What good is a mixed-ability class?

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?

Finnish inclusivity and Singapore's Education System.

Some trips make you think. Some experiences reported about that trip makes you think even harder. And reading about their experiences make me think even more. 

Amelia Teng, Education Correspondent, recently made a trip to Finland to study how they did it and this is her opening salvo: -

“Finland has often attracted global attention for being an education miracle - there are no major exams until the age of 18, private tuition is unheard of and yet students still do well in global education rankings.”

As a parent of three growing kids, putting my kids through the rigors of our local educational system, the part that raised my eyebrows to the heavens was “private tuition is unheard of” and “students still do well in global education rankings.” (And I won’t even get to the part about there being “no major exams until the age of 18” - I only have two eyebrows to raise).

Well, our students here have done equally well in global education rankings too. That has to be said. But still, our route (or experiences) is quite different from the Finland’s path. 

And I know there are many roads that lead to Rome, but can one of the healthier road be the Finland’s way where (as reported and experienced) there is no major exams (until 18) and tuition is unheard of?

PSLE and GCE “O” level are the sacred cows of our educational system. They are what our unique meritocracy is based on. They are the cornerstone of how we streamline society, kind of like a filtering system, where the academically bright are separated from the academically less bright - to put it simply.

Mind you, it has been with us since independence and it has worked well - so, what’s ain’t broken, shouldn’t we just let it be?

At most, we can tweak the entrenched system a little or progressively in the same way a race car would be spruced up at a pitstop at F1 race. But don’t expect major overhaul because the driver has a race to catch, and most times, it can be really intense. 

But before I drone further on this point, let’s return to the article’s main point. 

The report on the trip was mainly on inclusivity in schools, that is, “more than 95 per cent of its students with special needs, including those with severe conditions such as cerebral palsy, are in publicly funded, regular schools known as comprehensive schools”. 

In Singapore, we have a comfortable percentage of 80 (who attend mainstream schools). 

To be exact, the stats are that “these students have learning difficulties due to conditions such as dyslexia, autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The rest, or about 6,200 students, attend 19 special education schools, which are for those who require more support.”

But many felt that we can do more, and do more without compromising and undermining the development of other students.

In fact, according to the report, “a 2016 paper by Harvard Graduate School of Education found that students with special needs who went to general education classes outperformed their peers in segregated settings.”

Lien Foundation chief executive Lee Poh Wah said “the concept of special education here is still rooted in an archaic system of separate special schools run by social service organisations.”

What was suggested was for the channeling of resources “to create a network of inclusive primary schools, training more mainstream teachers in special needs and equipping schools with dedicated specialists such as psychologists, therapists and social workers.”

This is similar to the experience of Finland educators where “special education teachers in Finland are highly qualified and well-trained; a key feature of the inclusive classrooms was their co-teaching and co-planning of lessons with the mainstream teachers.”

Surprisingly, it reports that this system “may even improve teaching practises for all students, as teachers and principals are required to support the needs of each child individually.”

And “by law, special classes even in regular schools are kept small in Finland - one teacher to a group of six to eight students with severe learning problems.”

If you put a mental tag on that aspect of inclusivity in Finland, and move back to what I discussed earlier about no major exams and where tuition is unheard of, you get a picture of a system that is somewhat kinder and healthier for students as a whole as they progress from age to age until maturity. 

Now, of course, the ultimate goal is testable results and the report card (at the end of the day) must show learning, knowledge gained and applied, and academic maturity. But this has to be bore in mind, at what cost? 

Let’s take our system on tests at every crucial stage for example. Dr Jacqueline Chung, academic director and senior principal at St James’ Church Kindergarten, said that “primary school teachers here tend to focus on gearing up children for the Primary School Leaving Examination.” 

She added: “It can be pressurising for students with learning difficulties if they cannot keep up with the pace of learning.”

In Finland, it reports that children “do not have any standardised or high-stakes exams. Teachers use projects or homework to evaluate their progress and track learning.” 

Dr Marjo Kyllonen, head of development services in Helsinki said that “schools in Finland believe in portfolio assessment - assessing students based on learning tasks and objectives. This learning is more natural for students...as opposed to cramming for tests and not remembering anything you studied the next day.” 

To sidetrack...parents, she does have a point right? 

We all experienced this before, when we study to pass and not study to learn (or study for interest). The major difference is that for the former (study to pass/score), it is all about that day, and everything that leads to that day of exam. 

Once we have done it, completed it, we jettison most of what we have stored mechanically in our brain out of the system. The mental script is: Mission accomplished, let’s prepare with technocratic focus to jump through the next academically-intense hoop.

My concern is that our system somehow risks setting up our children for that kind of mindset. Alas, it is said that education is not about cramming everything into our kid’s brain, but lighting a fire within - stoking curiosity, rekindling passion, igniting desire and fortifying interest. 

