There is something I would like to share to your readers about my experience when I was still working in MOE years ago, both in schools and in the headquarters. I wanted to share this after I read the local news today about Singapore students being the best in solving problems. It is comical, given that we have so many national problems plaguing us for years with no real solution in sight. In the education scene, most teachers lead a workaholic lifestyle and students spend way too much time in school. The problem has been acknowledged and recognized for years, but no real solution had been proposed or implemented. I would like to explain why this is so.
When I was a trainee teacher at the National Institute of Education (NIE), my lecturers told me that teachers need to do more than just teach [academic subjects]. When I was posted to a school after my training at NIE, my school principal and reporting officer also repeated the same message.
The average teacher spends an average of six to eight working hours a week on CCAs. The hours can get much longer when teachers bring students out for competitions, multiple rehearsals for music performances, sacrifice weekends and evenings accompanying students for uniformed group camps and training. During these periods which take place throughout the school year, teachers are not able to coach weaker students, grade assignments and prepare for lessons sufficiently. The school expects these to be done anyway, so teachers are expected to work much later into the night or sacrifice time with family. Some teachers are too tired or lazy to work till the wee hours into the night, simply prepare for lessons hastily the next day and go for classes poorly prepared. In contrast, their preparation and involvement for CCA is tiptop.
The root cause of students spending too much time on CCAs is directly related to how teachers are graded for performance. It's a bell-curve performance system where top performances are ranked as 'A', above average performers ranked as 'B', average as 'C' and so on. Annual performance bonuses and speed of promotion are directly affected by this bell-curve ranking system.
Vast majority of teachers are not able to excel in their job by teaching alone. It is not because they can't teach well. Teachers who insisted on focusing mainly on teaching had jeopardized their own careers. They are stuck in the same rut for years while their peers get promoted faster despite lower quality in teaching but much higher engagement in CCAs and other areas of work. Those are the rules of the system.
Asking the teachers or school leaders to reduce CCA is akin to asking them to weaken their portfolios for annual work reviews, so that your child can have a more balanced, less stressful and happier school life. What do you think most teachers and school leaders will choose?
Even if the teachers and school leaders agree with you, they are not likely to do so, because beside hurting their own career prospects, it also means offending their own superiors. It is not worth it.
Our education system used to reward teachers for going the extra mile and putting extra effort to ensure students excel in their CCAs. Now, the system just orders the teachers do put in many extra miles for their CCA duties, or risk being graded poorly on a bell curve against their peers. Teachers need to make a living. It is more natural for them to sacrifice your child's best interests in order to secure theirs.
If one school reduces CCA training, and ends up losing key sports matches, doing poorly at music competitions against other schools, or fail to secure achievement awards for uniformed groups, it is the CCA teachers and the relevant school leaders who will bear the full consequences for the loss.
While there are responsible teachers and school leaders who try to balance their own survival and your child's best interests, there are also many who do not. The system's natural tendencies pushes teachers and school leaders to put their own interests and survival first. This is why you see many cases of overemphasis of CCAs for many schools and a huge reluctance to solve this problem.
Our students are claimed to be the best in the world in problem-solving. That's no big deal actually. Anyone, as long as they are not too incompetent, can solve an academic problem if their own interests are not affected. Most stakeholders, including very competent leaders, are not able or not willing to solve the problem if they perceive their interests would be jeopardized. Now you know why you complain so much but yet the problem never gets solved.