\n<\/p>\n
Associate Professor Eik Leong Swee, an economist at the University of Melbourne in Australia whose research includes education and inequality, similarly argued that policymakers should also ask why parental demand remains so concentrated on a relatively small number of schools.<\/p>\n
“There are a lot of good schools that parents are missing out just because they don’t know that they are good,” he said.<\/p>\n
Rather than focusing on fine-tuning the supply of places at popular schools, MOE could also influence demand for places at other schools by giving parents more information about what they offer, he suggested, encouraging them to consider what would actually make a good school for their child.<\/p>\n
“If the average parent starts believing that ‘the potential set of good schools for my child is 50 schools rather than 10’, a lot of things will change.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Assoc Prof Swee added that, if feasible, he would spread the location of sought-after schools more evenly across Singapore. But he acknowledged that doing so would be difficult and financially costly.<\/p>\n
Pointing to Anglo-Chinese School (Primary)’s move from Barker Road to Tengah<\/a>, he noted that relocating an established school requires land, could weaken existing alumni and community ties, and may draw resistance from supporters. Such moves are therefore rare, he said.<\/p>\n Still, if social mixing is a priority, Singapore should consider “reshuffling geographically” where sought-after schools are located, Assoc Prof Swee said.<\/p>\n While there is no shortage of ideas for reforming Primary 1 registration, the harder question is why more sweeping changes have not been undertaken.<\/p>\n For all the trade-offs involved, Ms Bhandari of EveryChild.SG does not believe the difficulty is necessarily a technical one.<\/p>\n Unlike other education reforms, such as reducing class sizes, changing admissions would not require substantial additional resources or retraining teachers, she said.<\/p>\n One way forward would be to progressively expand Phase 2C over several years before moving towards a centralised allocation system.<\/p>\n “It is a communications issue, but I don’t think it’s insurmountable,” she said.<\/p>\n By this, Ms Bhandari meant the government should clearly signal where the system was heading and give families several years to adjust, particularly when some had made decisions about where to live and other arrangements based on the existing rules.<\/p>\n The history of Primary 1 registration, however, has largely been one of incremental change.<\/p>\n Assoc Prof Tan of NIE pointed to the gradual increase in places reserved for Phase 2C \u2013 from 20 to 40, and now 60 at most schools \u2013 as well as changes such as merging Phases 2A1 and 2A2 and introducing the new two-track scheme at 12 schools.<\/p>\n In the short term, he expects this approach to continue.<\/p>\n The framework is trying to balance too many competing claims, he said, while removing established advantages is socially and politically sensitive.<\/p>\n “Once you have put in place certain privileges, it’s not always easy to take them away,” he said, especially when families have planned years ahead around the rules.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Associate Professor Eik Leong Swee, an economist at the University of Melbourne in Australia whose research includes education and inequality, similarly argued that policymakers should…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/95191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WHY IS CHANGE SO HARD?<\/h2>\n
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