MOE’s Changes: Baby Steps Forward

By now, the news of the coming changes to education would have spread island-wide like wildfire. So, what are they? And more importantly, what does this mean for us and our children?

It’s important to remember that these things that the MOE are removing were there for a purpose, and that the benefits of removing should outweigh those of keeping them.

Losing Weight

The removal of weighted assessments is a big deal. It doesn’t mean that there will be no assessments, but that these assessments or a percentage of them would not be used as criteria for streaming or promotion. It’s very different when you’re learning for a test versus learning because you enjoy it. The latter tends to lead to much richer knowledge.

Without weighted assessments for Primary 1 and 2, it allows children to progress on to Primary 3 without being concerned about failing or being streamed. As adults, we take a lot for granted. For children in Primary 1 and 2, their challenges could be more than academic, for example, being toilet trained, basic reading or even holding a pencil.

Removing assessments that could prematurely pigeon-hole them gives them more room to develop until they are more cognitively and physically level.

The flip-side of this is that non-weighted assessments are all the more important now to monitor and ensure that children progress as they should before they reach Primary 3. The worst-case scenario is that, without weighted assessments, children are not expected to meet any learning criteria and promote into Primary 3 without being able to read, write or do simple arithmetic.

Maximising Time

Any teacher that has taught in the upper Primary levels would have experienced that mad rush to complete the syllabus and squeeze in enough practice before the exams. The removal of mid-year exams for the levels above are a long-welcomed change.

At Primary 3, students experience formal exams for the first time. At Primary 5, there is a huge content crunch as Primary 6 content is brought forward to clear up more curriculum time for PSLE revision. At Secondary 1, students have to come to grips with the new subject combinations as well as their respective assessment formats. At Secondary 3, students are introduced to even more specialised subjects. More time for students to adapt to these changes, and for teachers to help them do so, is a win-win for everyone.

One potential disadvantage is that schools that do not conduct mid-year exams as assessment milestones are not able to flag learning concerns early. Some students may be happily cruising through the year, only to be hit hard with the realisation that they have major learning gaps after the SA2. By then, it would be too late in the year to remedy.

Assessments have a very important place in the process of learning, and we should move forward carefully and be vigilant to monitor how these major changes affect the overall quality of education for the years to come.

Self-Mastery

Another major and positive change is the removal of class and level positions from the report cards. The benefits of this are evident and have been discussed extensively. My only concern is the extra workload on teachers, as providing written qualitative feedback is way more time and energy-consuming than quantitative feedback. I hope, for the sake of our school teachers, that the MOE has systems put in place to mitigate this heavy workload.

On a positive note, I believe this change addresses one of the most pressing issue facing our society – competition. I firmly believe that stress is not caused by exams, but by competition. Some people have expressed that these are the first steps towards the removal of the PSLE, which would remove stress that our Primary level students face. No, it won’t.

As long as there are elite schools and schools that restrict entry; as long as parents compete with one another to get their children into these “good” schools or even the “best” class; as long as we keep finding ways to compare ourselves with each other, the PSLE will exist as a tool to rank and filter our children.

Perhaps, years of being educated on the importance of getting ahead has contributed to our kiasu mentality – the ugly selfish people who push their way onto the bus, who make mad dashes to empty seats on the MRT, who refuse to allow other drivers to filter into their lane. And perhaps, by this seemingly small act of removing positions from the report cards, we are redefining our culture, as Education Minister Ong Ye Kang explained

so that the child understands from a young age that learning is not a competition, but a self-discipline you need to master for life.

Perhaps, a new generation would also understand from a young age that life itself is not a competition; that we don’t succeed as Singaporeans in spite of one another, but because of one another.

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