SHIFT IN PARENTAL ATTITUDES
While the study showed that parental attitudes towards education in Singapore have moved in the past decade from academic competition towards holistic development, the study found that this shift is not necessarily linear, with a large portion of parents increasingly holding both orientations at once.
“Parents continue to value what a school’s education can provide to their child in terms of character, self-discipline, social-emotional development, and a happy learning environment, and place less importance than parents did in 2016 on several conventional markers of a ‘good’ primary school, including competitive environments, alumni networks and records of academic achievement,” said the researchers.
The study showed that parents were more willing to say children should be allowed to fail and learn, and less willing to endorse disciplining children for poor examination performance.
“Yet these attitudinal changes coexist with continued concern about academic positioning, greater use of tuition and enrichment, and rising expenditure on both.
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