The Future of Education in China, Singapore and the ROW

Last week, the Chinese government decided to overhaul its USD100bn tuition industry by declaring that education and tuition companies should be strictly non-profit and will not be allowed to use the now infamous VIE structure to raise capital from foreign investors in foreign markets. Tuition stocks subsequently crashed as exemplified by New Oriental Education crashing 70%. There is no money to be made here. It is unclear if these companies can stay listed. If they do, great, maybe you might be able to make 100-300%. But if not, then you will never see your money again.

New Oriental Education from >USD50 to USD 17

There have always been qualms about how capitalism should not encroach certain sectors like healthcare/hospitals, public services such as waste management and, needless to say, education. If these institutions are run for profits, then they could just go full throttle to make money and fail to provide the necessary public services. In China's education landscape, this has happened. Or rather, it was structured to happen because the rich can always pay up and get their kids onto the best platforms or employ the best tuition teachers for their children. 

Hence the Chinese government decided to do something - by clamping down on education (and also property and internet giants). In this way, you can level the playing field if not the current generation, then for the next generation. The next step is to get the nation's kids off "spiritual opium" - additive mobile games that has glued all our children's eyeballs to those screens. As such, Tencent is also falling like a brick. 

Actually, Singapore and the rest of the world are not that different. Our tuition industry runs into billions of dollars despite our population and economy being only a fraction of China's. Kids from lower income families are losing out in our highly competitive, elitist education system. And mobile games, that's every Singaporean parents' nightmare. We are all smoking "spiritual opium".

Spiritual opium

Addiction is as old as civilization. Our brains are wired to respond to incentives and it requires a lot of willpower to abstain. Think prostitution, tobacco, alcohol, gambling which has caused so much problems despite everyone knowing their harmfulness. What are our odds now to beat addiction when the lures are now right in our palms. It is a huge social problem as with our global education system.

Yes, (*sigh*) the global education system.

It is well-known that our education system is very outdated. When we look at our lives across various aspects, it is really hard to think of system that has not changed. The way we communicate across distances have changed so many times that we don't even know where to start counting. Broadly, maybe it started with human messengers, then letters, then telegrams, phones, emails, whatsapp and now zoom but in between we also had pigeons, pagers, car phones and SMSes. It is a similar story the way we work, the way we consume music, the way we commute and run our governments and so on and so forth. Everything has evolved. It is amazing how the classroom has not changed. 

Classrooms have not changed for 100 years!

Is this really to best way to learn? I have written a lot about Singapore's education system. But as I learnt about other education systems across the globe, the bigger picture remains bleak. Not only has learning not changed much since humans rode horses, it is totally inadequate in preparing our children for the connected future. What is the point of memorizing Shakespeare when you can always just google it? The other day, my kid just asked me did I ever use the solution to the quadratic equation in my adult life. I did not answer him.

Learning has to be made fun, multi-faceted and more about harnessing creativity. It is no longer about memory work and brute force. How do we incentivise our kids to learn when screens, games and Netflix are competing for the same eyeballs? There are no easy answers. It doesn't help when the best brains have also gravitated to work for Facebook and Google to write algorithms that will capture those eyeballs rather than staying in schools to teach.

It's at uphill battle. We desperately need better teachers. We also need to better use media to teach in fun ways and ensure knowledge is retained. Parents have to play even bigger roles. We also need to make sure our kids can learn to relearn, because knowledge keeps getting updated. I remember my periodic table was much simpler!

Today's periodic table

Learning is also about discipline. It takes effort to force the brain to rewire itself as it learns new knowledge so that it gets stronger. Games, Tiktok and Netflix do none of that. It is a different state of mind. It's inducing artificial dopamine kicks after dopamine kicks without the effort needed. As such, Our kids are increasingly addicted, getting used to the effortless lazy mode. In future, they might find it way much harder to get in the "flow zone" of focused studying or training. 

The joy of learning is being taken away.

Learning is for life. It doesn't stop after we graduate. I learnt what's most important in life way after school: human psychology, value investing and valuable lessons from best selling books such as The Selfish Gene and Bill Gate's How To Avoid a Climate Disaster. We are not teaching these in schools. At least not yet. It is pertinent that our schools emphasize that learning never stops. The twelve to thirteen years of core education simply prepared us for the important tertiary learning and then ultimately the University of Life. If kids are taught that learning is about brute mugging and exams and they have to find dopamine kicks from "spiritual opium", then all is lost. 

As parents, perhaps we have to step up and encourage holistic education, induce a home environment of learning, replace spiritual opium with physical stimulus (more sports and physical activities, it's the Olympics fever after all) and enforce the mindset of learning to relearn, discipline and help our kids discover the joy of learning. 

If China is doing something, Singapore should follow.

Happy National Day! Huat Ah!

Singapore's Conundrum: MOE's Compounding Mutation

Spoiler alert! If you intend to watch Akira (1988).

Once in a while, on this infosite, we discuss Singapore's education system, which, in my opinion, is mutating uncontrollably into something that is ready to implode any time. While researching for this post, it reminded me of this Japanese cult anime called Akira that depicted an apocalypse future where kids with psychic ability (like 100 times more powerful than Star Wars' Jedis) wreaked havoc and destroyed cities. In the scenes below, the kid with psychic ability was not able to control his power and mutated into a huge monster that ended in a la-nuclear explosion (if I remember correctly). The day was saved only (or partially saved) by a miracle. Again, spoilers ahead in case any reader here would ever want to watch Akira.

Scenes from Akira (1988)

In some ways, our education system is really like a monster than had been mutating and mutating all these years and looks like it would further mutate wreaking havoc for Singapore. In some ways, we are seeing some warning signs: more and more teenage suicides, the recent infamous NDP middle finger boy, Amos Yee, just to name a few. So what's happening?

In the past, we discussed these issues, poor working environment for teachers, school rankings, kiasu parents, elitist system, syllabus that was way too mature for primary school kids amongst others. I would say that over the past 20 years, these issues were simply compounded as one detrimental issue added on top of another. It's some kind of compounding mutation like what happened to the kid in Akira. He was actually a fine lad in the beginning.

To better illustrate this point, we look at another manifestation of the problem that is how parents tried to tackle the issue with creative solutions, how the system accommodated and how this got crazier and crazier. I would say that there wasn't a problem 30 years ago, when I was in primary school. Back then, we were just interested in getting kids to school, making sure we got the literacy rate up. The problem really started say some 15 years ago when parents realized they needed to upend the system to gain an advantage for their kids in our small little red dot. So these pioneer mutation experts gamed the system by preparing ahead of the syllabus and/or trying to get into good primary schools on Day One. Back then, there was no need to volunteer to get into good schools like Raffles Girls or Nanyang. It was free for all.

Then some 10 years ago, the good schools started to feel overwhelmed since everyone wanted to get in and they created the damned volunteer system. This was the beginning of the end since only privileged families can afford to do the volunteer hours. Then the hours lengthened. And lengthened. Today, it stands at 80 to 100 hours for the best schools. Other parents, thinking ahead started preparing for GEP to try to game GEP - the gifted education program that allow kids to skip PSLE and also in other ways (direct admission), secure a path to good secondary schools and higher education, even though their kids may not be gifted.

