An Interesting Case for Opposition Parties to Speak up

yizhen SG

An Interesting Case for Singapore Opposition Parties to Speak up

I found that Singapore government is always extreemly proud of Singapore education system, always claim that they are providing the world class something to their residents. But Singapore primary schools only provide half day (double session) education. Most Singaporean seems also get used to this issue, and seldom raise questions about it. But if we take a few minutes to analyze this case, compare with other countries education system, I think everybody will find this is an obvious defect of Singapore education system. Even in a third world countries, like China, Vietnam, North Korea, the governments provided full days single session basis education from decades ago, never mention those developed countries.

Here are some key points of this issue:

1: Half day education dramatically raise the financial burden of parents. Every child need to stay at student care center, or hire a maid, and this cost parents S$250-S$900 every month. Its an additional investment of education by each family itself, and such investments effectiveness is very poor.
In most Chinese society, parents are willing to invest heavily in their Children education, thats why even in China, with very poor education system, the students still can get a quite good result in international competition. If Singapore students get a good result in the international competition, its because they have first class parents, not the government. If the constitution require compulsory education, then government should abide by the law to provide and pay for the full day education for all pupils, even though the parents willing to pay additional fee for their children.

2: Double session forces morning session pupils to get up very early in the morning, this is not good for the health of pupil.

3: As Singapore government claim they are the first world government, and the government are indeed the richest government in the world, its very reasonable that government should provide full day education, provide free lunch to all pupils, like all other western government are doing. Singapore political elites always argue that if government provide too many social welfare, the citizens may not willing to work hard. But this is definitely not the case in primary education. Provide some welfare to our pupils, will free their parents to concentrate on their work and business. It not only benefit the future of Singapore, its also provide more free time for parents, more job vacancies for education workers, its benefit everyone in this society immediately.

Although pupils are too young to vote, but this doesnt mean their welfare can be ignored by politicians. Before this election, government has just spent 2.6 billions in lower income citizens, use the same money, we can build dozens of new schools, and this is a wise investment.

4: Job vacancies is always the top concerns of Singaporean, to build more government school, provide longer free education hours, definitely will create more job vacancies for people, and most of current staffs of students care centre can also be trained and absorbed by new schools. The other effect is that Singaporean will less rely on foreign maid. Its a very unique phenomena that some many Singaporean families hire foreign maid, create some many social problems, sometime even jeopardizes Singapore diplomat relationship. And its obvious is the bad consequence of half day education. If government can provide full day education, then most families only need to engage part-time maid instead of full time maid, this will also significantly reduce Singaporean household financial burden, in the other hand, part time maid services can only done by Singaporeans, like the cap drivers position, isnt it a win-win solution for both job market and residents?

5: Singapore government may argue that they have plan to provide single session education until 2014. This is not the right answer to this question, first, the single session in the plan is still partial single session, and second, half day education system is the hallmark of colonial education, back to British, they provide full day education for all their own citizens, so when Singapore get independent 40 years before, its already become the local government duty to provide full education to Singapore pupils. We may compare this case with Hong Kong, because Hong Kong is also a British colony until to 1997, and just 5 years later, at 2002, 60% primary schools has been converted to full day education, and they government also promise to convert 100% primary school to full day single session by as early as 2007. Then why Singapore government, grasp power decades before, still can not provide full day single session education until 2014, is it because this half day education become the hallmark of Singapore world class education system?