I think school hours have to be shortened in Singapore for the betterment of society. Yes, standard of education here is very high, and so is the learning populations' memory bank. Only in Singapore does memorising a book make you scholar material. If students had more time for other activites then perhaps they would become more well rounded individuals.
School should actually start later so students are more refreshed to attend class.School hours are too long and break time is too short!What we want is to build a strong foundation with teachers to scaffold,so they should have more hands-on experiences instead of spending long hours in class.
I agree that school should start later. The current timing was based on the two-session school system, which was phased out years ago.
MOE's argument the last time this was raised was that starting school late would add to the peak hour traffic every morning. I do not believe that argument was valid. In fact, by starting school at a later time, it would allow parents to send their kids to school before continuing their journey to work.
Even if that is true, we can always start school even later at 10am. Such a timing would allow working parents to drop off their kids at 8.30am and leave enough time for a proper breakfast. Students traveling on their own will also be able to avoid the bulk of the morning crowd.
If schools start at 10am, they will have 4-5 periods of class till about 12.30pm. Allow a 1-hour lunch break and resume classes at 1.30pm till about 4pm.
CCAs can begin after that (when the sun is not so scorching) and end about 6.30pm, just in time for dinner at home or for parents to pick them up after work.
Agreed with Thinkinky, I dont know currently how parents cope with school going kids. My friend was telling me that her kids wake up at 5.30am to prepare for school as the school bus arrives at 6+am. 5.30am!!! I can't imagine the day I have to wake up at 5.30am to send my kids to school.
Some schools are already on single session, I think that should be the norm rather than the exception.
Starting school at 10am is a good idea. It might post some logistic problem to parents with young kids and no maids/grandparents to help bring the kid down to take school bus. Might mean increase in costs as these parents would then have to rely on before-school care centres to do take care of the kids for them.
Ending school at 4pm and with ECAs running till 5.30-6 is also good. Means for the older kids, there is less time for them to hang around before/after school to cause "mischief".
School in Australia actually starts at 9am and ends at 3pm. If the children have extra curricular activities, it may stretch till about 5pm. This arrangement allows the parents to drop the children off at school and then proceed to work. I think that implementing this policy will make it favourable for women to return to work and may even encourage an increase in birth rates. It solves one of the major issues of having children - child care. If the government is worried about the traffic, they could encourage companies to stagger their work hours and make it more flexible.
Schools in Toronto start at 8.45am and end at 3.30pm. Parents can drop off their kids in the schoolyard starting at 8.30, and then go on to work, and depending on where they live relative to where they work, they may be able to get in by 9.00. Personally I think school here (in Toronto) should start a little earlier, say 8.30 so that we can drop off our kids at 8.00 or 8.15 and then be sure to get in by 9.00, but it's a small quibble. I think the S'pore system with school starting at 7.40 is a bit insane, especially since most kids don't live near their schools and so need their parents to drive them, or take a long bus ride, unlike over here, where kids are assigned to schools close to home. If schools in Singapore are already single-session, I don't see any drawback at all in implementing later start times, and everyone will be a lot happier.
Instead of focusing on the duration of 'school hours', have we thought about swtiching to a continuous 'school days' whereby we can have shorter school hours for each school days by shorthening the mid term school holidays? Right now, schools and teachers are always 'rushing' to complete the syllabus as top priority - when got time to cultivate learning process? Perhaps we should look at:
1. Having more weekly breaks e.g. Feb, Apr, Jun & Aug instead of the historical Mar, Jun & Sep school holidays
2. Adopting a continous assessment (not all school do it now) e.g. fortnightly test like modular assessment in post secondary learning.
3. More project base assignment to cultivate creativeness instead of traditional 'homework' which is so boring!
Interesting ideas... Splitting the big chunks of holidays in June and December into smaller, equal blocks of 1-2 weeks each sounds feasible, although then schools will have to figure out when they can have the time to do strategic planning and training for the following year. (This currently takes place during the long December holidays.)