Then there was the huge tuition problem. After years of parents preparing kids ahead of the syllabus, the schools started to teach less and less, outsourcing real teaching to the billion dollar tuition industry. But as the game progressed, it's not just any tuition that would allow the kids to smooth-sail through PSLE. About 5 years ago, polarization in the tuition industry happened, with Learning Lab and lots of other star tutors and star centres paving the way for elite tuition. Only by paying up can students stand a chance to be good at PSLE.

To sum up, over the past one or two decades, our education system didn't evolve to be more robust to deal with these changes. It let the mutations grow like cancer.

Mutation gone wild

Today, the mutation had gone truly wild. In fact, the tables had turned and it might not be feasible to go into the good schools unless the parents are willing to fork out thousands of dollars every month to keep up with the system. It might be better to be in a good class in a good neighbourhood school, with young and energetic teachers. Coupled with tuition, the kid stands a better chance to do well in PSLE. This problem came about because of the lack of good teachers.

You see, MOE (Singapore's Ministry of Education) had been losing the good teachers for years, so the ratio of good teachers in the system could be just 20-30%. These teachers would be assigned to the best classes. So in good school, it is more likely that an average kid would not be in the best classes hence getting the poor teachers. While in a neighbourhood school, the reverse is true. If a kid gets a poor teacher, it takes a lot more effort and tuition to catch up. The kid is also less motivated. In school, he is not taken care of by the poor teachers, and he has to go for lots more tuition which makes him tired. All these further exacerbating the issues, making the mutation worse.

We learnt that compounding is a good thing in investing. Returns compounding at 10% makes our money double in 7 years and quadruple in 14 years, growing 8 folds in 21 years, meaning $100k can become almost a million over two decades. This similar concept works in reverse in MOE. The mutation is compounding and has intensifying the problem for all primary school kids and their parents. Now that MOE is going to preschool, it might be more cancerous compounding.

Some might argue that it's the parents fault. It might be, but we discussed this before as well, we cannot stop an arms race or much less girls wearing higher and higher heels wanting to look tall and beautiful. Similarly, we cannot stop parents from being kiasu. Some also argue this is what it takes to be really good, to win global math and science Olympiad competitions. Maybe, but why drag the whole nation into this race, not every student can be Joseph Schooling. The system cannot just be catered to produce a few Joseph Schoolings while decimating childhood and causing teenage suicides.

Some say it's about building character, building resilience. Again that's true. But we also use that reasoning for conscription. Army sucks, we still dig trenches, something important maybe a hundred years ago to escape artillery bombing during WWI, but today people are bombing with drones. So, we carry ET stick and blade for what ah? Some say, in the army, we learnt almost nothing useful for working life but we say it builds character. Army builds resilience.

Scene from Akira (1988): Nuclear explosion

In fact, the resilience excuse is pretty useful. So a messed up education system builds resilience. Army builds resilience. We got a hardship overseas job posting, it helps build resilience. When we encounter bad bosses at work, they helped build resilience in us. Surviving a nuclear explosion builds resilience. Heck, everything bad builds resilience. But shouldn't we focus on fixing the system?

Alas, the more I think about it, I believe it cannot be truly fixed. I thought we could some years back (see other posts in the Education label). But we have mutated beyond the point of no return. The partial solution could be scrapping PSLE. This could be good enough for the next decade or two. We would spare young kids going through this proverbial MOE's baptism of fire before puberty. Most countries have their students tested at university entrance exams, usually at age 18. Singapore is unique that we do it at age 12. If we scrap PSLE now, we dial back the mutation somewhat, but the trajectory is unlikely to change, we are heading towards South Korea's path.

Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia about South Korea's education system.

The system's rigid and hierarchical structure has been criticized for stifling creativity and innovation and is also described as intensely and "brutally" competitive. The system is often blamed for the high suicide rate in the country, particularly the growing rates among those aged 10–19. Various media outlets attribute the nations high suicide rate on the nationwide anxiety around the country's college entrance exams, which determine the trajectory of students entire lives and careers. Former South Korean hagwon teacher Se-Woong Koo wrote that the South Korean education system amounts to child abuse and that it should be "reformed and restructured without delay." The system has also been criticized for producing an excess supply of university graduates creating an overeducated and underemployed labor force; in the first quarter of 2013 alone, nearly 3.3 million South Korean university graduates were jobless, leading many graduates overqualified for jobs requiring less education. Further criticism has been stemmed for causing labor shortages in various skilled blue collar labor and vocational occupations, where many go unfilled as the negative social stigma associated with vocational careers and not having a university degree continues to remain deep-rooted in South Korean society.

Well again some Singaporean parents are thinking ahead, pulling the kids out of the system if they could. Already, 20-25% of every cohort now go outside the conventional route in secondary schools. They could be in international or private schools and I believe more and more parents are also sending their kids overseas at the junior high level if they could. 

The ultimate ideal model is the Nordic education system where the best teachers (all Masters and PhD holders) are put at the core of the system and they believe in the true altruistic learning philosophy making sure that learning is enjoyable, done at the child's pace and ensuring that no child is left behind. This is the direct opposite of our system that emphasizes about ranking and results, commoditizes teachers and the teaching profession and ensures everyone is left behind except the elites. To be fair this is an Asian phenomenon and no Asian nation had successful replicated the Nordic model.

In Akira, the world averted a catastrophe with great sacrifices and the ultimate reset - a Big Bang that gave birth to a new universe. Perhaps that's the miracle we can hope for in Singapore's education conundrum.

Teach Less Learn More - Lessons Learnt Part 3

This is the last instalment about Singapore's Teach Less Learn More Education Philosophy, its trials and tribulations and the improvements needed. Links to the earlier parts below:

Part 1
Part 2

We discussed how Singapore's education system should nurture the love for learning and also focus on collaboration not competition. Google and the great companies of the world collaborate to bring about better results. It's not voting out your mates in some reality TV in order to win a million dollars. The real world is about working together to create blue oceans, not battling it out in red oceans.

In this final post, we would like to discuss adaptability and understand the game changing future that is upon us and how we can prepare our kids for it.

The world is changing faster than ever. A hundred years ago, changes from generation to generation was rarely as epic hence fathers could teach their sons very useful life lessons and the next generation benefits. But in today's world, things are moving so fast that whatever we learn becomes obsolete in a few years. What our fathers learnt has no implication in our lives today. We can barely learn anything from our parents when it comes to work and technology.

In fact, whatever we learnt in school just a few years ago is already obsoleted. Considering that our primary schools and secondary schools are using curriculum pretty much improvised from fundamentals half a century ago, we can safely say that almost everything that our kids learnt in school today has no use when they enter the workforce. What could be more important is really teaching them how to learn and how to relearn, on top of nurturing their love for learning and collaboration.

Yes, this is about adaptability. A great concept in a profound religion is the concept of impermanence. Everything is ever-changing and the only constant is constant change. In today's world it has also become constant change faster and faster. To adapt to such an environment, one must learn to be resilient, to accept new norms and reject outdated thinking all the time and faster each time. 

