Interesting debate.

At AL6, my gut feel is, go for a top school.

At AL8, I think I would be more neutral.

Many people say top schools have a ton of opportunities like special programmes, which is true.

None of my kids took any special programmes lol

Did I find the ECG outstanding for university applications? Actually I didn’t.

A lot boils down to individual effort and what you make out of the experience.

I am grateful to the schools my kids went to. But I have equally seen a ton of casualties from top schools.

Whichever choice you make, make the best out of it - and don’t look back.

@bbbay said in Singapore universities historical IGP/RP by courses:

@SG_KP1

I read NUSC is the replacement of Yale-NUS

Not in its entirety. NUS discontinued YNC and University Scholars Programme. There is no more ‘scholars’ RC per se.

NUSC has taken the learning points from the two programmes, and opened it up to a much larger pool of interested students.

Everyone ends up liking their RC or hall, me thinks. There is palpable pride.

@slmkhoo said in New L1R4 system for JC entry:

@zac-s-mum When you hear of anything interesting, post on KSP? Could be a good chance to meet too! Especially since we will have money to spend!

Please do watch Hotel by Wild Rice if it is included in the Culture Pass!

@bbbay Thank you for this very interesting perspective.

I have no basis for comparison as I only have personal experience with HCI and would fully agree with your observation that HCI’s activities generally are without the bells and whistles.

My kid enjoyed the 6 years fully but admittedly, he did find it intense.

I did not enjoy witnessing A levels results collection last year.

Yes, there are 20 or so kids who would get some form of honorary mention for their good grades, persevering in spite of adversity etc. Am certainly happy for them.

However, I also witnessed a fair number of individual sobbing, devastation and disappointments at the different nooks and corners in school. That stuck with me strongly.

certainly, we should not be obsessed with university (or school) rankings. neither should rankings be discarded in the considerations.

For niche interests or value propositions, the considerations are different. This applies even at decisions at the schooling stage (e.g. certain special programmes, SOTA for Arts & Music etc). If a child is going to read say Dentistry in a not so well ranked university overseas, but earns a degree recognized by the singapore accreditation board, and wishes to practise in Singapore, i think most parents will support (if they are financially able to). so it there is a clear niche such as studying in Germany with plans to work for German firms in Singapore, or working in Austria/Germany in future, I think that’s fine.

However, if the child has no clear plans and wishes to keep job options in Singapore as wide as possible (not unusual among university-going students), then I guess my general take is that going to local universities or more widely known universities may open the most options. As slmkhoo explained, it’s also down to how the candidate is able to position the experience and his/her choice, and to contextualise it to the employer’s hiring needs.

@zac-s-mum

One of my kids was from a Secondary School which made Literature a full compulsory, grade counting subject for all for years for IP kids. For O level kids, it is compulsory minimally as a half subject in upper Sec, and a full subject in lower Sec.

I was one of those who could not for the life of me understand why a School would stand by such a decision - shouldn’t it be to prioritize the L1R5 or overall grades of all their students at Sec 4? After all, Literature is subjective.

Or so I thought.

Gradually, I became a convert and now I hope the School can preserve this policy/tradition for as long as it can - though I know its hard as there will be many parents and kids who believe in choice and maximizing grades.

Every other subject taken in school that is examinable, is a language or a STEM subject, to build immediately ‘useful’ foundations or skills. But which subject at the Secondary School level allows one to explore human themes, emotions, situations? Which subject allows you to engage with the material to build empathy, draw connections between various points, and have you immersed in certain circumstances and settings? A single subject, even if you score a C5, will pull your L1R5 down unless it is your single humanities.

The engagement with reading and with text, goes a little further with taking Literature throughout Sec School.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/i-feel-happier-learning-more-students-pick-up-french-german-under-flexible-language-programme?utm_campaign=stfb&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawJDV95leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHSNxS29dquc6PYRgKRQO1mTlMftCaf_8YMwcVHh7Go7y06rPsE9LaXgnFA_aem_zgmwVoUkik9XGL3NMn8iHw

I am really glad to see MOE opening up French and German to more students, and on a modular basis. For the longest time, it was only opened to a select group who qualify based on PSLE grades, and it follows a set schedule and structure.

@zac-s-mum said in New L1R4 system for JC entry:

@SG_KP1 Not sure if A level History would be suitable for those who didn’t take O level History. The learning curve would be particularly steep (compared to Literature - I think).

Secondary school History has changed since our time, when there was only the structured essay component - just memorize the content & you can score well. Nowadays in lower sec, memorizing content will only get u 50% of the marks. The other half is from answering source-based inferential questions. Many Science-inclined students struggle with those.

In upper sec History (O levels), it gets even tougher: the structured essays are no longer simple memorized content. The questions are Argumentative-type essay questions, ie. “(Opinion statement on X historical event.) How far do you agree (with this statement)?” So the student needs to (within exam time limit), formulate the For and Against arguments, and conclude with his own opinion (agree or disagree) and why. Again, there are students weaker in English who do not even choose this essay type in their English O level compositions (preferring Narrative type like PSLE style, where they can memorize flowery descriptive phrases). They would fail both the History structured essay AND the source-based essay (which moves on to an even wider variety of qn types at upper sec).

