On the first day of Secondary 4, Nabeel was determined to turn over a new leaf.
He even told his younger brother that morning: “You know, today is the first day of school, I’m going to be the best there. I’m going to start attending more, make my mum proud.”
Instead, he found out that day that he could no longer attend school because his family owed the school around S$20K in unpaid fees — S$11K for him and S$9K for his younger brother.
Nabeel, who holds a Malaysian passport but was born in Singapore and had studied here his whole life, said: “Because I’m not a Singaporean, my school fees were always higher than usual. So the school said we can’t come into school unless we pay off.”
Nabeel subsequently moved to Johor Bahru, where he spent an entire year out of school, which took a lot of getting used to.
“Like, I was really unproductive, you know? I just play games, eat, go back to sleep. You know, I was really isolated, and I wasn’t familiar with everywhere I was,” he recalled.
The year of isolation took its toll.
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