Schoolchildren are paying a heavy price for Singapore’s success in global education rankings, with rising numbers seeking psychiatric help as they struggle to cope with the relentless pressure for academic excellence.
Children are reporting symptoms of anxiety and stress related to school as early as elementary school, experts warn, and there have been extreme cases where pupils have been driven to suicide.
Youths often face long days at school, hours of homework, and are then pushed by parents to have private tuition, which is having an impact on mental wellbeing — a recent report found that overall the city’s pupils reported higher levels of anxiety than average.
Photo: AFP
Now, in a bid to reduce stress in its schools, Singapore is embarking upon reforms that will scrap some academic tests, and change the rigid streaming process.
“We have to balance the joy of learning and the rigor of education,” Singaporean Minister of Education Ong Ye Kung (王乙康) said, as he announced some of the changes in parliament earlier this year.
The move comes at a time when more authorities in Asia are being forced to assess if pupils are being overwhelmed by pressure to perform — Hong Kong’s Child Fatality Review listed problems with schoolwork among one of the key reasons for teen suicide.
Japan reported its highest youth suicide rate in 30 years in the 2016-2017 school year, with officials saying there is an annual spike on Sept. 1 — the start of the school year.
Singapore has placed education at the heart of its development since independence in the 1960s and now tops the PISA international rankings — a system dubbed the world cup of education — for math, reading and science.
However, a study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which conducts the PISA assessment, found that despite academic success Singapore’s students reported higher levels of anxiety about schoolwork than other nations.
Elementary-school children are required to take a leaving exam, regarded by parents and teachers as crucial because success often means access to prestigious schools and top sets.
“Children are being forced to mature too fast without the relevant foundation and reasoning power to reassure oneself,” said Daniel Koh, a psychologist with the Insights Mind Centre. “Society does not want to allow the luxury of taking it slow.”
The youngest person he has treated for school-related stress was a first-grader who was struggling with the transition from kindergarten, he said.
Under such heavy pressure, private, after-school tuition has become the norm. Singaporean students rank third globally on time spent on homework, at 9.4 hours a week, an OECD survey found.
As major exams approach, suicide prevention group the Samaritans of Singapore typically sees a rise in students contacting them, Samaritans senior assistant director Wong Lai Chun said.
In 2016, an 11-year-old boy jumped to his death on the day he was supposed to reveal his mid-year exam results to his parents. He had failed two subjects.
“Over the past few years, based on my clinical experience, I have seen more teenagers who are from top schools and report experiencing school-related stress,” department of child and adolescent psychiatry deputy chief Lim Choon Guan at Singapore’s Institute of Mental Health.
However, he said this might be due to a greater willingness to report problems and that school counsellors are more aware of such issues and refer them.
Authorities hope the reforms can go some way to ease the pressure. Measures include axing some exams in both primary and secondary school, and only grouping students according to ability in more academic subjects such as math and science — rather than separating them into streams for all subjects.
Students are to be taught together for classes such as art, music and physical education.
“The reform recognizes some of the detrimental cultural and emotional effects that streaming has had on some students,” said Jason Tan, an associate professor at the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University.
However, one of the biggest hurdles to easing expectations might be tackling parents’ attitudes.
For Wendy, who only gave one name, sending her 12-year-old daughter for private tuition in addition to her schoolwork is the only way to ensure success.
Ministry of Education Divisional Director of Planning Cindy Khoo said schools have been “actively engaging parents to explain how the changes will benefit their children in the long run.”
However, pushing one’s children to do well was “deeply rooted” in Singapore’s culture, she said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.