The way humans communicate shed light to how our world is really moving. A hundred years ago, person to person written communication was the snail mail. Some of us might have the privilege to experience this outdated mode of sending letters via snail mail to pen pals or loved ones, then waiting for their replies which could be weeks. Then telegram came along, we could send today's equivalent of SMS to our loved ones at an exorbitant cost of 10 word at $3 via the global telephone network pioneered by Alexander Bell and his successors thereafter. Then we moved to fixed line telephones, which was a break through then. About thirty years ago, phones went mobile and we could also send SMS via our mobile phones, for 10 cents per message.

Remember this?

But when the internet came along, the whole game changed. We had emails replacing snail mail and we wait for hours or days for replies, down from weeks. Then we had the first generation of chats like ICQ, then Skype for video, Messenger and today Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Wechat and Telegram (again)! We created another whole online world for communicating which for some became even bigger than the real physical world in terms of communication. Everything has changed. We no longer wait for weeks for a reply, we are down to seconds. A minute could be an eternity for some. 

Yet we are learning to solve how many marbles Ravi has in our primary schools (an anecdote from the previous posts).  

Along this evolution of social communication, some inevitably fail to adapt. Some of our friends are not on Facebook, some not using Instagram or Twitter, unable to adapt. Most might not heard of Telegram, the new Whatsapp. To adapt is to keep shedding the familiar for the unknown. It is not easy hence not taught. But for our next generation, it could be imperative. It's adapt or die.

Adaptability also means being able to learn and relearn and to be resilient. Not calling it quits when the going gets tough. These attributes again, are not developed by solving complex math problem sums involving Ravi's marbles or rote memorising. Adaptability might well be about introducing important universal concepts drawn from the intellects of the past philosophers: resilience, tenacity, not taking things for granted.

Another big theme in our lifetimes could be the advent of A.I. or artificial intelligence. Computers are getting smarter by the minute. They can beat the best human players in traditional board games like chess and GO or weiqi, supposedly impossible still for at least another decade. The A.I. community is now targeting games like Warcraft. Pitting A.I. against the best players in a highly complex real time multi-player game. Again it might not be long before we see A.I. beating humans at their own computer games. In fact, it had be theorized that A.I. could go into what is called a singularity - a point of no return.

Since A.I. can learn by teaching themselves, as the weiqi program that Google's AlphaGo invented did, what happens if they keep teaching themselves in milliseconds and their intelligence explodes in an exponential way? This has been hypothesized, and if it comes true, then human as a race could face an eventuality. It could be utopia, where machines do all menial jobs for us, find cures for all our illnesses and we can be left to pursue our real purposes of our lives, which we have to then figure out. What is our real purpose in this universe if we don't have to worry about food, money, health problems?

A.I. - Termination or Salvation?

Or it could be apocalypse, ie. machines wipe us out like what Hollywood depicted. Machines that are able to teach themselves would eventually come to a point where they surpass us in every and any way imaginable. Just as they already did in chess and GO. So why would they need us to be around? These are big questions, worthy of yet more discussion. But to get back to the education issue. The key question is:

Why are we still trying to figure out how many marbles Ravi has in a way-too-confusing math puzzle?

Computers can do all the math that needs to be done. Yes it is true that we need to learn the basics and the fundamentals, but nothing beyond what is more than necessary, definitely not solving for marbles via convoluted English sentences designed to confuse nine year olds in a math problem that requires algebra but yet algebra cannot be used as a solution. The future is not about hard math nor hard science, not about rote learning, memorizing, concepts way too advanced for pre-teen kids i.e. all the things the Singapore's education is focusing on.

Ironically as computers take over more and more routine calculations, jobs that are immune to this mega A.I. threat are the ones that Singapore gave the least emphasis on, like hairdressers, barbers, chefs, masseuse, chiropractors, therapists, nail artists, trainers, pastors, gurus perhaps even, here's the kicker, school teachers. In short, jobs that require more human touch where robots find it hard to make the emotional connection. 

Ultimately it might be teaching our kids what it means to be human. To be compassionate towards other, to be able to empathize, to use the best soft social skills to help others. These are the important lessons that might differentiate the next generation and give them the edge over robots. Singapore's education has skewed towards forging the alpha male or female, to compete and beat everyone in some rule based animal war. The world is changing. It's not hardcore competition nor grades and results. Education should be about:

1. Collaboration

2. Resilience and adaptability

3. Learn to relearn

4. Empathy and the human touch

It is not too late to focus on these. Teach Less Learn More doesn't have to become another acronym. Let's hope we move faster towards this new direction, more and less alluded to by the baby steps initiated by Mr Heng Swee Keat, our former education minister.

PS: Very good to know that he is recovering from stroke! Let's hope he get well really soon!

Teach Less Learn More - Lessons Learnt Part 2

This is a follow-up post on Teach Less Learn More - Part 1.

Teach Less Learn More (TLLM) was touted as the frontier philosophy in Singapore's education system to make learning holistic, bringing learning from inside the classroom to hands-on experiences, learning by discovery and less rote memorizing. Unfortunately, the implementation left much to be desired. Today, after years of TLLM, we are still stuck in an epic education war, akin to the popular Animal Kaiser game, where no animals nor their masters actually win.

Perhaps we have to go back to the genesis of Singapore's education system to understand a bit more. Singapore's national education system started in the late 60s and early 70s. Back then, the late Dr Goh Keng Swee, Singapore's chief economic architect needed to solve urgent problems: illiteracy, lack of core math and science skills and the need to increase in productivity and efficiency of our workers working for Multinational corporations or MNCs setting up shop in our little red dot. So he created an education system to tackle these issues, focusing on the most efficient way to produce engineers and workers.

Dr Goh Keng Swee

Dr Goh Keng Swee was a super remarkable man. Yes, super remarkable. We owe Singapore's success as much to him as our late founding father Mr Lee Kuan Yew himself. (Links to these posts attached to their names in the previous sentences.) This website has posts dedicated to our two most important Titans. The education system they created fifty years ago was best suited to solve the issues then. We focused on rote learning, skewed the importance of math and science and we made sure we produce engineers by the truckloads at the end of it. It worked perfectly. 

Alas, after half a century, we failed to reform the system for today's world. Today's issues are, by and large, created by still following an outdated model laid down by our founding fathers. We had some nominal education ministers, whom didn't restructure for modern times when they were in power. We introduced school rankings and a completely berserk implementation of TLLM. We crammed difficult concepts into our young minds thinking it's improvement. 

Yeah, Laplace Transformation at PSLE, anyone? Or perhaps psycho-analysis of Lolita at Primary 5?

Then we had Mr Heng Swee Keat who did a lot of wonderful things but he left the Ministry of Education way too early and now it's really unfortunate that he had a stroke. Our hearts to Mr Heng and his family, hope he can come back soon! 

For all the good things that Mr Heng has done, we need some strong follow-ups. In particular, here are three points worth discussing:

1. Love for Learning

2. Collaboration not Competition

3. Adaptability: Learn to Relearn

The tragedy of all the mis-steps in education over the years was that it killed the students' love for learning. By cramming more and more difficult concepts into young brains when they are not ready simply turned them off. Imagine throwing the baby into the deep end of the pool and then expecting the he becoming next Ang Peng Siong in eighteen years. That seemed to be the way our education system wanted to work.

Stop cramming difficult concepts into our young minds and start nurturing the students' love for learning. The world has changed. We do not need to churn out engineers and secretaries as fast as possible. We need multi-dimensional thinking, adaptability and teamwork. It is time our schools start to teach more of these.

