In my previously post, 'An Open Letter to all Oppositions in Singapore', I take this little opportunity for me to clarify one of the points. Hope soon I can produce clarification for other points.
Rebutting the comment of learned public servant Mr Heng Swee Keat and to show how Ministry of Education possibly under him and his predecessor had undermined Singaporean and had breach our constitution.
Under our constitution of Section 16-Rights in respect of education, it state as follow:
16-Without prejudice to the generality of Article 12, there shall be no discrimination against any citizen of Singapore on the grounds only of religion, race, descent or place of birth-
(a) In the administration of any education institution maintain by a public authority and, in particular, the admission of pupils or students or the payment of fees; or
(b) In providing out of the funds of a public authority financial aid for the maintenance or education of pupils or student in any education institution (whether or not maintained by a public authority and whether within or outside Singapore).
What does this means and what policies had contradicts to our constitution?
Singaporean when applying for public Pre-U and University because Singaporean must pass an “A” on MTL to qualified, if not he or she must pass before allowing to graduate. Whereas foreign student does not require to do so and allow to compete for the vacancy provided by our public school using our public fund. This policy discriminate Singapore by place of race, descent and birth.
2) Majority of students qualified among the entire Singaporean applicant are selected from the background of their Primary, Secondary and Pre-U. This discriminate Singaporean based on descent of poor background.
3) Only less than 1,000 Singapore born Singaporean manage to get scholarship while foreign student multiples by several thousand get scholarship. This discriminate Singaporean from not getting the funds from public authority financial aid.
4) Good schools get more allowances and special treatment while normal schools does not. This discriminate Singaporean where public funds must be given to all school in equal measure as stated in 16(b).
To justified my argument, I have use the less than actual statistic provided online by Ministry of Education and the calculation perform by Roy Ngerng. Why Roy Ngerng? Since he had posted his article in his blog, the Ministry of Education nor any PAP MP had contradict, argue or rebutted his calculation, it is safe to say that his calculation will not be far from the truth. Do not that the derivation on the percentage of PRs and new citizen can only be estimated (it could be less or could be much more than I had anticipated), because until today, the government had refuse to separate many statistic value to show the actual amount of Citizen, New Citizen and PRs in all their reports and comments.
Base on year 2012 statistics (Reference http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/education-statistics-digest/files/esd-2013.pdf)
Mr Roy Ngerng calculation (Reference http://thehearttruths.com/2013/12/05/only-6-of-singaporean-university-undergraduates-receive-scholarships/)
Each year, we have 51,325 “O” levels, 15,024 Pre-U and 13,906 enters into public university, Poly and Lassalle, etc. To have better understanding, let’s do some simple math.
In 2012 51,325 students including PR & kids of expats graduate with an “O” level equalivant. Out of these only 15,023 gets in Pre U, which also includes PR and kids of expat, that give us 29% “O” levels get to go in Pre-U. Out of this 29% or 15,023 (Singaporean & PRs) fight for entre to Public University, together with all the new PRs and new citizens issue by the government each year. Since only have an annual intake 40,560, 2/3 of these intakes are reserve for foreign student on direct entry. So we take 1/3 of 40,560, we have 13,385 Singaporean, new citizens and PR manage to win a place. 10% of these are of new citizens and 20% are PRs, so only 9,369 original Singaporean gets to enter our public Universities.
When you take a look at the total “O” levels of 51,325, only 9,369 Singaporean manage to reach university. What make matter worst is out of 9,369 local student 6% or 562 get scholarship. However, 4,617 foreign students of each year get scholarships.
One of the main reasons that many Singaporean do not get in public university is due to the double standard impose by our Ministry of Education.
Singaporean must pass 2nd Languages as required by all Public University, (http://admissions.ntu.edu.sg/UndergraduateAdmissions/Pages/ALevel.aspx). However, foreign students do not have to meet the full requirement as to Singaporean (http://wvvw.studyinternational.com.my/studyinsg.asp). Several link online prove that Singaporean MUST passed an “A” score for MTL (Chinese/Malay/Tamil) in order to graduate, whereas foreign student does not need so.
Do also note, that none of MOE statistics show from the total amount of applicants verse the total amount of accepted applicants are from the elites school and how many are accepted who graduate from normal schools. It will not surprise anyone that majority of their intake from the pathetic 9,369 Singaporean are mostly from elites school where majority of those from normal schools are rejected.
On top of that, our Ministry of Education claim that our education system works, in that case, why does parents need to spend more than a $1000 month on tuition fees? Note that teachers from normal school strongly recommend tuition classes.
So when Mr Heng Swee Keat state that he is very happy with the results of PISA for Singapore, do not be mistaken. He is happy the result for Singapore, he did not mention he is happy the result for Singaporean.
Also note that Mr Heng Swee Keat comes from a rich and well-connected background like all the other PAP elites. He came from Raffles Institution, got in University of Cambridge and a Master from Harvard University, under scholarship as one would guess. I secondary school education only, I very the envy him….sob sob sob.
If China were be able to successfully cheat the score using top students only, do you not think Singapore will not do the same? Since many Singaporean had come across too many incidents that our government using selective reports and statistic to hide the truth, it is safe to assume that the method use by Ministry of Education may not reflex the whole truth.
Very Cham Singaporean
TRS Contributor