I
received a call from a policeman belonging to the Violence Against
Person Squad (VAP). He said that he wants to know what happened
between us and the Ministry of Education (MOE) with regards to our
daughter.
Background
information:
When my
daughter was in her primary 4 (10 yrs old), due to some school
issues, I requested for her to sit for her SA2 (final year exam) in
the school’s General Office. The principal (Mdm Balakrishna) did
not accede to this request and thus, my daughter did not sit for
her exam.
As the school issue has not been addressed, I applied
through the principal for homeschooling for my daughter. Months
later, someone from the Compulsory Education Unit (CEU) called and
inform me that I’m not allowed to homeschool her due to my daughter
not taking her P4 final year exam (special arrangement was not
approved by the principal).
There were no more follow-ups from the CEU until when
my daughter turned 12, where a meeting involving a few people
including the principal, Karen Chan (Head of CEU) and myself was
arranged. In this meeting, both the principal and Karen agreed on
not allowing my daughter to take her Primary School Leaving
Examination (PSLE) if she did not return back to school. Since
then, we engaged in correspondence with the group.
When my daughter was about to reach 15 (according to
the Compulsory Education Act, a child of ‘compulsory school age’ is
one who is above the age of 6 years and who has not yet attained
the age of 15 years), the principal sent me a report and copied it
to Karen Chan. Most of the content in it contains inaccurate
information. I have highlighted the huge disparities in the report
to both of them, yet none of them bothered to respond.
Out of a sudden, not knowing what has happened, we
received a call from a policeman belonging to the Violence Against
Person Squad (VAP). He said that he wants to know what happened
between us and the Ministry of Education (MOE). We provided him
with the information, however he did not get back to us ever
since.
It has been almost 2 months and there was still no
update from him, thus we requested to close the case as we did not
do anything wrong, plus there were no further queries from him.
Suddenly, his superior sent a text message insisting to
meet-up to investigate on the matter (in which we still have no
clue what it is about). We have requested him to write an email to
explain on the situation (to make sure it’s clearly documented),
but he came back with a reply of “communication thru email and
behind computers is not helpful, not effective and will cause
misunderstanding”.
How can a simple school issue propagate to such a
serious case involving the police, from the Violence Against Person
Squad?
“You don’t want to be the first parent to be sued for
kids not returning back to school” was the statement Karen said to
me in my previous meeting. The school’s principal has also
reiterated on this.
Hmm… food for thought…
Reviewing from past experiences, where there are huge
disparities between statements made (especially those of the
school’s principal) and a lack of transparency in communication (no
meeting minutes after meetings, questions and requests were left
unresponded to), I would like to ask if it is possible to take this
straight to court to settle this issue.