It has been said so many times that it's like super cliche. But we have to say it here again. Learning is a life long process. One can never stop learning. It's the truth. Our education system has made learning so tough, it's not funny. If we kill the love for learning in our next generation, then how can they continue this life long process? 

It is not too late to revamp the system to one based on nurturing our students' love for learning. We should move away from tests, cramming difficult concepts, rote learning to make education really beneficial. Learning should be fun, entertaining, relevant, practical even for the daily lives of young students. It should also be impactful and inspiring. There is really not much relevance in solving for how many marble Ravi actually has, knowing that he has 245 more then Siti and John combined and John has yet another 69 marbles more than Siti and all of them has 941 marbles together. Whatever! How does this help a nine year old in his daily life?

The only reason why primary school students derive joy in solving as many as these problem sums is to be able to beat their classmates by solving more sums than them. This is a very sad revelation. It creates another big problem. It foster excessive competition. We are not saying competition is not good. Competition is obviously necessary. It is dictated by nature: survival of the fittest. But excessive competition which is what Singapore is all about has lasting damage. The real world is not about individualistic competition except in Olympic games. 

In most work environment, we work as a team. There is competition but that is based on company vs company like Google vs Apple, or even consortiums vs consortiums like European banks vs US banks. It is rarely about individual competition or even competition within the company. Companies that encourage the culture of intra-company competition usually fail. Within the team, or within the company, it is about collaboration, not about competition. Yet, the Singapore education has evolved into one where it is all about becoming #1. Or being amongst the top. Only the top quartile or decile wins. Beating the next guy to be one up. This is a loser's mentality.

More often than not, Singaporeans have the mentality that there can only be winners and losers. If you lose, that means I win. To go up, I must step on others' heads. I cannot lose even if I am giving money away. Must check whether the auntie selling tissue really lives in one room flat. This loser's mentality is very detrimental and most work environment collapses when such mentality dominates the culture. These losers think that the compensation pie is fixed. If I get a smaller slice means someone is getting a bigger slice. So they go all out the grab the slices. They are willing to backstab, hit below the belt, go under the table and do all sorts. This is loser's mentality at its worst.

It is not about competing who's winning and who's losing. It's collaboration.

In the winning culture, the winners know that the pie is not fixed. It is as big as they want to make it because the world is their oyster. They collaborate in the most ingenious ways to grow the pie. This is how the Facebooks and the Googles of the world is taking over the planet. Our education is not contributing to create more of these world dominating companies, nor educating the workforce to be able to adapt in these winning culture. 

Collaboration

The real world is about collaboration, not competition. There is no #1 spot, nor cut off scores, nor elbowing to be amongst the top. It is teamwork, thinking win-win, forging new routes to access the blue ocean and adapting along the way. 

For those in the workforce long enough would know there is really limitations in what one person could do. Humans work together since prehistoric times, to bring down mammoths, to build pyramids and today to create new markets. The pie is never fixed. Google, by putting the best brains in the world into one firm is trying to solve some of the world's biggest problems. Like creating self-driving cars so as to free us to do a lot more productive work while commuting and at the same time reducing accidents and traffic jams. This came about with collaboration, not competing who gets more fat bonuses from Google's advertising revenue via its search engine.

Google and the rest of the tech firms are at the forefront of game changing innovations. Alas, our schools are ill prepared for what's coming. Next post, we talk about adaptability: how to learn to relearn and the best skills to impart to our next generation!

All three parts are out!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Teach Less Learn More - Lessons Learnt Part 1

Despite this being an investment blog, education posts written in 2011 and there after had delivered one of the highest pageviews as a result of our obsessively competitive education system and the interest it generated. There had been various changes since then: it was announced that PSLE would move away from the three digit scoring system, schools would be more holistic building on the TLLM (a.k.a teach less learn more philosophy) implemented almost a decade ago amongst other changes. Hence it might be a good time to give an update here.

Let's recap a few topics:

1. Parents vs System

2. Teachers

3. Philosophy (new topic)

Parents vs System: this topic had been debated to the death, yes blame the kiasu parents. But the solution is not asking all the parents to stop being kiasu. That cannot be the case and as parents, the solution is also not about stopping tuition for our kids, as to try to stop condoning the system and to try to cut the financial umbilical cord to tuition centres. This seemed to be some parent's mentality. If I do my part to not support the tuition industry, then the system has to change. Sorry it doesn't work that way. Tell the ladies: try not wearing high heels to stop condoning heels which are bad for ladies' feet, bad for stability and bad for the wallet. It doesn't work. Not letting your kids go tuition when he needs it in this day and age just makes it a handicap, akin to purposely tying one arm behind in a boxing match.

Just to share another interesting revelation here. The education system in Singapore, in effect, is an epic battle between parents and their resourcefulness, it is not about the students, who's really smart and who's really good at math or science, or reciting poetry. As our young kids are made to learn more and more difficult concepts at younger and younger age, the key determining factor becomes how much resources the parents can put in the ensure their kids win. Unfortunately, it is much less about the kids' true capabilities.

Just take primary school math as an example: today an 8 year old Singaporean school kid is made to learn very difficult math concepts using fractions and algebra when their minds are not developed for these concepts. Just to elaborate, we have math problems requiring algebra to solve but the system refuses to introduce 'x's and 'y's and instead uses bars and pies to try to mask the difficulty. Needless to say, there is a very high degree of idiocy in giving such problems in the first place. I am sure we will get to 'x's and 'y's, perhaps differential equations and Laplace transformation for Primary 3 in a few years at the rate we keep introduce tough topics. 

Good luck parents of the future! Hence the solution to make these poor children "able to do" these problems involve rote learning and memorizing steps without them truly understand the concepts. This requires major investments into either tuition or parent's involvement (time and effort) or both,  to make sure the kids keep regurgitate the rote steps to solve these math problems.

This is so silly, agreed?

This is like a video game where the parents throw money, time, resources to train their kid i.e. the character so that they can go fight other computer characters and prove their worth. Of course, the kids at this age simply move like the computer characters, fully controlled by their parents. Some really good and smart kids soon realize the game and become motivated to fight on their own, but this is like A.I. achieving consciousness, ie the computer begins to think and move by itself and understands its own existence. Alas we are not there yet, most of our kids are simply moving from command to command, having not awakened. Hence we parents end up just training ourselves to be the gamemasters for our kids. This is the result of our f**ked up system.

Just to give the analogy a bit more meat, for some parents, the following game probably rings a bell. Animal Kaiser is a popular arcade video game where the player collects tonnes of cards in order to beat the opponent. These cards are of grave importance, some cards give the animal special powers, or even divine help, which is crucial during battles. Here, in the analogy, the parent is obviously the player, the kid is the animal character in the game that is going to fight all the other animals. And the tonnes of cards, which requires money, time and effort to collect represents the resources that parents pour into their kids to ensure they win this animalistic epic battle. 

Animal Kaiser & Our Education System

So yes, in Singapore we are all stuck in this big Animal Kaiser education war. Our kids are all animals, training hard, controlled by their gamemasters (a.k.a parents) in this meaningless fight. Does it help them when they go to real world? Does the special powers exist elsewhere outside the game? What are we trying to achieve here?

