Education in Singapore needs to see beyond KPIs

I read the news about our minister of state for education defending a principal who advised her secondary 5 students to transfer to ITE. It is important that there are three aspects of the same issue occurring here. The first issue relates to the mode of teaching students, whether educators should be allowed to use any methods to encourage or spur their students to improve better. To be honest, as an educator myself, I also used the harsh and benign approaches to my students but I usually decide my approach based on my understanding of how the student thinks and works. If I adopted the harsh approach, it is out of the genuine feeling to make the student believe that they are capable of greater things. Hence, we cannot fault the principal if the intention is to motivate the students and give them a sense of urgency to work harder for their own futures. The second aspect of the issue which it has not been clear to me is whether the principal is asking them to get a transfer to ITE, because the principal is worried about her KPIs for her annual performance. Well, it's not that difficult to fudge numbers in a way that her school might have 100% record of getting better performances by not taking into account transfers. However, I am going to give the principal the benefit of the doubt, but I will comment with a story which happened to a teacher (who's a respected senior of mine in NUS). The third is what does it mean to educate a person. Is it to just get high grades and get a good job or is it to inculcate good values and skills to students such that they can in turn contribute back to society.

Let's start with the first issue about methods. It is important to understand that harsh and benign approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. Of course, given the comfort and security we have in Singapore, most parents would tend to protect their kids out of parental love. Yet, sometimes, that protection does not help them but instead hurt them in the process. The principal might have wanted to let the students to get a harsh dressing such that they would "wake up" and start to work for their own futures. When the message of the principal ends up to the parents through the words of their kids, the story might be totally interpreted in a different manner. Make no mistake, I am not insuinating any deliberate distortion of facts by the students, but what I am suggesting is that the principal's intention might be mistaken for something else. Actually, I am rather surprised why the principal did it all at one go. She might be better off meeting each of the student one by one, and depending on the profile of the student (which can be helped by their form teacher's reports), give different advice in different tones for different students. She chose to put up all their results on a projector, and I can see why the public is unhappy with that approach, since most Singaporeans hate to lose face.

The second issue is about this whole key performance indicators happening in the education sector of Singapore. It all started with the ranking of the junior colleges and secondary schools a few years back. I do agree that metrics are needed to assess how teachers and principals perform, but the way how KPIs are constructed sometimes baffled me. The percentage of students passing O levels are more important than the percentage of students having a proper grounding in basic English and mathematics.

To be more explicit, I will talk about the story which made me very disgusted about how some principals being so obsessed in their own KPIs that they sacrificed their teachers to educate students well. When I was in the university, a senior of mine went on an attachment to his own junior college (one of the top junior colleges) to teach physics. This senior of mine is a dedicated teacher who loved the subject and has often made the subject interesting and inspiring for their students. One day, the principal of that college called him up and gave him a dressing due to just a few low grades among the students. In that conversation, the principal told my senior that she is more interested to see more A1s in her college than see the students learning physics properly. That principal's behaviour is an absolute disgrace to education in my opinion. It just made me wonder why some principals have ended up locking their students in a rat-race that do not develop them to better individuals for the society. Of course, the story has a better ending. That senior of mine was posted to my former alma mater (which is not a top junior college), and I have heard from my former college principal, physics teachers and even his students that he is an excellent physics teacher who has inspired his students to greater heights.

I have no problems with the Ministry of Education setting up benchmarks and metrics, but I want the policy makers to bear in mind that these numbers have the unintended consequence of backfiring what we want to achieve with students for the future.

The last issue is with the meaning of education. Oftentimes, we hear our leaders including MM Lee talking about the lack of local talent, the lack of grace, the need to move towards a first world nation. Actually, they have an answer to the problem which they created for themselves. That solution is through education. If we start empowering our educators and offer them the venue to work and help students without putting too much emphasis on KPIs, the teachers in our country might be able to inspire our students to achieve what we never imagine for the future of this country.

Related Links:

1. Aaron Ng, Know who to give the wake-up call to, please.
2. Teh Si, Self Improvement for others.
3. Singapore Patriot, That's not the way to build confidence in youths.
4. Mr Wang, 27 Hapless Girls And One Unhappy Principal.
5. Stressed Teacher, Your results suck!
6. Molly Meek, Mediocrity in Meritocracy: There must be, there cannot be.

Comments

[Kelvin Ng]

We need a whole revamp of the education systems and means of instituting new KPIs like "joy of learning" and "constructive stress" through nation-wide psychometric testing and evaluation. Stress testing has been done in UK and should be done in Singapore

See http://greysteppenwolf.blogspot.com/2008/01/stress-testing-in-singapore-education.html

[Driving Schools Finder]

I heard that Education in singapore is focused more on economy and teaches less to be involved nin countries affairs