One Singaporean mother I met in Perth has, on more than one occasion, expressed her bewilderment of the WA education system. The kids get minimal homework and the school syllabus isn't clearly divided into chapters and topics like the textbooks I grew up with.
Everyday the kids come home and, if they want to, complete a worksheet that just takes up one third an A4 page, consisting questions like telling the time, a maths question, a science question, and maybe a couple of english questions.
Is that enough practice?
I grew up with learning about certain things for a certain period of time, like we would do fractions for two weeks, then multiplication and division for another two weeks and we'd learn all about something during that time. We had like two textbooks per subject (one A version, another B version, for Chinese, one 上, one 下), not to mention heaps of homework to be completed by the next day. Education in Singapore was very clearly structured and inflexible. At least, it was like that when I was in primary school.
But you know the phrase, all roads lead to Rome... anyway?
Well, come uni and there really isn't much difference between students who did primary school in Australia and Singaporean students, or any other international students for that matter.
So there really isn't a need to get worried over whether your kids are getting their necessary education is there? I'm not a parent yet (obviously), but hey, it's not like the average adult is not savvy enough for what life doles out. Does it really matter where you got your primary education?
Everyday the kids come home and, if they want to, complete a worksheet that just takes up one third an A4 page, consisting questions like telling the time, a maths question, a science question, and maybe a couple of english questions.
Is that enough practice?
I grew up with learning about certain things for a certain period of time, like we would do fractions for two weeks, then multiplication and division for another two weeks and we'd learn all about something during that time. We had like two textbooks per subject (one A version, another B version, for Chinese, one 上, one 下), not to mention heaps of homework to be completed by the next day. Education in Singapore was very clearly structured and inflexible. At least, it was like that when I was in primary school.
But you know the phrase, all roads lead to Rome... anyway?
Well, come uni and there really isn't much difference between students who did primary school in Australia and Singaporean students, or any other international students for that matter.
So there really isn't a need to get worried over whether your kids are getting their necessary education is there? I'm not a parent yet (obviously), but hey, it's not like the average adult is not savvy enough for what life doles out. Does it really matter where you got your primary education?
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