Things really have to change.

For things to change, it has to be changes made to the system. Change cannot be asking the parents to stop what they are doing. Just like we cannot ask all ladies to stop wearing heels. We must change the system. Yes things are finally moving but unfortunately the changes are moving too slowly. We saw the PSLE changes and what not, which might help, but perhaps most importantly, we have to upgrade our teachers.

Teachers are the most important players in the system.

In the previous posts we discussed that teachers used to be quite well paid some 20 to 30 years ago. I remember my teachers when I was a student were relatively well to do. During those days, their vocation was a profession, they were respected members of the society. Hence they also had the luxury to buy good properties during those days and benefited well from Singapore's property rise over the years.

Alas, today's school teachers are not having such good fortunes. Public school teaching has become a job that is not well paid, very taxing and yet thankless. Parents are ruthless, demanding and oblivious to the consequences of their actions when they condone their kids' wrongdoings in school. Teachers are unable to tackle unreasonable parents given the change in their social status. This is a sad problem.

It is said that the crux of a successful education system ultimately depends on the quality of the teachers. We have destroyed this. We turned teachers into commodities and hence are now suffering the consequences. Is it a wonder now that we have to resort to a billion dollar professional tuition industry to educate our kids?

For things to change, we need to attract talent back to the teaching profession. A big part of the answer lies in raising the salaries of teachers. Ironically, in Singapore, money talks loud and we have to pour money to solve this problem which created the issue of having parents to pour money in the first place. The answer is as follows:

If we doubled or tripled the salaries of teachers, subsequently tightening the requirements such that only the best graduates can be teachers, automatically, the society would recognize this to be a noble job, giving it the same recognition in due time. However this is also easier said than done, most countries had not succeeded except some Nordic countries where they dictated that teachers needed to be PhDs and are paid really well. Subsequently, they raise the education standards, really making sure no child is left behind.

The Nordic education system which extends to early childhood education is said to be the best in the world.

Of course, the ability to pour money to solve the problem ultimately depends on the government's coffers. If the government has no money, then how can they double or triple the salaries of teachers, who usually represent a huge number in the workforce? But Singapore government has money. We can definitely pull this off if we wanted to.

Next, we talk about our system's philosophy.

Meanwhile a happy Labour Day to all!

All three parts are out!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Parents vs Education System

A discussion on Singapore's education system will almost always come face to face with kiasu parents. The logic goes like this: Yes Singapore's education system is not perfect. We have teachers that keep leaving to become private tutors because they actually get the pay they deserved teaching at Learning Lab, the elite enrichment school. And enjoy the work they do i.e. teaching. Not like now, where public school teachers are doing a bunch of ECAs and other unrelated stuff like preparing a visit for Ministers etc.

Ok, next issue: our education system focuses on teaching ahead of the curve. In the past kids learned multiplication and math problem sums way later. Today they are doing these before they enter Primary One. Maybe in 20 years, Primary One kids will have to solve differential equations or do Laplace transformation. Geez, that would be fun.

But wait, that's because kiasu parents wanted to game the system and went for enrichment to arm their kids with Primary One knowledge before they enter Primary One. It's the parents fault, as long as they remain Kiasu, with a capital K, no matter how we improve the system, parents will find a way make their kids one up. It's not the system fault. It's the kiasu parents fault. Kiasu parents, wake up, stop being so kiasu and make life difficult for everyone else.

Oh yeah! That's the final answer to solve our nation's greatest problem. Yes, final answer. Ask all the parents to stop being kiasu, wake up and get a life, maybe make a few more babies and stop doting and worrying too much about their single child.

Just tell the parents, "Stop being kiasu!" Why didn't anyone think of it?

Come on...

Parents will be parents. Singaporean parents are not more kiasu than Chinese, Koreans, Japanese or Americans parents. The original Tiger Mum came from the States. Everyone is just working in their own best interest. Yes, this sometimes conflict with the interest of the community but it can't be helped. There is even a term for this: tragedy of the commons. It happens everywhere. Girls wearing high heels to gain that height advantage. Hey, let's ask all the girls in the world to break their heels! That should work. Fishermen over-fishing the shared ocean. The global arms race etc.

The solution obviously cannot be asking all parents to stop being kiasu right?

It is changing the system. Dis-incentivise parents to act in a kiasu manner. I have discussed in previous posts about how the Singapore's elitist education system concentrates resources in the best schools, creating paths that benefits only good students and causes the issues we face today. It's just unwinding all these.

I think we are moving slowly that in that direction. PLSE scores will be scrapped. That's a good start. In time, we should create multiple avenues to higher education, not just making it more difficult via through-trains and what not. Bring up the lowest denominator, not just bringing up the best and leave the rest behind. In the army we are taught, "leave no man behind". The education system has to follow that through. Learn from Mindef!

This is Aloysius after he was the first to run away and left all men behind. Lobang and his whole platoon mocked him by singing,"Training to coward, fight for myself, whole of my life, leave all men behind."

Yes there will always be those really, really kiasu parents who will compete to the last decimal point. Every test score, every ECA, musical instruments played, sports, maybe even countries visited/toured that could earn bragging rights. But just let them be. This is a marathon with no end. What's more important is to instill in our children tenacity, adaptability and ingenuity. Teach our kids to appreciate learning and then compete intelligently.

For that, we need the Singapore system to change. Luckily, it looks like it's changing.

Patience

"Patience is a Virtue."

I was googling around for this topic and as usual, Wikipedia came to the rescue. Sadly, it's still loss-making because donation somehow doesn't work on the internet. Google should just buy them out.

So what did Wiki says about Patience? It's actually part of the seven heavenly virtues which are counterparts of the more famous seven deadly sins, protrayed in the cult movie starring Brad Pitt and promoted Kevin Spacy and Gwyneth Paltrow to stardom. Patience is described in more context than our current world usage: usually like waiting patiently for someone or for the MRT to actually move smoothly. Accordingly, it is about endurance, moderation, grace and forgiveness. The counterpart in the sins is wrath.

In investing, the masters have talked about this over and over. And this is the Nth time I am re-learning this lesson as well. Baseball is the favourite analogy. It is known that the best baseball players do not anyhow swing. They wait for the perfect pitch. When the pitcher screws up and throws a slow ball, in the right zone, they swing the bat and hit that sayonara home run. In buying stocks, it's the same. You don't just buy when Singtel drops 10%. You wait for something to happen or some crisis for the stock to fall really, really cheap. Actually it's sort of happening now with some of our Indonesia exposed names like Jardine Cycle and Carriage.

And you swing when the slow fat pitch comes. Like when Jardine drops to $30, when it's PE hits 8x and its dividend yield goes up to like 6%. Imagine! 8x and 6% for the No.1 auto and motorcycle distributor in Indonesia where both auto and motorcycle market would likely be in the Top 5 globally in the next few years. 

These opportunities do not come often. Usually once every few years. The last time Jardine was this cheap was 2011 when the Greek tragedy hit. As for Singtel, the No.1 stock in market cap in Singapore, the last time it was cheap enough was Lehman, that's half a decade ago. So as patient value investors, most of the time we should really just do nothing. It's called "sit-on-your-ass investing" according to Buffett. To deploy capital over mediocre opportunities simply just doesn't cut it, especially if we are trying to hit 8%pa kind of return.

