Argumentative Essay Revamp To The Psle System of Using T-Scores

Question: Write theArgumentative Essayfor Revamp To The Psle System of Using T-Scores. Answer: Revamping The Psle System Of Using T-Scores Is Good To The Economy Of Singapore Imagine a situation where you visited a cloth line only to find one size of skirts being sold due to government regulations that could not allow other sizes of skirts to be sold in the same shop. This may sound surprising but the truth is that this has been the case in the Singapore education system for a long time. For quit a long time, the Singapore government has embraced the PSLE education system which focuses on theoretical performance as opposed to practical performance. The education system comprises of three years in Kindergarten for children from the age of three to six years. At this stage children are taught skills to enable them interact with others and to prepare them for the formal education at an advanced level such as primary school (Soon, 1988). At the age of seven, children are expected to begin primary education school which is divided into two; four years in foundation stage and two years at the orientation stage. At the end of the orientation stage, the students are subjected to a compulsory national examination; Primary School Leaving Examination. Based on their performance in the PSLE, students are allowed to choose secondary schools of their choice. Students are selected to join secondary school based on merit in PSLE as well as their choice. Moreover, the Ministry of education also admits children into secondary schools through Direct School Admission system (Adedoyin Shangodoyin, 2010). Under this system, secondary schools choose students based on possession of special talents such as sporting, acting, singing among other talents. Selection basing on this criterion usually takes place before students take their PSLE. The PSLE system puts too much emphasis on examination performance and neglects basic life skills. Children spend all their school time reading and preparing for examinations which according to the system determines their future. Failure in the examination means a loss of hope in life. As a result, children lose focus in other aspects of life such as nurturing of talent and concentrate all their time in the examination in an attempt to live a good life (NG, 2015). This has contributed to development of children who are very sharp when it comes to school work but with low productivity in the job market and in life skills (Adedoyin Shangodoyin, 2010). For instance, many children at the orientation stage, parents complain, cannot even prepare a simple mean yet they are able to score A s. Furthermore, studying and preparing for the examinations causes the children together with their parents a lot of stress. Parents spend a lot of resources buying materials to help their children prepare for the examinations. Moreover, due to the emphasis put on the perceived good schools which children who perform exceptionally well are allowed to join, most parents have to send their children for extra coaching to drill them so that they can pass the examination to join the good schools. This in the process has proved very costly especially to the middle income earners. Furthermore, the education system keeps the children away from parents for most part of their active years of development. This would have been the best stage for parents to be near their children to teach them basic life skills. Instead, the children at this stage are kept in school glued to their books focussing on the examination that is supposed to shape their future (Boon Gopinathan). No wonder children have been developing funny behaviours especially in the adolescent stage where most children do not know how to take care of themselves. Increased cases of pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease infections among teenagers is attributed to this system that locks children away from society making it impossible for society to teach them social skills as well as moral values. A revamp to this system as proposed by Mr Lee in his 2013 National Day Rally speech is the best thing to have happened to the Singapore education system. The revamp according to Mr Lee is to be focussed in the aggregate scoring system. This will shift focus from a believe by most Singaporeans that PSLE is a matter of life and death as well as the long held belief among the parents and children of Singapore that the aggregate score determines the future of the students a belief that has seen parents go as far as becoming involved as part of the examination process (Gopinathan Mardiana, 2013). The PSLE system as a whole is not a bad system but rather its scoring system emphasising on examination as a tool to measure the capability of a child is not good. In recognition of this point, the government has decided not to abolish the entire PSLE system but instead only to make deliberated changes on its scoring system in attempt to making education revert to its true purpose of developing holistic students (Kam Gopinathan, 1999). The changes are to make the system shift the traditional focus from over emphasis on academic performance to putting focus towards students discovering their personal interests and enhance the acquisition of life skills by the students that are to help them in their day to day life. Moreover, the revamp will help the government address the problem of unemployment. Over emphasis on academic excellence saw production of many graduates into the economy waiting to be employment into the formal sector. However, due to scarcity of resources, the formal sector lacks the capacity to employ all the graduates. As a result, many young people in Singapore are jobless. A revamp to the PSLE system promises to address this phenomenon. A shift in focus from academics to general life skills is likely to produce young men and women equipped with the necessary skills to create their own employment rather than wait to be employed by the government (Lim Tan, 1999). Children are to be equipped with skills such as business and entrepreneurship skills while at the same time the revamped system encourages growth of skills and talents among children; a phenomenon which has created so many jobs in the world today. For instance, sportsmen and women are one of the highly paid people in the world. References Soon, T. W. (1988). Singapore's new education system: education reform for national development. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Adedoyin, O. O., Shangodoyin, D. K. (2010). Concepts and practices of outcome based education for effective educational system in Botswana. European Journal of Social Sciences, 13(2), 161-170. Tee Ng, P. (2008). The phases and paradoxes of educational quality assurance: The case of the Singapore education system. Quality assurance in Education, 16(2), 112-125. (Adedoyin Shangodoyin, 2010) Boon, G. C., Gopinathan, S. (1965). The development of education in Singapore since 1965. Toward a better future, 12. Kam, H. W., Gopinathan, S. (1999). Recent developments in education in Singapore. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 10(1), 99-117. Lim, E. P., Tan, A. (1999). Educational assessment in Singapore. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy Practice, 6(3), 391-404. Gopinathan, S., Mardiana, A. B. (2013). Globalization, the state and curriculum reform. In Globalization and the Singapore Curriculum (pp. 15-32). Springer Singapore. NG, I. (2015). This article is a localised version of Ng, Irene (2013). Education and intergenerational mobility in Singapore. Educational Review, 115. The article is available at https://www. tandfonline. com/doi/abs/10.1080/00131911.2013. 780008#. VEnKAfmUecI.