The gist of my post this morning is about rethinking. This sentiment is expressed aptly by executive director of Rainbow Centre, Ms Tan Sze Wee, when she said: -

“If we can move away from exams as the primary way to decide on places for schools, and look instead at different ways of teaching and evaluating diverse learners in one classroom, our children will learn to value and respect diversity.”

That’s the direction I trust our system designers are taking. Not just a more inclusive system where no one is left behind (or feels as if he or she is left behind), but also valuing each child for what he or she can excel in within an environment that is essentially child-centric and not exams-centric. 

Imagine with me for a moment: Our education system is not a race to see who finishes first, to crown the winner with trophies and the glam-lights and leaving the rest in winner’s shadow. But it is a marathon, where the first to arrive is no doubt recognised for his or her endurance and character, yet those who come in thereafter are also applauded for their endurance and character. 

There is still an element of competition to some extent and it is unavoidable. But unlike an academic rat-race to the bottom, a marathon is more about challenging yourself, beating your personal best, and doing better the next time round. 

While a race like a sprint is to see and compare who’s better/faster, a marathon is about completing it with pride of one’s achievement and about self-congratulation and giving a good pad on one’s back. 

Most importantly, the whole community rejoices with every marathoner arriving at the finish line. But in a race, the celebration is usually about who comes in first, and by how much he or she beats the last timing. One is communal and the other is largely individualistic. One is about intrinsic motivation and the other fiercely competitive. 

I feel that the Finland road is a marathon while our system is largely about racing within certain highly anticipated timing - lest you, as a competitor, is frowned upon. No doubt we are evolving, and that is why we send delegates to Finland to learn from them. 

But my concern (as I end) is that if we remain fiercely meritocratic coupled with the all-consuming goal of putting the economic growth cart before the inclusive/communal horse, we run the risks of merely paying lip-service to changing our educational system without changing the script behind it, which we have unwittingly elevated to the status of inscrutable sacred cows. Cheerz.

Clean wage, Clean Government, missed opportunity?

We should just let it go, let it go. It has been frozen for years, and now the Auditor-General's Office (AGO) is thawing it.

Come August this year, charging teachers for parking fees will melt into reality and they can expect to pay either a monthly or annual sum for occupied spaces in schools.

However, letting it go or otherwise, MP Seah Kian Peng had recently raised the issue again in Parliament.

He said: "For too long, we have made decisions based more on an economic compass, as if the use of one dollar has the moral equivalence of the loss of another...It is time we recognise money is merely a proxy for value, and at times, a very bad one."

MP Ong Ye Kung's reply to MP Seah is simple. It is about equalizing the civil service. It is about fairness to all. It is about "cleanliness".

He first talked about teachers being flagged by the AGO "for going against the civil service's policy of paying clean wages," that is, wages with no hidden benefits. In other words, he is saying that the government shouldn't "subsidise" teachers with free parking.

And then, he put the matter to fiscal rest when he said: "This finding went against years of MOE practice. Yet, we have to respect our internal system of checks and balances. We cannot pick and choose which (AGO) finding to address or comply with - we take them all seriously. This is about upholding the value of self-discipline."

Now, to be fair to Ong, at one point of his speech, he did resonate with MP Seah's POV when he said that "governance and running a public service system is not always about taking a purist market approach."

Ong added: "Perhaps for the same reason, for a long time, we didn't charge parking for teachers in schools and servicemen in camps".

At this point, I wonder, what Ong meant by "perhaps for the same reason, for a long time, we didn't charge parking for teachers in schools and servicemen in camps"? And this is to be read with: "this finding (that is, AOG's unclean wage) went against years of MOE practice (that is, allowing for free parking)"?

It is tempting to ask: How did MOE (and our servicemen) get away with it for so long? More relevantly, why did they get away with it for that long? What then broke the camel's back of the AGO to finally put a stop to it and charge teachers for parking?

If "governance and running a public service system is not always about taking a purist market approach," a noble sentiment which MP Seah shares, why change now?

Are we then returning to a purist market approach by charging teachers after a long respite, because our government can't stand the cognitive dissonance on the economic front and therefore has come to their dollar and senses?

I ask this because, admittedly, if it has been going on for years, if not decades, for our teachers and servicemen, then it is invariably entrenched, even silently accepted by the majority at large.

So, considering human nature, uprooting it now would surely disrupt expectations, to put it mildly. And it has indeed ruffled many feathers according to the last survey on the social media landscape.

Many are not happy about it, and MP Seah must have felt the anguish on the ground to deem it fit to have the issue canvassed in Parliament.

Yet, Ong came forward to justify the charges as about "upholding the value of self-discipline".