Ok, that's patience in investing, but what about patience in life?

I think this could be the more important lesson. Patience in life could work in various circumstances:

1. When we are preparing to do something bigger. Hence needing the patience to remain in the current situation for longer, allowing more time for training and mastery.

2. In facing our adversaries, one of the best weapon is patience. Wait for them to commit mistakes. But we need to do our part in maintaining our best. The wait would usually take months if not years. Although sometimes we ought to leave the mud-house especially when the bosses are not on the right side. Choose not to wrestle pigs, if possible.

3. To garner support for change, sometimes it take years for things to move. Like the changes in our education system. Together with others (more prominent opinion leaders and education specialists), I have discussed about revamping PSLE a few years ago in a few series of posts on Education. Finally, something would be done. Well, at least, PM Lee promised.

Being patient in situations is not about admitting defeat. It is taking a step back to leap forward. It is taking time to strategize, recognizing that the time to act is not now. Recall the old battle scenes before machine guns were invented. The army needs time to reload their guns. So you cannot fire when the enemy is coming until they get near enough. Patience makes the difference.

Of course, there is a spectrum to everything. Pulling patience past its limit is cowardice. Unwilling to act after waiting and the opportune moment passed. That would also be a grave mistake. How do we know when is the right moment then?

Oh, we know. We ALL know. When the stock hits 6% dividend but we fail to act even though we already decided we must buy when it hits that price. We didn't because our balls shrunk and we say let's wait. It's the same feeling as seeing the girl leaving and our balls shrunk and we say, "next time I'll ask for her number."

To sum up, we need a suitable amount of patience to succeed in investing and in life. Train up and be prepared. Focus and wait for the opportune moment. Then seize the day! George Savile, an English statesman who lived 400 years ago also summed it up pretty nicely, "A man who is a Master of Patience, is a Master of Everything Else."

Happy National Day!

Singapore turns 48! We have come a long way, though still young as a nation. I would say that Singapore had a few hiccups in the last ten years or so but nothing insurmountable. There is a lot of hope that things will be better.

The timespan of 48 years is a also a good period to think about investments. After all, we don't live forever and companies don't stay as they are forever. A lot of companies don't survive for 48 years. Great companies are built to last. Some of them can do well for 30, 40 years. But to be the leader in its field for much longer, it takes much, much more. This is why there is only one company still in the Dow Jones Index today since the index's inception a hundred years ago.

Well, food for thought.

Meanwhile, found an interesting story drawing parables in Singapore's education system. It's called Nanyang Butterflies. Link below.

http://nanyangbutterflies.blogspot.sg/

Happy National Day!

2nd Level Thinking in Real Life

2nd Level Thinking works in real life as well. We should not be thinking superficially and derive simplistic answers to some of the problems we face. Again in most cases, consensus would be right, and it's tempting to just follow the crowd. Sometimes, maybe average is good enough. But in other important issues, we might need to strive to be one level up.

Take my favourite topic: our kids' education. All the parents in Singapore are stuck in this crazy competition of getting into branded schools, tuition marathons and fighting to be one up against the rest. But the since every parent is doing that, no child stands out. To make things worse, parents waste money on tuition, waste time at volunteer work and every child actually has less free time, are more stressed and become less proficient in other non-academic areas: such as learning to iron, cook or fix a light bulb.

One solution to this issue is for authorities to step in as mentioned in previous posts. The nature of the game has evolved such that it is impossible for the participants (ie parents) to resolve the issue, even though everyone is just simply working in their own best interest. This is akin to asking all women to stop wearing high heels. (See this post if you don't get this.)

Well that's topic for another day.

The idea here today is to apply Second Level Thinking. Different but better. Needless to say, it cannot be just different. Some might say don't go for tuition lah, don't succumb to doing parent volunteer and support this elitist system. But then the kid loses out. So it has to be more innovative than that.

Again we ask questions such as:

1. What are the viable alternatives?
2. How can we invert and think out of the box?
3. Where are the kids today lacking?
4. What are other parents not doing enough?
5. Does my kid have a talent?

When we think through some of these answers we are effectively applying Second Level Thinking and some solutions might well be different and better.

Take question 3, what are kids today lacking? There are plenty! As alluded to above, they cannot do simple chores (Blame the Maids!). They speak less mother tongue (60% of homes are English speaking). They are exam smart not street smart. They don't see as well (a lot of kids are short-sighted).

A lot of the issues have no relevance in academics but still something to think about. The one key here: kids today speak much more English and are bad at their mother tongue.

20 years ago, English was a problem, bcos 60% of Chinese homes speak Mandarin at home. Today it is the opposite. Our Chinese kids are becoming bananas fast. Yellow on the outside, all white inside. Their command of the Chinese language is poor, and they and their parents either have no intention to do anything about it or are incapable of doing anything bcos the parents themselves don't speak good Mandarin. In fact, MOE wanted to lower the bar to satisfy some parents, only to get lambasted by the Chinese elites.

So the 2nd Level Thinking here would be to let our kids become proficient in at least 2 languages. In fact, we should let them be exposed to more if possible. Research have shown that kids can learn languages better than adults. So while we are at it, we can definitely throw in important languages like Malay, Japanese or even Spanish.

Of course language needs the environment, so if the parents cannot speak Spanish, it is hard for the child to pick it up out of the blue. But for some parents who are bilingual and speak dialects, or Malay or other 3rd languages, it might be useful to impart these to your kids.

Alas, as in stock market, people catch up to 2nd Level Thinking fast. What worked yesterday might not work today. Some parents prepared their children for Primary 1 when the kids were in K1, K2 many many years ago and those kids gained the one up against their peers during that time. But today, all parents do this and the bar is raised, to the detriment of those who cannot keep up.

Similarly, I won't be surprised that a lot of parents are making sure their kids are effectively trilingual and in the near future, we need to apply 3rd Level Thinking to gain that one up again.

More on Kiasu Parents

This post is updated in 2014.

In economics, competition is the best thing that can happen. Competition brings about lower cost, innovation, improvement and makes economic development possible. Competition goes on until it is limited by other factors. E.g. until all producers are loss-making and can no longer make money, or until some input resource is depleted. Which is not always bad in economics bcos it benefits the consumer or it forces innovation (by looking for a substitute).

But for kiasu parents, competing for the best schools is a completely different ball game. After reading a few examples from this book titled, "The Economic Naturalist" by Robert Frank, I could really relate to the plight that our Singapore school children and their parents are in. It's useless excessive competition that ultimately leads to a worse-off situation.

This is a phenomenon known as "tragedy of the commons", but in the book it is merely stated as "competing for self-interest that conflicts with interest of the group". I will highlight some of the interesting examples here:

High heels: One of the examples showed how ladies prefer ever higher heels in order to impress upon the opposite sex ie. us guys... Well, as we now know, there is no turning back. The current global contest of the highest heels has begun to pose safety issues and has affected ladies' feet/mobility. Yet since every woman on this planet is now wearing high heels, a girl simply couldn't stand out even if she splurges on those life-threatening 10-Inch Stilettos, but yet she cannot afford not to wear. The solution would be for all the girls in the world to agree to break all the heels, but alas that's not gonna happen, my dear.

