JANUARY 14 — My first article on education reform, published on Facebook on the 7th of January, was a call for discussion on education reforms to be based on research over emotions, facts over politics, and continuity over personality. It was generally well-received, but at the end of it, I offer...
JANUARY 14 — My first article on education reform, published on Facebook on the 7th of January, was a call for discussion on education reforms to be based on research over emotions, facts over politics, and continuity over personality. It was generally well-received, but at the end of it, I offer very little in terms of “solution” or policy proposal, and this was pointed out by a few learned friends and strangers.
I would suggest that the core problem under the purview of “education system” and supported by evidence is the underperformance of our school children in Reading, Mathematics and Science relative to high-performing nations, especially in East Asia, and even to countries with similar GDP per capita .
We allocate a smaller percentage of time in school for teaching of science and mathematics compared to high performance nations. For example, we allocate 13 per cent of school contact hours for maths compared to 22 per cent in Singapore and 16 per cent in South Korea. Children from lower-income group, in particular the urban-poor, suffer from stunted growth and malnutrition which may impact long-term academic performance. Children’s initial reading competency is correlated with the home literacy environment, number of books owned, and parent distress . However, poor households have less access to learning materials and experiences, including books, computers, stimulating toys, skill-building lessons, or tutors to create a positive literacy environment .
Policy recommendations can be divided into short-term , medium term , long-term in both implementation and impact. For brevity, I would like to propose the following short-term policy to address the 3 reasons of our underperformance: 1.Introducing state-sponsored after-school classes – whether run in school or privatized to outside parties – for the very bottom of the under-privileged children. This programme is a stop-gap to the long-term plan of extending schooling hours to the model in South Korea, Japan and Australia;
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