Singapore's Tuition Epidemic

Hey y’all! This is John.

This newsletter is about human flourishing. Ostensibly it’s about better parenting and fixing education, but ultimately what I really care about is helping young people flourish.

In this issue, we discuss Singapore’s tuition epidemic. Covered in this issue:

• Tuition-centres selling fear

• Regulating the tuition industry

• Are high-stakes exams necessary?

Let’s dive in!

In early 2022, the Ministry of Education (MOE) of Singapore announced that mid-year examinations for all primary and secondary school levels would be removed by 2023.

MOE removed mid-year exams for good reasons.

Doyobi hosted a group of MOE teachers and principals a couple of days ago to discuss bridging the classroom with the real world - self-directed learning and developing 21st century skills came up a lot during the three-hour session. More about the Learning Journey we hosted in next week’s issue.

The quote above by the Education Minister is recognition that academic achievements are not enough. Young people need to learn to become self-directed learners, have agency, and develop 21st century skills in order to make their way in the world. As an entrepreneur and an investor in over a hundred tech startups, I can confirm that employers are looking for employees who can identify problems, own them, and work collaboratively to solve them. This requires a myriad of skills and dispositions like taking initiative, resilience, adaptability, creativity, communication, collaboration etc. that are not taught in the classroom. Hence the decision to remove mid-year exams to create the time and space for students to develop these skills.

The Geniebook ad is an absolute abhorrence.

I don’t mean to single them out. There are many other tuition centres with similar ads. I just happened to see Geniebook’s ad. Perhaps what is more damning is the fact that Geniebook are a tech startup themselves. Can the founders say hand-to-heart that they make hiring decisions based on grades? I am certain what they look for in prospective employees are the same skills and dispositions described in the paragraph above. So why are they asking parents to use the time MOE explicitly carved out to develop 21st century skills for exam prep?

I get that we live in a capitalist society. Companies are profit-driven. Geniebook just happens to be in the tuition business. Left unchecked, most businesses prioritise profits and shareholder returns above all else. Fear is a very powerful emotion. Selling fear = more money.

Here are a few possible solutions to solve the fear-based, tuition epidemic in Singapore, in ascending order of difficulty, from tactical fixes to fundamental policy changes.

Ban tuition ads

Just like how tobacco companies are banned from any form of advertising in Singapore, the government can do the same with tuition businesses. Implementation is not as straightforward as with cigarette ads because the line between tuition and enrichment is not always clear, but this is definitely implementable.

Ban tuition

Tuition is a multi-billion dollar industry in Singapore. There are probably tens of thousands of jobs at stake, but in the larger scheme of things, I’d rather 10,000-20,000 people forced into changing careers than entire generations of Singaporeans finishing formal education with limited skills and dispositions to make their way in the world. What’s at stake then is millions of jobs and the future of the nation.

Let me be clear here.

There is a direct trade-off between sending kids to more tuition and giving them the time and space to explore, discover, learn about themselves and develop 21st century skills.

In 2021, the Chinese government clamped down on the private tutoring sector, banning them from providing for-profit classes on school curriculum subjects. It has not been entirely successful. There is a rampant black market for private tutors. But Singapore is not China. It is not nearly as vast, and the Singapore government has shown time and again that when they want something banned, they are pretty good at enforcing it. Chewing gum and duty-free cigarettes are two good examples.

Banning tuition will also increase teacher retention within the public school system. How many teachers does MOE lose to the tuition industry every year? Teachers with years of training and experience who went over to the other side because it’s more lucrative. There is a real cost to the government and to society.

I understand banning tuition is harsh on many tutors who genuinely want to help students gain confidence through better grades. Perhaps what is not being said is that for many lower-performing students, the reason they are not doing well is because many of their higher-performing classmates have been attending tuition for years. The problem is created by the tuition industry. Sell the poison, then sell the antidote.

Change the secondary school admission process

For as long as good PSLE (a compulsory high-stakes one-off national exam at the young age of 12) results is the ticket to getting into one’s secondary school of choice, parents will keep sending kids for tuition. So why not fix the admission process? This can take many forms and is beyond the scope of this newsletter, but one simple idea is to let students use their PSLE results to choose secondary school districts rather than schools. Each district can have 8-10 schools, for example. Students can pick their district of choice based on proximity to their home and the school(s) they like to attend, but MOE assigns the student to one of the schools within their chosen district. There is still an incentive to do well for PSLE, but there is also randomness in the admission process that downplays the importance of the exam.

Make PSLE optional

PSLE is not an evidence-informed (science-based) way of checking children’s learning or potential. There are much better ways of checking their learning at age 12.

For a deep dive into how making PSLE optional can work, please read this blog post by advocacy group EveryChild.sg. [Full disclosure: I am a volunteer]

This issue of Education & Catastrophe, while strongly worded, is not meant to cause offence. It is just my take on what I view as predatory marketing, and all the underlying issues at hand.

If you enjoyed this week’s issue, subscribe to Education & Catastrophe now and follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter (sorry, X) for thoughts on the future of work and learning.