Antlers: Nature provides the case of how antlers with bigger horns can attract more mating partners but run higher risk of getting eaten by lions since the horns will get in the way when they try to escape predators. In this case, natural selection determines the optimal size of the horns. Those with smaller horns ultimately cannot seek partners and their genes died out. Those with horns too big get eaten up. So we are left with horns just right.

Slim models: Another interesting example regarding female models showed how the Association of Fashion Designers came down to dictate the minimum weight for models as it was become a social problem. The issue: all models want to look better than others and they go on a competitive diet regime that ultimately benefits nobody and worse still, influence young girls globally to become anorexic as young girls want to look like their favourite models.

Full automatic rifles: In the US, regulations are imposed to prevent people from easily obtaining full automatic rifles like the M16 or AK47. Again without such restrictions, we can easily imagine robbers buying M16 to rob the neighbourhood stall and the owner picks up his bazooka to fend robbers off.

In the last two examples, the government/authority or entity in power steps in to correct the situation.

In Singapore, I would argue that kiasu parents and their kids are trapped in the same game of de-generative competition. Everyone goes for tuition to try to gain one-up against other students but actually nobody gains. Yet the kids have less play-time, are more stressed, parents' wallets get thinner and the Govt saves money on public education - which is kind of strange plus stupid.

As alluded to with the examples above, this situation can only be solved in 3 ways:

1. Some limiting factor comes into play: parents run out of money to fund the tuition marathons. However, with wider income disparity, this means that only the poor will run out of money and the rich continues to play the game and only the top 1% wins. Well this is happening now.

2. Parents come together and say stop this. Again, as with Kate Moss wannabies and girls going for high heels, this will not happen. This solution happens when the no. of affected parties is limited. E.g. the nuclear arms race came to an end when all the nuclear nations agreed not to increase the no. of warheads. With 2 million parents in Singapore, agreement is gonna be a real long shot.

3. Authorities need to step in with guidelines/regulations. I see this as a viable solution although it has not succeeded meaningfully anywhere in the world. South Korea outlawed tuition but the results are mixed. It went underground and tutors risked going to jail for US$10,000 a month.

Well, we cannot outlaw tuition in Singapore, but I do believe some measures (described in my previous posts as well) might be worth thinking about:

- Smaller class sizes: each child gets more attention.
- Less focus on grades, more on qualitative assessment.
- Scrutinize tuition agencies (highlight scams).
- Set guidelines for parents (on fees, no. of hours per week etc).
- Encourage good teachers to teach in public schools (better pay, environment etc).
- Publish statistics (tuition vs no tuition relative improvement, mental health of kids before/after tuition etc).

The Singapore school system has changed significantly since this blog posted about education (this post originated 2 years ago). I believe we are moving in the right direction. Our Government is not stupid, when they want to change things, they can. They just need to be more caring as well. Heart truths!

And to end this post, some food for thought about competition. While we need some of it to foster the child's urge to better himself, parents must ask when does it become unhealthy?

Insightful read:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/tcac.htm

Problems and Solutions to Singapore’s Education System – Part 4

This is the last post of a four part discussion on education, interested readers can read from the first post.

Teachers, or rather the lack of good old-fashion responsible teachers, the inability of the system to retain the talented ones, the low teacher to student ratio, the mind-boggling ECA workload, the long hours are all the woes we hear about teaching.

It is said that being a teacher is no longer about teaching. It’s about writing proposals to help the school win awards or about going through motion since the students would then learn from the private tutors anyways. Even better, teaching is simply a way to get oneself out of the unemployment ratio.

I believe the whole teacher/teaching system is due for a huge revamp. The solutions are pretty straight forward to me although I must admit this is just really from my layperson point of view.

1. The admin workload of writing proposals, involved in ECAs

It is pretty clear that there is a need to increase admin headcounts for these jobs. Teachers are supposed to teach and they should be compensated for teaching and rewarded for being able to teach well ie the students genuinely love learning from the good teachers and their grades improve when they get a good form teacher.

As for the admin staff, they would be involved in the ECAs, the awards, event organizations and their compensation would reflect their output on these jobs.

2. Inability to retain talent

Partly related to the first point, as teachers spend more time doing work that they don’t like, working long hours but getting less satisfaction, is it a wonder that most good teachers would leave to become private tutors? Of course, we forgot to mention that teachers’ salaries have not risen to match other professions bcos it is not set by the market, but by the Govt.

Hence the solutions are pretty simple. Make teaching enjoyable again by reducing the workload, reducing the working hours and increasing the pay of teachers. In the old days, I believe teachers would be in the top quartile of income earners in Singapore. It was regarded as a profession, and a noble one. Today, as income rises exponentially, teachers are no longer earning as much in a relative sense and private tuition pays bcos it is set by the market. As we have discussed, since the whole system creates these scarcity premiums all over the place, prices skyrocket and the best teachers leave to become private tutors. And the best private tutors charge the best prices.

3. Overall lack of teachers

It is a well-known fact that our teacher to student ratio has not improved in the past 20 years. It was one teacher to forty students then, it still is today! We don’t have enough teachers! Why? Bcos they keep leaving to become private tutors and we keep importing foreigners and their children to our schools. So we are back to square one, we need to make teaching a job that people covet. We need to increase the pay, reduce the working hours and improve the working environment.

There might also be a need to de-emphasize the ECAs and the awards so that schools focus on what is most important: the students and their learning experience.

4. Performance assessment of teachers

Currently, there are also situations where teachers who excel in doing ECAs get promoted bcos this work is more visible and definitely what the principal needs. Real teachers who just want to impart knowledge are marginalized.

Hence we are back to the first point where teachers should simply teach, and admin staff can handle the ECAs. And the performance of teachers should be based solely on their teaching ability. Also the principals should not be judged on how many awards the school wins, or how well they do their ECAs.

The focus should be on the children and their learning experience. Education in the early years should be about learning basic stuff in a more holistic manner. It’s not just about mathematics, science and languages and high stakes exams. It should be about nature, music, art, history, hands-on, sports etc.

The best teachers are those who have the passion to help our children learn about all these. They have the knowledge, the patience and the enthusiasm to teach and they should be judged by these yardsticks. Not quantitative measures like how many awards, or how many initiatives.

Teaching should be made noble again and learning fun.

See all posts!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

There is also more discussion on kiasu parents.

Problems and Solutions to Singapore’s Education System – Part 3

This is the 3rd post out of four part discussion on education, interested readers can read from the first post.

The phenomenon of having more private tuition to supplement school education is a very Eastern phenomenon. We see it in almost all East Asian countries like China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan. We might argue that this is a cultural issue. Parents in Asian countries going through this phase of development see the importance of being ahead of the crowd in education and hence are willing to pay through their noses to let their child have this head start.

This is also the argument used by MOE. The Govt cannot stop parents from sending their kids to private tutors. Blame the kiasu parents. They are not called kiasu for nothing. No matter the changes put to the system, since kaisu parents want their kids to be one-up, private tuition will continue, and prices for the best private tutors will keep on rising.

Well, let’s see if this argument really stands.

