SBB – 2 years on (Post Secondary 2 reflections)
Two years on after ending the series of subject based banding, Tiger girl is now halfway through her secondary school education. Time has really flew past and she is now entering upper secondary. Two more years and she will complete her secondary school years as the last batch of O-Levels students.
This week the Secondary 3 subject allocation has been announced. She didn’t really get the subjects of her choice. It was not that she didn’t meet the mark to take the subject but rather the school had insufficient students to make up a class for the subject that she chose. She is still taking triple science but one as a pure subject and the other as combine. Weird isn’t it? They weren’t able to offer her both Pure Biology and Pure Chemistry but gave her the combination of Pure Chemistry with Combined Physics/Biology. Apparently Physics is a compulsory subject in her school and not Chemistry. I do know from before that Chemistry and E-maths are compulsory for other schools. This is the first time I heard about compulsory Physics. I guess it is because of a lack of sufficient Chemistry/ Biology teachers in her school.
There is really a lack of Science teachers in her school I really feel. QUALITY science teachers to boost!! This year I was really shocked when her science grades took a real nose dive. I didn’t blame her for the bad grades as I was extremely skeptical of the current year’s science teacher’s teaching. Being a straight A student like her brothers there is no question about her ability to excel academically. Just as I expected that teacher really did a bad job with slip shot teaching, insufficient explanations and not completing the syllabus as scheduled. Many questions which came up during the examinations were not taught in class therefore it was impossible for her to score and the whole class failed badly during the mid years as a result of poor teaching by the science teacher. Seeing the E8 in her report book I told her that she really need to do something about it and don’t bother “trying” to follow what the science teacher is teaching in class as clearly he doesn’t even know his stuff as evident by the whole class failing badly for the midyear exams. Tiger girl did remediate her poor grades through intensive tutoring given by Monkey boy. During the end of the year exams her science grade returned to an A1. It was clear evidence that the teacher was the one hampering her stellar performance in school as with her elder brother’s coaching she was on track with her academic grades.
Being a tutor myself and having secondary school students to coach I do note that the standard of teaching in schools have drastically dropped these years. The basics are not thoroughly covered as before and the students do not get enough practice before moving on to new components. There has to be a lot of drilling done privately for them to really grasp the concepts that are suppose to be learnt. Unfortunately even those branded schools fall short giving adequate help to students to survive through their secondary school years. It is impossible for one to do without extra help these days to survive the system. Most of the good teachers have left and the ones left are mostly half baked. I really pray for the youngsters today. They are being shortchanged by a messed up environment.
