Another shorter paragraph highlighted the views of teachers - there are too many pupils in a class, too much admin and CCA stuffs which are forcing teachers to be distracted and to 'teach less' in the classroom! Just how many more teachers do MOE want to drive away from this job? And how many thousands more do they intend to con into it?

I just hope that someone up there wakes up and stop deluding themselves and the public any further.