Putting on the economics hat again, I can again identify a fundamental economics problem here. Yes, the supply and demand issue again that we discussed. In short, the whole elitist system drives demand for private tuition. If the system is made less competitive (well at least in the primary school level), more holistic, with more qualitative assessment, less high stakes exams, it would become irrelevant to game the system with more tuition. In Finland, lower primary is just about learning and how to make it fun. There are no numerical grades, no high stakes exams. Yet their students do as well in international competitions.

It might be a good idea to completely do away with PSLE and replace it with qualitative assessment and simple grades with no numbers or granularities ie just A, B, C, D. Then you might ask how to differentiate between the good and the bad students? Now, by asking that question, you just missed the big idea. The idea is: there is no need to differentiate them at such a young age. The education mission is to allow the child to learn about our world in their first 9-10 school years. Each child should be given the same opportunity at this stage. It is not about differentiating and just bringing up our best children.

Of course, at the big picture level, when we achieve the grand goal of having so many good schools that eliminates the scarcity premium of the top schools, there is no longer any need to compete for the limited spaces.

On the supply side, there is a lack of good teachers and a system to retain the best teachers in schools that resulted in Singapore’s phenomenon. We all hear anecdotal stories of how some of our teacher friends started noble wanting to teach, only to be discouraged by low pay and poor working environment and they move into private tuition. Now if we can change that, put these best teachers into the schools again and at the same time further increase the quantity of good teachers, can we address part of this issue?

We might.

I say might bcos we have not tackled the other part. The kiasu part.

Parents are inherently kiasu, even if you put the best teachers back in schools, or you revamp to whole system, since they want their kids to be one-up, they will still go for private tuition. There is no solution to this problem.

Is that really so?

The kiasu conundrum is an interesting one. I see it as somewhat similar to the famous Prisoner’s Dilemma in Game Theory. If you confess, you get a light sentence and the other guy suffers. But if both confess, both are worse off. The parents are in exactly the same situation. They think that by going to private tuition, they gain one-up. But in reality, since everyone is doing that, we are all worse off. Only the private tuition agencies gain.

The issue here is one of information. If all the prisoners know that the other parties are not going to confess, they will all keep mum and all stand to benefit. This is how most Singapore oligopolies play the game. Look at the telcos, or the petrol kiosks, or the transport co.s. Nobody ever cut prices. Nobody ever confesses and every player benefits, except the consumers.

Twisting the situation around, the policemen also have the full information picture. They know whether the other prisoners have confessed. In fact, at the start, they could have engineered the results they wanted. They could have tell the prisoners no one is confessing, if you do, you sabo everyone. But if everyone doesn’t confess, everyone is better off.

MOE is the police here. The official stance is always that they should not meddle with the private tuition industry. But the fact of the matter is that private tuition is now mainstream education! And by the way, private tuition is now a multi-billion dollar industry in Singapore, bigger than the budget of some Ministries. In time it WILL be bigger than the budget of MOE.

There is a need to educate the parents, to show that everyone is worse off with tuition in a relative sense. Yes the child do improve on absolute terms, maybe they learn fractions faster or can read Shakespeare earlier. But since everyone can, we are all the same in a relative sense. Just that the parents’ wallets are thinner. I believe some parents figured this out, but their response is: no choice, bcos everyone is doing it, we cannot lose out. So if it can be shown that there something can be done, the parents would bite. Information is the key here. Inform the parents that tuition does not help.

Perhaps MOE or other relevant bodies can commission a study to show that the stress level of students are much higher, or they have less sleep time, less play time and hence affecting their development as a result of tuition. And bcos everyone is going for private tuition, nobody actually gains. The media can definitely publish more articles on these issues. The media can also highlight how some tuition agencies are not adding value at all and how some private tutors are irresponsible and are there just for the money.

On a more hardline tone, MOE can regulate the industry since it is becoming such a big part of education. In Korea, they outlawed private tuition some time back ie anyone caught giving tuition goes to JAIL, and the tutee pays a FINE! That’s a bold move! That might not go down well in Singapore. But MOE can still have some measures.

All primary school classes have form teachers who know their students well, they can discourage parents from sending kids for tuition, not encourage them by telling parents they MUST send their kids for tuition. Of course this works better when the class size gets down from current 40 plus to 20 or less. They can give exact instructions to parents on how to help their kids improve in weak areas like focus on spelling, or multiplication etc. Or where the child show world-class potential and can really develop a REAL “one-up” against others. The idea here is to curb demand.

To regulate supply, MOE should ensure that all private tutors are qualified and licensed and have fee guidelines, protection against scam tutors etc. These measures also discourage some of the bad practices.

Again the solutions proposed here involve a destruction of the billion dollar private tuition industry and is definitely a bitter pill for many, many people. However for the sake of our children, I believe it is a worthwhile effort.

Next post, we talk about being a teacher!

See all posts!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Problems and Solutions to Singapore’s Education System – Part 2

So, what is the solution?

As I have alluded to in the last post, it is the elimination of scarcity value. This means eliminating our branded schools, or creating more schools that are as good. It will also incorporate changes to the grading system to make it more holistic, encompassing many more subjects, making the system less granular and qualitative assessments from form teachers. It will also involve redistributing resources from elite schools to the entire system and upping the Education budget, making it bigger than Defence.

There are a few ways to create more good schools, mostly involving hard measures but for the greater good. We can redeploy the best teachers to other places and rotate these best teachers and principals so that they spread the best practices. We can nurture promising schools so as they can rival the top schools. These are tough choices. There will be a lot of unhappiness and resistance and it will take a decade if not more to achieve but our children and the future generations will benefit.

Think about the day where parents no longer need to scramble to get their kids into branded schools, because they know that most schools in Singapore are as good. There will be no volunteering for mundane tasks, no fighting to be a grassroots leader, or buying properties for the sake of getting 1km from the school etc. Students receive equal opportunities no matter which school they go. They get a chance to learn from the best teachers and more importantly to learn more holistically.

These are not simple changes. We need to attract talented people and convince them teaching is again a good, noble, highly sought after profession, like in the old days. We might need to double the salaries of teachers, and pay the better ones even more. We need to put money into nurturing promising schools. It is not an impossible task. A good example would be Rulang Primary, which was never highly regarded just perhaps 10 years ago but is today one of the most coveted schools in Jurong. We need a lot more Rulangs and the people who made that possible.

The strength of a good system is to make the best the lowest denominator. In basketball, if we pit Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan against and All Star Team, which team is likely to win? It’s Chicago Bulls, bcos in the good team, Michael Jordan in the lowest denominator, while in an All Star Team, the weakest Star is the lowest denominator, and the weakest All Star is inferior to Michael Jordan. Currently Singapore’s primary school system has the worse schools as the lowest denominator. And in the schools, the worse students are the lowest denominator, dragging down the class, or even the school. Hence the parents scramble to put their children into the best schools, not wanting to be dragged down.

On changes to the grading system, by making it more holistic means more manpower as well. The current PSLE is efficient and achieve its purpose of sorting out the best students. The new system wants to put the child at the centre of the equation. It means form teachers making qualitative assessments, ie smaller classes. Emphasizing other subjects, more specialized teachers. Infrastructure changes would likely be needed as well: a science garden, history and geography rooms, music rooms, sports facilities, like swimming pools in every school etc.

Again, such changes are not easy, but would be for the greater good and the benefit for the children of Singapore.

Next post, we talk about kiasu parents!

See all posts!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4