Thursday, January 6, 2011 @ 10:37 AM
In today’s society, education plays an important role in ensuring that Singapore has a strong labour force. Since Singapore focuses more on the secondary and tertiary sectors for its economic growth, getting a basic education is crucial. Therefore, it is essential for parents to make sure that their children obtain at least a Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) certificate.
Having good schools with capable leaders and teachers, and facilities that are amongst the best in the world, Singapore is said to have a very strong education system. Therefore, children often set high goals for themselves and often get good results. Singapore is now moving towards a flexible and a more diverse education system which aim to provide students with greater choice to meet their different interests and way of learning things.
An extract taken from Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE) website, “We want to nurture young Singaporeans who ask questions and look for answers, and who are willing to think in new ways, solve new problems and create new opportunities for the future. And, equally important, we want to help our young to build up a set of sound values so that they have the strength of character and resilience to deal with life’s inevitable setbacks without being unduly discouraged, and so that they have the willingness to work hard to achieve their dreams.”
On the other hand, students also face problems with their parents and also foreign students. Parents often emphasize on the importance for their children to work hard and get good grades in school. Therefore, they will feel pressurised and hence overwork themselves because they do not want to disappoint their parents. Besides meeting the expectations of their parents, students are also facing problems when it comes to competition from foreign students. Most of the times, these foreign students are smarter and more hard-working as compared to our Singaporean students. This is because the pressure is much greater on them given that they had fork out a lot money for their education in Singapore, which is costly due to the high currency rate.
However, pressure does not necessarily have to be a negative thing. It might also serve as motivations for Singaporean students to work even harder in order to be on par with the foreign students or even be better than them. Singapore is a fast-paced city, therefore it is important for us to constantly upgrade ourselves to achieve greater heights.