Parents should look beyond cut-off points for secondary schools: Heng Swee Keat

Babe 

• 16 hours ago

• −

Some parents struggle to push their kids to the better school based on the cut-off point - because the school is a top school or better school.

But as his classmate is cruising, he will be struggling and fight fire everyday. Eventually, he will either give up or retained - because the teacher will teach at the pace of the majority = which is a cruising speed and the student who are struggling will be drown.

Conversely, if he go to a school he qualify as a top student, the teacher will teach at a pace of average student in the school and he will fly and do very well and motivated to do better.

As among the top student in this school, he will do well better than the average student in the top school.

So why do parents want to keep pushing their kids to a top school or better school to rub shoulder with fast learning students and let your kids struggle and drown - and later either dropout or retained - which will kill his confident - when he can do better in the lower tier school?

hellokitty00  Babe 

There are no lack of students who enter as 1 of the top students in an average school, but end up in the middle or worse. There are also those who barely made it to a top school and end up amongst the top while there. PSLE performance is not always a good predictor of performance in secondary school. Different student are motivated differently - some strive harder when they are lagging behind and gets complacent when they do well, while others just lose all motivation to study if they are near the bottom.
The issue with neighbourhood school is that there are relatively more kids with bad habits eg smoking, glue sniffing and gangs. Such cases tend to have an inverse correlation to COP.


Babe  hellokitty00 

      Do you know that in 1 cohort, out of 20 or 21 1st class honour in a local University, ab  about 17 are polytechnic graduates while the rest are from JCs?

YoYou mention that neighborhood school produce kids with smoking, glue sniffing and
      gangs - I think you insulted a vast majority of them who are in neighbourhood schools - who are very successful in their careers.

Do you have evidence to prove your claim?

Also can you list those neighbourhood schools versus your elite schools

Probably you will be surprise to discover that many who graduate from these neighbourhood schools probably are equally successful if not more successful than your elite schools.

Babe  hellokitty00 

By the way, can you list down those neighbourhood schools produce kids with bad habits eg smoking, glue sniffing and gangs. Will like to see what you say is true or not - or is just your perception and a sweeping statement.

Also have you open your mouth and ask those people you met who are PMET (Professional Manager, Executive, Technician) - an indication of success in their career - and you just do a count how many are from neighbourhood schools, polytechnic or average JCs versus your so called elite schools - before you made your sweeping statement.