What good is mixed-ability classes?
Some schools are trying it out nevertheless. Ai Tong, St Hilda Primary, Ngee Ann and Catholic High are mixing students of different streams in one class.
The goal? “To lay the groundwork for nurturing lifelong learning attitudes and skills.”
Another principal, Mrs Daphne Yeo, said; “We decided to further blur the distinction of results between our students, by spreading our high-progress students across more classes.”
Daphne hopes that academically stronger pupils will support and guide those less academically inclined in the same class. “This interaction between peers of different abilities also allows them to learn from one another’s unique strengths and develop empathy for others.”
She added: “Through these changes, we can still gauge our students’ learning outcomes, but in a more nurturing and less competitive environment.”
Education minister Ong Ye Kung has given these schools his ministerial blessings in some kind of unspoken social experiment to study “how they can reshape form classes so that they are not organised along academic tracks in future.”Such experiment is not the first in Singapore’s education history.
In 1978, a team of engineers nicknamed the “daring dozen” led by DPM Goh Keng Swee took on the challenge “to fix a broken education system, where students were dropping out of school with low levels of literacy and having trouble even staying in secondary school.” (“Why schools proposed streaming in school 40 years ago?” Amelia Tang, 17 March 2019).
“The Goh Keng Swee report, as it was known, had recommended that students learn at their own pace, and a child's academic ability be assessed at Primary 3.”
One of the team members then, Professor Lim Siong Guan, explained: -
“The particular context of Dr Goh's study was to increase the number of students who go on from primary school to secondary school, and to do this in a way which can be handled by the resources of school buildings and teachers.”
"The goal was to make sure that students were taught at a level most suited to their learning ability. Streaming was a logical way to do this if we reckon that the 'total learning ability' of the child is reflected in the 'total examination results' the child has been able to get."
Alas, after nearly 40 years, where streaming was seen as a logical solution based on the definition that a child’s “total learning ability” is summed up by his “total examination results”, Ong Ye Kung and some daring principals are reversing the logic and going against the traditional stream.
Will it work? What makes the environment, educational system and teaching methods so different in late 1970s from today? And I can hear some parents arguing, why fix something that is not broken?
Well, Vice Principal Cindy Ng said that mixed-ability classes “provide more opportunities for fostering the joy of learning and reduces the emphasis on academic results.”
Mm...I wonder, is the joy of learning without the intense competition to separate the “academic” wheat from the “slow learning” chaff suitable for Singapore’s economic growth policy to seek out the best and brightest from the academic track to helm different ministries and industries?
What’s more, some parents are already raising eyebrows with mixed ability classes. One said that “if the standard is homogenous within the same class, it’s earlier and more effective for teaching. If mixed, it may be stressful for the weaker students and not as beneficial for the faster students.”
Others are worried that a mixed class will hinder or compromise their child’s learning ability. On this, their principal had assured them that “all pupils still have customised learning” proceeded at their own individualised pace.
Lim Wee Ming, 44, a parent who works in the enrichment sector, said: “Children should learn at their own pace, whether faster or slower. Mixed classes may not be efficient for learning. It could slow down the progress of stronger pupils and put extra stress on weaker pupils.”
Well, some argue that it would also put extra stress on teachers too.
Another parent said: “If the other classmates are willing to share and learn from each other, it will be good (for mixed ability classes). But if the classmates are selfish, they may group into small cliques among themselves, so it can be very bad for those kids of lower ability.”
Lesson? Just one, and it is animatedly expressed as such: “Who dares to reverse the legacy of the daring dozen led by Goh Keng Swee and undo 40 years of efficient academic progress in our intensely competitive island state based on uncompromising meritocratic principles?”
Is it then really worth it to have less unhealthy competition with mixed ability classes and subject-based learning so that a child who is lagging behind can feel better about himself and not feel that the society has forgotten him?
Is the trade off that bad - that is, ending with a more competitive, maybe a little prideful and haughty child, but one who has proven himself in the pressure-cooker academic race to emerge as the best and the brightest?
Well, for a trade off calculation, you need an economist. In comes Professor Kelvin Seah from NUS. He sets the record straight that he believes it is not a solo effort. It is a communal effort.
For it to work, the “schools need to convince parents that the benefits of having children together in mixed-ability classes outweigh the costs.”
He said: “Schools need the buy-in of parents for the scheme to be a successs.” Kelvin felt that “the role of primary schools in fostering social mixing is very important.”
“The best way to encourage social mixing is to do it at a young age, so that kids can be exposed to others from different background early.”
St Hilda’s principal Mrs Yeoh said: “Having students in mixed classes helps to break down stereotypes regarding the profile of the class, hence promoting a growth mindset amongst our students.”
From the above pro-and-con and back-and-forth arguments, I get a sense that every social experiment in a society is a cultural one whereby the product or mindset ingrained is very much a matter of how the culture is shaped, conditioned and formed over time or decades.
Personally, I feel that streaming and mixed classes are not mutually exclusive. Although there is some basis to say that mixing them, putting the bright and less bright ones together, may undermine or disincentivise those who wish to excel faster than the slow ones, yet things are often not that black-and-white or binary in nature.
There is always a balance to be struck so that we progress as a society that is held together by virtues like empathy, compassion and altrusim that are nurtured conscientiously at an age that absorbs them better.
Professor Kelvin is right to say that we need buy-ins from parents, teachers and the government to make the scheme successful.
If parents frown at the scheme and transfer their child out into another school or the government pays lip service to addressing the urgent issues of social and income inequality and base their hiring policy more on grades than the mastery of skills, then this birthing efforts of mixing students in the same class will die stillborn.
And we will never know whether it will lead to a better society because we have in the last 40 years been so embedded in the cultural mindset of streaming and encouraging intense competition as the only proven way we know to produce the best and the brightest.
Let me end with this anecdotal account in the report by Amelia Teng. No doubt it is only anecdotal, but I feel that many parents (even students) can identify with it.
“A parent of a Primary 5 girl, who did not wish to be named, said that the school sorts pupils by their exam results for Primary 3 to Primary 5 classes. The teachers openly tell pupils that those who score above 90 marks for their subjects will get into the best class, known as Hope, she said.”
"The WhatsApp group chats for every class are very active except for Hope's, probably because the parents are very competitive and don't want to share any notes," said the parent, whose daughter belongs to Hope class.”
"My daughter's classmate dropped from the best class to another class and she was crying very badly."
Alas, there is no doubt that streaming for the last 40 years has solved one of our most vexing educational problems, that is, high dropout rates.
But in solving it, to a great extent, has it unintentionally or unwittingly nurtured another problem in our own backyard, that is, turning us, especially parents and their kids, into a grades-hungry, self-obsessed, and winning-at-all-costs society? Food for thoughts?
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