I guess the problem with schools not adopting a modular approach to assessment is because they have a final exam system where the entire syllabus is tested in one major examination. Going modular means we will abolish the mid and end-of-year exams and replace them with small "tests" conducted at the end of each module. In that respect, schools are already doing so with the frequent tests in class. However, that also means that these test scores will form their final scores for the year and will have no chance to improve on that score without re-doing that module. (The current system allows students to fail their small tests but still pass overall if they do well enough in the final exams.)
Perhaps we can break up the June holidays into smaller bits but still retain the long year end holidays in November/December. That means we'll have a 2-week break in March, June and September, then the usual 6-week break in November/December.
We can also allow for more emphasis to move from exams to project work, as ymskip suggested, but taken out from the weighting for exams. If let's say the current weighting is 30% for continual assessment (CA) and 70% for semester assessment (SA), we can add in the project component and adopt a 30% (CA), 40% (SA) and 30%(Project work) distribution.
As far as I know, such a system is already being adopted in several secondary schools, with slight differences in the percentage distributions.
I personally feel that the pupils in Singapore spend too much time in the classroom. School or curriculum hours should be shorter so that more time can be spent on other activities which will enrich their lives. Also, the syllabus should be revamped to include less theory, more project work should be advocated.
I also feel that the pace at which the pupils are expected to learn has also increased tremendously. In my time, kindergarten was more a place to learn through play, learn social skills like socialising etc but now, they are expected to know addition, subtraction, multiplication and even a bit of Science concepts at K2 and all these we only learnt in P1 or P2 or even P3 at my time. It is absurd that they need to know all these at such a young age. It becomes a vicious cycle in which the parents expect the children to learn faster so that they are better able to cope in their Primary School and when the most of the pupils in the class are better the standard just keeps going up and up.
I wish that the syllabus for Primary School will be reduced and the pace of learning is slower so that the children will be better able to enjoy their childhood and not be stressed over learning too much at a young age. Learning is a lifelong process and something to be enjoyed and children will get burnout faster if they are forced to learn too much at a young age.
i remembered when i was in Primary 1,i was tracing the worksheets in PETS workbook.But now,Primary 1 kids are expected not only to write but also read and even spell!This is insane. Its a matter of parents pushing their students to keep up to the demanding curriculum that the Ministry is setting.And partially parents peing competitive..
It's a vicious cycle and it would be unfair to say it's all MOE's fault for driving students up the wall. Parents have always tried to "outrun" the system/curriculum by engaging private tutors and putting their kids through enrichment classes. Over time, the old curriculum simply becomes too irrelevant and so had to be updated to "keep up". Otherwise, learning becomes boring and kids will find attending schools purposeless since they already knew everything even before the term started!
Hi.
I was just wondering as i read through the comments whether any of you is a school teacher. Most of the commentors here have focused on the fact that MOE or even the schools are not shortening the hours or thinking of ways to effect this change. I would like to bring to your attention another party that is involved in this decision-making process - the students.
From my observations, teachers would rather have the day end early. They have other duties to take care of in the organisation. However, school hours have to be extended to facilitate the learning of the students mostly because they do not really realise the importance of an education. The Sec.4 are particularly affected, I'm pretty sure it's a common phenomenon for the graduating classes to have to stay back after school for extra lessons because their results are not up to par. Even then, some of the students do not take it seriously. Then we are back to that old argument about school ranking (it's still done actually, just not too publicly), and teachers would then have to have such lessons to make sure that the academic excellence goal is met.
Of course we ask then, if our methods are correct. In my humble opinion, the whole education systems needs to be revamped. And that start with asking what is the common goal of education? Is it just to cultivate generations after generations of students who are good in studies with no strong foundation in values? Schools will tell you it goes hand in hand, values and academic excellence, but when it comes to crunch time, they would go for results. That probably entails a different thread altogether just to get a feel on what we value more in a society- people with qualification and no values or people entrenched in good values but do not do as well or brilliantly as the scholarly ones.
Sorry. I have gone a little off-track. But yes, if we want to talk about shorter hours or changing the timing of the schools, it is as easy or as difficult as the schools want to make it to be. I have heard of schools which have come up with a different system when it comes to what time the school starts and ends lesson. So for those of you who are parents and are concerned about this, be part of the parent support group in the school and voice your concerns. Then maybe it will be more than just words in a forum.
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