This is copied and pasted from an earlier thread http://sgforums.com/forums/2297/topics/386256
The advice is very useful indeed for students who are
considering to study in a private school.
"When you are choosing a private school, you need to ask one
very important question which many private students forget to ask
before they enrol in a private school.
The important question to ask the private school is
"Who are the teachers that are going to teach you ? "
Ask to meet the teachers personally, ask to see their teaching
materials, ask to talk to the former students of these teachers,
ask the teachers for detailed lesson plans, lecture notes, tutorial
exercises with worked detailed answers for each lesson. Are these
materials just taken from a guidebook and the teachers just teach
from the guidebook ? Are the teaching materials exam oriented and
specially prepared by the teachers for the "O" level exam ?
It will be too late once the private students sign up for the
course and later they found out that the teachers do not cover the
whole syllabus of "O" exam ie some private school teachers just
cover the sec 4 topics or covers the topics superficially or the
teachers do not give or mark any assignments or exercises. Do not
do any ten years series questions or just pick one or two simple
questions to do. Worse, some teachers do not even know the syllabus
in detail or the exam patterns or the topics at all or they teach
only the topics that they know and they skip those topics that they
do not know and then they tell their students that those topics
they do not know are not in the syllabus or unimportant. Or when
the students have doubts or questions and approach the teachers for
help, the teachers will try to avoid by giving the excuses that
they will give the answers another day and on the next day they
will feign ignorance or they do not know the answers themselves,
they will try to scold the students or act angry to divert the
attention."