SINGAPORE'S universities will scrap awarding points during admission to students for taking part in sports and for taking up leadership positions in school activities.
The points system has been given the boot after the Education Ministry received bad feedback about calculating students.
So, from this year, if junior college students want to take up sports or lead the debating team, they will do so because they want to or feel passionately for a particular activity.
The National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) will look at their co-curricular activity (CCA) record only when their academic results are not good enough for them to gain admission onto the course of their choice.
Also scrapped is compulsory community service for JC students. Now, when they sell flags for charity, they will be volunteering, rather than fulfilling the minimum six-hour requirement.
Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam announced the changes in Parliament yesterday during a debate on his ministry's budget.
He said: 'Our basic approach as we go forward is to go for more quality and less quantity. We will focus on quality of learning, quality of CCA and community engagement, and the quality of the whole school experience that the student goes through.'
His announcement pleased Madam Ho Geok Choo (West Coast GRC) and Mr Gan Kim Yong (Holland-Bukit Panjang GRC). Madam Ho said the system 'served to inculcate and perpetuate a paper-chase mentality, except that this time the students literally chase points and their passion in CCA is driven by points'.
The change, from this year, will be implemented in 17 JCs, plus the Millenia Institute.
These points now count for 5 per cent of the admission score at NTU and NUS. But both universities will scrap it from 2007 when the current group of first-year JC students are knocking on their doors.
so, this is the big change in the education system. this change in criteria has its pros and cons. actually, i don't really support this change. 1st once this 5% for cca is scrapped, it means that our A levels bears a higher percentage.. so basically, the As are an EXTREMELY important component now..
ok, MOE thinks too highly of students. indeed, most of us join various ccas not coz we've the interest.. alrite, maybe 30% interest 70% for the PEARLS points (sorry, non-singaporeans, u probably won't get it) yeah, so most of them join so that they can have an A in CCA. take choir or band in AC for example. They spend their whole saturday in school practising every week, and during the week, they still have to stay back for at least twice to practice. now, with such a criteria scrapped, i'm pretty sure most people will start dropping these ccas and join a slacker one.
hmm, the community service problem is also true. most of us, like during flag day, would spend 3 hours eating instead of doing community service and at the end of the day, we gain nothing. I'm thinking that community service should be something done at least once a fornight, so that we can gain something from it and get to interact with the people we help. A one-time CIP (community-involvement programme) won't benefit anyone. I'm in interact club, so i go to a hospital every week to be escorts. Although i've not started, i'm quite excited cos this sounds pretty fun and enriching. Yeah, such a thing is called effective community service. I like how the Minister of Education puts it "it's not the quantity but the quality". truly, we do service.. shouldn't be for clocking hours, but during the process, learn something from it. i can't wait for my school to organize some overseas CIP trip, i'd be darn interested to join..
ok.. i guess this change in policy will most probably be a blessing..
an interesting pic i came across
the awful truth!