It’s perfectly okay to read A level History without taking O level History. A good number of A level History students did not take History at O levels / upper sec.

@zac-s-mum I understand why there are prerequisites for science and maths - because these are super structured subjects and the content and skills and topics build on previous foundations. There is a highly methodical way, which hasn’t changed in the past 100 years as far as foundational aspects go.

Whereas for Humanities, I don’t think there should be any prerequisites even at the uni level, for History, Geog, Lit or Economics. There isn’t a need to impose. Content knowledge is not exactly the key in these subjects The prerequisite skills needed are mainly in language and math. Those with prerequisite exposure may have an advantage at the beginning, but it’s not stacked learning the way it is for STEM.

@slmkhoo said in New L1R4 system for JC entry:

@zac-s-mum When you hear of anything interesting, post on KSP? Could be a good chance to meet too! Especially since we will have money to spend!

Please do watch Hotel by Wild Rice if it is included in the Culture Pass!

On a separate note, I feel that the creative arts scene in Singapore has come a very long way. Many people may not be aware of how far SingTheatre has come, and how high the sciptwriting standards and production standards have come. I would encourage families to watch a Wild Rice or Pangdemonium production - it makes for a great family outing. Hotel is particularly good and I believe Wild Rice is running it again this year.

@zac-s-mum

One of my kids was from a Secondary School which made Literature a full compulsory, grade counting subject for all for years for IP kids. For O level kids, it is compulsory minimally as a half subject in upper Sec, and a full subject in lower Sec.

I was one of those who could not for the life of me understand why a School would stand by such a decision - shouldn’t it be to prioritize the L1R5 or overall grades of all their students at Sec 4? After all, Literature is subjective.

Or so I thought.

Gradually, I became a convert and now I hope the School can preserve this policy/tradition for as long as it can - though I know its hard as there will be many parents and kids who believe in choice and maximizing grades.

Every other subject taken in school that is examinable, is a language or a STEM subject, to build immediately ‘useful’ foundations or skills. But which subject at the Secondary School level allows one to explore human themes, emotions, situations? Which subject allows you to engage with the material to build empathy, draw connections between various points, and have you immersed in certain circumstances and settings? A single subject, even if you score a C5, will pull your L1R5 down unless it is your single humanities.

The engagement with reading and with text, goes a little further with taking Literature throughout Sec School.

@zac-s-mum said in New L1R4 system for JC entry:

Sigh. I heard that some schools are considering not offering any pure Humanities for next year’s sec 3 batch (the first batch using L1R4 for JC entry). Their assumption is that double science combis will still be more popular & therefore no demand expected for double Humanities. What a sad consequence of this system.

What? possibly no option to take even a single full Humanities? That is really sad to me.

In the UK where higher education is known to be pretty narrow/in depth, the norm is to do 8 to 10 GCSEs (i.e. O level subjects). I’m a big advocate on broad exposure in the early years. Singapore’s primary school education is already narrow to me, and would prefer that students get more opportunities for academic breath in Sec School.

How many kids would have the courage to read Lit, History or Geog at A levels if they had not done so at O levels? Ditto with Physics, Chem, Bio and arguably Computing.

Is this a drastic reduction of workload for teachers then? First, school assessments have reduced by much. From CA1/SA1/CA2/SA2 full exam papers, now teachers are setting and marking much smaller tests. Second, if students take 7 instead of 8 subjects, does this mean each school need fewer teachers?

I value the function to edit posts too! I think it is important to be able to amend one’s post, especially if it contains some inadvertent mistakes or misinformation.

By virtue of my workplace and nature of work, thankfully I do have exposure to young people, their challenges and how they think. I really enjoy interacting with young people - it helps me break out of my narrow generational perspectives which do creep in thanks to social media algorithms and the natural company we keep with peers.

I value church too, as a means to live out the christian faith in action individually and as a family. I didn’t use to think of church this way when I was younger, when it was more of fulfilling my own spiritual needs.

Ironically, we travelled so much as a family during the kids’ schooling years and now that the kids are older, and also possibly due to the intensity of work (when I 1st started work we did not have laptops so a holiday was a real holiday whereas now, we check emails on the go all the time) I am finding it harder to get away, even though we are now free from child-raising activities!

@slmkhoo we use Facetime and it works well! The whole family has succumbed to the Apple ecosystem, heh.

I’m not feeling the emptiness as I can always find things to occupy and amuse myself It’s just the realisation that we don’t quite have the kids with us any more cos they’re no longer kids! heh. It’s actually a very nice stage of life to walk together with the spouse.

Actually GE period was pretty fun - DD and I attended rallies and screamed our lungs out! Cathartic!

@slmkhoo I suspect if my 2nd one also decides to study overseas later this year, I’m going to be suffering from empty nest syndrome. Any other KSP mama in my shoes??

I shall take it as advance preparation for kids getting married and flying the coup!