Party Ploopers

A principal of a girl school made some comments to her new batch of O levels students (newly promoted from N level) and it has created a ruckus. What she said or was trying to say was that if the student can't do well in the O level end of the year - better not to waste one whole year now but to go straight to ITE. I guess her point was the weak students should not waste time (whose time I wonder?) but go straight to ITE now! Such faith this Principal has in her students. Surprisingly, the MOE has came out openly to back her position which is a big disappointment!

Whether the child can eventually do well enough to go JC or Poly depends not just on the children themselves but also the teachers and in this case it is quite clear that the school does not want to waste time and resources on this borderline cases. Instead of discouraging the students, the schools should be encouraging them to work late. These kids deserve a shot at it since they have taken the long hard route to reach Sec 5.

I remembered in my secondary school days, at Sec 3, we were split into A class, B class and so on with the A class being the cream of the school and allowed to take additional subjects like A maths - something like the streaming but not so extreme. Well guess what, when the O levels result came out (those days got no N levels), the top student in the school was from the last class of the cohort. Why did he achieve such sterling results - I believe he was a late bloomer and also he had a damn good form teacher who never gave up and was constantly pushing them to work hard whereas we in the so called 'better' classes were left most time to ourselves to study on our own!

So it just prove that if the schools really want to and are willing to commit time and resources to the average students, like pearl in an oyster shell, they will eventually come out shining.