A Comparative Piece between the Filipino Education System and the Singaporean Education System: Perspectives
“I take music business management.” ~ Carlos Ian Garcia, MINT College
That is the combination of two extraordinary tenets: interdisciplinary, as well as applied learning.
Over the course of this year, I had the opportunity to take part in the Asean Social Innovations Programme (ASIP) as an enrichment programme in Raffles Institution. Due to the nature of the programme which made us work closely with our Filipino counterparts, I learnt much about the education system and culture of the Philippines. What intrigued me the most, however, was the diversity in its education system, and I investigated further.
The structure of the education system in the Philippines mirrors that of the United States: middle school, high school, and senior high school, before one is able to graduate from K-12 and move onto college. Education changes made in 2016 signified a shift in the Philippines’ Government’s stance towards the lengthening of compulsory education in the Philippines. There is a great diversity of schools in the Philippines — both public and private. I had the privilege to work with students from two senior high schools: MINT College and Colegio de San Juan de Letrán.
The first thing that struck me as the obvious difference between Singaporean and Filipino education systems was the difference in motivation.
While Singaporean students in Junior Colleges care very much about their academic performance leading up to the ‘A’ Level Examinations, Filipino students take similar pride in the subject content that they have signed up to study for. Students at the senior-high division in MINT college, for example, had the opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary studies in music and business. As someone who had only the ‘tried-and-tested’ path to venture down in RI, the prospect of interdisciplinary studies was invigorating. Having the ability to learn subjects that one has passion in, and relate it back to creating value in the real world through market valuation is certainly one of the best ways to educate the next generation of creative artists in this unpredictable world. I had the opportunity to speak with a student from MINT: Carlos Ian Garcia. He is a student currently studying the subject of music business management, and was willing to share with me some insights on the way lessons were conducted there. His love for music came across the moment he jumped online — a piano keyboard was evident in the background, there was a studio microphone that I could discern in front of the camera — probably utilised in music production too.
Carlos was someone who was genuinely interested in excelling at what he did — yes, he might have been a standout — yet this burning interest was something that I felt our education system back home was somewhat lacking. The question of intrinsic motivation (or type I motivation, as Daniel Pink writes in his book Drive) is something that should be addressed in a child’s formative years of education. Giving students the liberty and freedom to explore different study options instead of brow-beating those who veer off the beaten track is something that we might want to consider shifting towards. No doubt, we are lauded for our academic rigour and success. However, if students are unable to see the bigger picture and answer the question of ‘WHY’ they are studying what they are studying, this feeling of dissatisfaction compounds over time. As this is a nuanced concept that needs to be unpacked with greater clarity in the Singaporean context, I would delve further into this in another piece of writing that is in the works. Students who are unable to relate whatever they are learning to how they can apply such knowledge in the real world are the ones suffering the biggest losts. Kudos to MINT for combining students’ passions with real-world impacts.
Second, the disparity in stress levels.
This is certainly a pain point for countless Singaporean Junior College (JC) students. Suicides in top JCs hushed up, mental health issues frowned upon, the excellence of academic grades over-glorified: all these are characteristic of how students in Singaporean JCs are suffering under undue amounts of stress. What worries us even further is that this phenomenon of sky-high stress levels are spreading to secondary schools, with a SJI boy attempting suicide a couple of weeks ago. If our minds are currently under undue amounts of pressure to perform and excel, how are students expected to grow?
Stress + rest = growth. Evidently, students in the Singapore education system are lacking rest, and once again, lessons can be learnt from our counterparts. To my surprise, I found out from Carlos that students at MINT College only have to attend 2 lessons per day from 9–12 and 1–3 (with a lunch break in-between), with Wednesdays as their day off. This absolutely blew my mind. Reflecting back however, it made total sense: if students are able to fully concentrate on lessons for just 5–6 hours of their time each day, lessons might be able to be taught at a much faster rate. Greater efficiency in teaching content that mattered to students, coupled with the intrinsic — rather than extrinsic — motivation of learning subject matters that one is truly interested in, translates into more time for rest and rejuvenation for the rest of the day. There is a caveat, however: schools in the Philippines are currently shut, and “staring at the computer screen for 3 hours for malaman (meaty in Tagalog) lessons” (as Carlos puts it), might be too intense for some. This still pales in comparison to the amount of time Singaporean students are devoting per week to schoolwork. Imagine having more than twice the amount of time spent in school, counting out the time spent on ad-hoc tuition classes. I am fairly confident that this translates directly into much higher stress levels in Singaporean students.
This piece of writing is not meant to be a harsh critique of the Singaporean education system, nor is it supposed to be one that lauds the Filipino education system, because both have obvious strengths and weaknesses that I shall not delve into. It is merely to show what is possible — to make education truly enjoyable and relevant to the students who are learning subject content that matters.
Out of curiosity, I asked Carlos — what was one thing that should be improved in the Filipino education system. He provided a unique viewpoint because of his background as a homeschooled student. Jumping straight into online classes in his first year of actual external schooling, he stated a problem which, I believe, plagued many different countries as well. The lack of funding and resource allocation to the education industry is something that Carlos wishes the Philippines government could be doing. He claims that teachers are severely underpaid for the amount of work that they are doing. (Teachers in the Philippines teachers are paid an average of 22000 PHP which converts roughly into 440 USD per month. This is almost 10 times less than what a teacher in the US would earn.)
In Singapore, we sure do spend quite a huge amount of resources on education. Yes, education is important, we recognise that. But are we truly cognizant of the way that we are educating our students, to spur them on to think of the big picture? Are we exposing students sufficiently to real-world skills that would make them rare and valuable in the workforce? Are we spurring them to critically consider what career path they are choosing in the future, and what lasting impact they would leave behind? That is something that we should consider critically, both as students and educators in the education system.
