In 1943, the author C.S. Lewis delivered a series of three lectures that would become The Abolition of Man, a classic text on public education that considers both the domains of moral philosophy and political elitism. In it, he issues a firm rejoinder to the prevailing caution against imagination in favour of methodical intellectualism, remarking that “the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.”
This statement reflects public attitudes towards education in Singapore today. Parents, employers and educators have called for a more lifelong approach to education, and the government is studying how it can enhance skills-based polytechnic and vocational education, and support skills training programmes for working adults. This aims to promote learning beyond educational institutions and into the workplace, which will help create a workforce more resilient to the changing needs of the economy.
There, however, remain traditional mechanisms by which we arguably “cut the jungle” more than “irrigate the desert”. The Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) is one such example. It has been around since 1960 and views are split over whether it should or should not be the mechanism by which the academic ability of students is assessed before they are dispatched to secondary school.
The PSLE serves two objectives — an economic function and a national imperative.
The economic principle behind the PSLE is an uncomplicated one: How do we allocate scarce resources most efficiently, in this case places at elite secondary schools? To dull the impact of what seems to be a high-stakes competition, the Ministry of Education has ramped up efforts to make every secondary school a good one by introducing two programmes — the Applied Learning programme and the Learning for Life programme — to connect academic knowledge with the real world and to promote life skills. This position, however, assumes that good schools are viewed as such due to either specific programmes or infrastructural superiority; in reality, school reputation often transcends these assumptions.
The second objective is ancillary to achieving state objectives; Singapore’s bilingual policies are arguably accentuated by the presence, or pressure, of a conclusive examination. The second objective, however, is a less pressing one because of the carry-forward of our language classes and examinations into secondary school, although debates over whether or not secondary school education should be made compulsory in Singapore are still ongoing.
Any alternative to the PSLE will have to serve these objectives, as well as with the competing motivations of the different stakeholders in the examination.
PSLE Stakeholders
I would liken the PSLE to a soap opera, where the chief protagonists are the students, parents and teachers, who spend nine months gearing up for what they see as a “make-or-break” event. At the heart of their story is a subplot involving the external markets of housing and tuition.
From the perspective of a child, the PSLE period is a time of great stress and uncertainty, as they conclude their time in primary school and move to a new environment with its associated opportunities and anxieties. For many, the PSLE is the sole determinant of entry into a secondary school. For the mischievous, the PSLE is a “last chance saloon” to make good. The PSLE also has a priming function — it sets the pace and marks the genesis of the hectic Singaporean life.
For parents, the need to know how well their child compares to others nationwide is a reasonable curiosity rooted in a national ethos of competition. As it is also well established that certain schools that are better funded offer more opportunities for students to enrich their school life, parents are also keen for their children to go to schools that can offer better chances at moving up the academic chain into junior colleges and subsequently universities. Further, deeply ingrained in the Singapore psyche is not the desire for excellence on its own, but excellence vis-à-vis others in the same cohort; a reductive attitude that defines the zero-sum game.
Teachers, especially those teaching the Primary 5 and 6 cohorts, have to decide whether to teach to pique an interest in learning, or to teach for the sake of assessment. Unfortunately, it is usually the latter that wins. This is referred to in education as the “backwash effect”. The PSLE as a high-stakes examination can thus have the perverse effect of being perceived as an end in itself, rather than as a preparatory step towards the next phase of education.
As a market, the education sector has a reinforcing relationship on external domains, such as the lucrative housing and tuition industries. The latter two industries, in particular, correlate most to PSLE achievement. Swank housing advertisements regularly highlight their proximity to elite primary schools and their attendant secondary counterparts, while tuition centres charging exorbitant fees seduce with promises of PSLE success — claims they back up with using the past performances of their stable of thoroughbred alumni. Thus, issues of equity come to the fore when paying parents become the major determinant of a child’s examined performance in a society striving towards true meritocratic ideals.
A Future without the PSLE
I lean towards a future without the PSLE. Some will say that this is a slippery slope position to take — if the PSLE can be done away with, why not the O Levels or other examinations higher up the academic ladder? For one, qualifications become more necessary at higher levels for international comparability, which can be used for employment or entry into other tertiary institutions overseas. Second, it is less equitable for children to compete on a cognitive plane at an age where development is still ongoing; this should be less the case at the later ages.
Put together, we can consider three possible scenarios to determine secondary school placement:
1) All primary schools are linked to secondary schools, so a child automatically knows where they are going from Primary One.
2) Entry to secondary schools is tied to proximity with where the student stays for transport optimisation.
3) After Primary Six, all students are randomly allocated to secondary schools across the island.
The first is similar to what Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Yee Jenn Jong proposed in 2012, a parallel, at the primary school level, to the Integrated Programme some secondary school students undertake as they skip the O Levels into the A Levels. However, this potentially transfers the stress of PSLE to pre-school education because entry into the “right” primary school ensures entry to a desired secondary school. The second, highlighted and rightly dismissed by Senior Minister of State for Law and Education Indranee Rajah, does not adequately delink the property and education sectors.
I am for the last option. This assumes that all secondary schools are comparable, with both teaching and monetary resources distributed evenly. While transport concerns will definitely be raised, one should not forget that already, more than 800 Singaporean children make the trip across the causeway every morning to go to school, and that a 2012 MOE study noted that their classroom performance was comparable to that of others in their cohort.
In this (hopefully not too distant) future, classes will start at 8.30am, so that students, teachers and parents alike are better rested to face the rest of the day. Parents are now incentivised to send their children to school prior to beginning work; this might cause traffic delays — but this is the future, and plans for a flexi-hour workforce would hopefully have been fully realised in a more pro-family mature economy. In the future, Ministry of Education guidelines still recommend 49 periods of 30 minutes each per week, or five hours a day, but classes will end at 2.30pm, to allow for a second recess break of half an hour at 12.30pm (the first recess break happens at 10.30am).
Since the PSLE is no longer a determinant in secondary school placement, students can also be also more engaged in co-curricular activities, picking up the different musical, sporting and social skills from various groups at an early age to nurture the holistic education past generations yearned for. This is something that can be actively encouraged in primary school because transitioning into a new environment with new friends, and not placement itself, is the main concern for both parents and children, and co-curricular activities serve as vital transitional mechanisms in the education system.
Any removal of choice is usually met with displeasure. In reality, however, the more substantive question is whether or not our society feels our children should be educated in a system premised on fairer opportunities for all, or one undergirded by more free market principles with its attendant inequities.
Andrew Yeo is a Research Assistant (Special Projects) at IPS.
Photo from here