THE STAR ONLINE
Private tuition is a booming industry, albeit one that
is outside the tax system, and allows many retrenched professionals
and executives to survive unemployment.
AMID shops selling things like designer bread and wristwatches
is a little stall that hawks an unlikely item in most countries
except Singapore – school test papers.
These bound documents, covering English, Maths, Science and
Chinese in the 2009 exam, are sold at between S$30 and $40 per set.
There are scores of such vendors all over the city.
In two nearby blocks of three-storey buildings in a suburban
town centre, I counted no less than 15 tuition centres that offer
almost every subject a child faces in the city’s stressful
exams.
Others teach Life Sciences, Creative Writing or “Preparation for
Primary 1”. Two are music centres, one teaches art and another
provides Japanese lessons – mostly supplementary subjects.
At another suburb a kilometre away, 12 or more tuition centres
are flourishing. Private tuition – together with the trade in test
papers – has become a booming industry, probably raking in hundreds
of millions of dollars and providing jobs for thousands of
people.
These figures may be too conservative, if one takes into account
what Singaporean parents spend on tuition to give their kids a head
start.
A reporter who did a random interview with 12 students found
that their parents spent an average S$500 a month on their tuition
fees. In another case, a Chinese-language newspaper reported a
father spent almost half his monthly salary, or S$960, to pay for
his son’s English lessons.
In other countries, old test papers are generally used to wrap
fish, but here it provides a living. Why are they so
marketable?
Just as in societies like China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea,
Singaporeans worship academic achievement, maybe a little too
excessively, some believe.
They have seen success often going to graduates with
distinctions. They are picked for high office. It is exam results
that often decide how well people are to live.
This is making test papers of top schools a hot commodity.
Designed by individual primary and secondary schools to test their
own pupils annually, they have long been packaged and sold. The
higher ranked the school, the greater the demand.
In this small city of 700sq km, there are at least 500 tuition
centres, each with a database of home tutors for parents to select
from. The teachers charge hourly rates: S$15-S$20 for Primary 1-6,
and S$20-S$28 for secondary 1-4.
Some tuition even takes place online, where test papers can be
downloaded more cheaply. Some top junior college graduates have
taken it further by selling their study notes on the web.
The exact size of the trade is not officially known because the
thousands of people involved – especially freelance tutors or test
paper vendors – work outside the tax system.
With the weak employment market for graduates, this is useful.
It has allowed many retrenched professionals and executives to
survive the crisis of unemployment.
More importantly, the role of the home tutor appears greater
than the government is ready to admit. It touches the life of
almost every Singaporean.
The Sunday Times conducted a poll in 2008 of 100
primary, secondary and junior college students and found that only
three students did not have any tuition at all.
Even some university students have sought special tuition, but
the starting age is getting lower. Two in every 10 involve
kindergarten kids.
Contrary to belief, not all who seek help are students of
average or poorer grades. They include straight-A students,
too.
Predictably, the world crisis has pushed up the number of
private tutors, many settling into it because it is
recession-proof. This has allowed some jobless to survive.
A few with flair have actually done well enough to make it a
career. For example, a physics tutor to 80 students reportedly
earns about S$20,000 a month. Even students – undergraduates and
Junior College students – are earning good pocket money this
way.
The term “private tuition” is generally disliked by fun-loving
teens and, one suspects, by the government, too, for two
reasons.
First, the vast number of Singaporeans who rely on outside
tuition is interpreted by critics as indicating that the school
system is far from adequate.
Second, a lot of this thriving revenue is going to individuals,
rather than the Treasury – unreported and untaxed. It is part of
the underground economy that no finance minister wants to have.
Does tuition help to improve grades? The answer cannot be “no”
when 97% of students have done it.
It provides a crucial help to children who are weak in certain
subjects, be it English, Maths or Chinese. Singapore schools supply
a general education that is quite modern and diverse.
It is winning accolades from some countries which have adopted
its methods of teaching. However, it also faces criticisms for not
producing creative workers good at solving problems.
A retired school principal commented: “Our children are very
good at Science and Maths, but they are not groomed to be
independent thinkers.”