Are they then going to instill further self-discipline by charging servicemen (which they are doing for some camps now), parliamentarians, ministers and volunteers during meet-the-people sessions?

In the end, this is Singapore. This is how the government rolls. This is what Ong calls a clean government.

And in his own words in "defending the clean wage policy as a moral idea," Ong said that "all public servants subscribe to it", adding: "This is one of our core practices to ensure a clean government.

Well, just for corniness sake, it is also a fine city.

But levity aside, I always thought that when a politician answers another in parliament, and if it is a good and sensible answer, it leaves one with less questions than before. It also leaves one thinking about why he had asked the question in the first place.

However, when Ong defended the clean wage policy as a moral idea in Parliament, somehow, it left more questions for me than before. It also made me want to repeat my question I'd asked in the first place (because I don't think he got the point).

I mean, how is returning to a presumably purist economic approach as manifested in the carpark charges for teachers this August considered "a moral idea"?

At best, it is amoral, or a neutral point. As Professor Sandel puts it: "Explaining how markets work is central subject of economics. So why has economics failed to provide a convincing basis for deciding what should, and what should not, be up for sale (or whether teachers or servicemen should or should not be charged for parking)?"

To that, he said: "The reason lies in the conception of economics as a value-neutral science of human behaviour and social choice."

That's the essence of MP Seah's point, which Ong had curiously overlooked.

And if the moral element here is about fairness to all, that is, across-the-board treatment, then it is a slippery slope because the benefits, monetary and/or otherwise, that ministers get - starting with their astronomical paycheck and the other perks enjoyed by them - far outweigh the take home pay of the majority by a considerably unbridgeable margin.

Fairness to all is a parliamentary ideal that once the well-endowed parliamentarians step out of parliament becomes a reality gap that our highly unequal society is hard pressed to bridge.

In other words, one man's clean wages is another man's perception of dirty wages.

Having said that, personally, I don't think Ong even answered (or addressed) MP Seah's concerns directly, or specifically.

You see, it seems to me to be quite obvious that AGO is doing its job to use a fine-toothed comb to scour the nooks and crannies of society to see whether they have left anything out for fair and expedient extraction of revenues. That is their technocratic job to be carried out with exactitude, I fully understand it.

Just as no one is left behind, so no one is left unaccounted for (for economic rent-extracting purposes of course).

But MP Seah's point goes further and deeper than that. In Parliament, he called for a rethink on the role of “economic reasoning” in policymaking here.

To flesh it out fully here, his point is about the larger picture, and not just about some issue of self-discipline (or for that matter, about free parking specifically).

In other words, "in the broader front," as reported, "Mr Seah urged the Ministry of Finance to lead a “reform”, and bring about “an explicit recognition (in the Government) of the limits of price, cost and expenditure as a proxy for value, and to allow for greater use of discretion by public officers in recognising moral reasoning as a legitimate form of argumentation”".

It bears repeating that MP Seah "stressed that his call was “not an appeal to populism”. Rather, it is an appeal to the ideas of justice and community that have informed Singapore policy making at the start of our journey 53 years ago.""

And "instead of taking the “cheap, efficient and quick” approach," he added. "Singapore has to look at what is “fair, just and right” in order to truly tackle inequality and other national issues.""

“We must… make (the) language of morality our vernacular in policy matters. It is time we recognise that money is merely a proxy for value, and at times, a very bad one," so rallied MP Seah.

I believe all that had unfortunately flew pass Ong when he replied in what I felt was a non-sequitur manner about AGO's enforcing internal checks and balances and emphasising that the issue is about self-discipline.

Alas, maybe the real issue is more about more self-reflection?

It is said that the eagle who flies high in the sky does not worry about crossing the river below.

Applying this metaphor here, I think MP Seah was taking the bird's eye view of things in the long run of how our government ought to build trust and confidence and close the income and social divide more effectively.

But Ong seems to me to have let a good point slipped by in Parliament by contending with the technocratic struggle to cross the "checks and balances" river on a purely economic approach by not directly addressing the issue at large.

Personally, and this has to be said, the issue is not just about charging teachers or servicemen for parking.

It really goes beyond that to what growth is our government going for or pursuing, that is, is it about putting a price on every nook and cranny spaces in Singapore so as to extract a pound of economic value in order to put more into the nation's already overflowing reserves, or is it about taking the high road to a more compassionate, humane, sustainable and trust-engendering society along the line of what MP Seah has said, that is, "to rethink the role of the market and of economic reasoning."

For there is a saying that we ought to treat everyone the same by treating everyone differently (because of the different stations, growth and fortune in life).

Alas, in Singapore, it seems like we treat some people differently by paying lip service to treating everyone the same. And this is sadly the result of the ever widening income and social divide between the elitist section of society and the rest of the population. Cheerz.