ASSISTANCE TO NEEDY STUDENTS AND PUBLICATION OF GENERAL EXAMINATION RESULTS

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ASSISTANCE TO NEEDY STUDENTS AND PUBLICATION OF GENERAL EXAMINATION RESULTS: 7.

Mr Wee Siew Kim asked the Minister for Education (a) how many households with school-going children have a per capita income of $300 or less; (b) how many households with young school-going children have retired parents; (c) what are the current assistance schemes available to them; and (d) has there been any study to show the performance in school of such needy students compared to the performance of the Singapore students in general.

8.

Prof. Ivan Png Paak Liang asked the Minister for Education if his Ministry will publish from now on all general examination results, including Primary Six, GCE "N", "O" and "A" levels, analysed by family income or, if by family income is not possible, by type of housing as well as by race.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education (Mr Hawazi Daipi) (for the Minister for Education): Sir, may I take Question Nos. 7 and 8 together, on behalf of the Minister for Education?

Mr Speaker: Yes.

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Mr Hawazi Daipi: Since 1988, MOE has been releasing data on educational performance of students of the various ethnic groups annually. This is in response to the requests from the various self-help groups that conduct targeted education programmes for students from the respective communities. It also provides a useful gauge for the different communities on how their children have performed in the national examinations.

Prof. Png has asked for MOE to publish examination results according to the family income group of students, or, as a proxy, by housing type. The Ministry does not collect data on the family income of students. We do have data on the housing types of students. As is to be expected, there is some correlation between academic performance of students and housing type, taken on average. This is not surprising because housing type tends to be related to parents' education levels, particularly amongst our younger families. In fact, parents' education correlates more strongly with academic performance than housing type does.

MOE does not plan to publicly release the annual examination results according to housing type or other socio-economic indicators on an annual basis. However, MOE releases information on the educational performance of students based on various socio-economic indicators to the self-help groups where they find it useful in planning their programmes and determining the kind of support they should give to targeted groups such as underperforming students and potential drop-outs.

Studies and evaluations by MOE and schools suggest that many factors affect the academic performance of a pupil, including the support he receives from the family. Most important of all, however, is his aptitude and his attitudes or desire to achieve. This is consistent with findings in studies in many other countries.

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Mr Wee Siew Kim had also asked about young students with retired parents. MOE survey data indicates that less than 0.1% or 50 Primary One students have a retired parent.

We will continue to help every child, through our schools, self-help groups, CDCs and VWOs, regardless of his family background. The MOE Financial Assistance Scheme grants students from low-income homes waiver of school fees and exemption from miscellaneous fees. Students under this scheme also receive free textbooks. Needy students can also receive additional financial support from the School Advisory/Management Committee (SAC/SMC), the Community Development Councils (CDCs) and Family Service Centres. Many School Advisory Committees and School Management Committees provide needy students with pocket money, bus stamps, free meals, stationery and uniforms.

Mr Wee Siew Kim (Ang Mo Kio): Sir, a lot of our schemes of help from different Ministries actually target at specific groups, like young parents with small families or young parents with very low education and hoping that the secondary generation gets help. But there are two groups that sometimes fall out of all these benchmarks: one, people who entered parenthood late and they have very young children - there are only 50 of them, as mentioned - and, I guess, the other group is young parents with very large families and a very large number of children. Sometimes, there is no proper way to address this problem, and I hope that maybe the Ministry can look into ensuring that these children have enough resources so that they can stay in school.

Mr Hawazi Daipi: Thank you for the suggestion. As I said earlier, there are already many schemes offered by schools, Ministry of Education, as well as voluntary organisations, and CDCs to help pupils

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who come from poorer families. For pupils who come from families which may not be able to support them academically, there are already national programmes in school so that they can learn at their own pace, they can pick up language skills in an environment in which they can learn comfortably, so that they would be able to proceed up to primary level, complete primary education and proceed to secondary level.

I would say, generally, that there are already a lot of schemes out there in the community by self-help groups, and CDCs and families can pick up some of these assistance schemes suitable for them and where they are eligible.

Prof. Ivan Png Paak Liang (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for responding to my question. The Senior Parliamentary Secretary has told the House that, in fact, the most important factor in determining students' education performance is not race, it is not housing type; it is parental educational qualifications. In that case, why are we publishing statistics based on race? Why do we not publish the statistics based on parental educational qualifications?

I ask this question, Sir, because every year we see these "A" level results, "O" level results, "N" levels, Primary Six, and so on, published based on race. It gives the impression that certain races are not doing as well as other races. But if the real reason is that for certain races, parents are not as well educated as other parents, let us make that the focus of the reporting and then let us make that the focus of our policy efforts; or else people will get the wrong impression that it is a race problem.

Mr Hawazi Daipi: Sir, as a matter of policy, the Ministry of Education will help every student, including those who come from poorer families, to succeed in

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education and to enjoy learning. We publish information on educational performance based on race because self-help groups, which help their own particular communities, think that it is useful for them to have the information so that they can target their assistance schemes for the various groups within their own communities. Yes, generally, the performance of students correlates with the academic background of their parents. But that is a known fact almost everywhere in the world. But what we have done is to help self-help groups to assist their own community, children in their own community, with the information that we have released to them.

Assoc. Prof. Ong Soh Khim (Nominated Member): Sir, with respect to the recent media focus on foreign students doing well in our education system, ie, primary and secondary levels, would the Ministry consider publishing the results and analyse them with respect to the nationality of the students?

Mr Hawazi Daipi: Sir, I am not sure whether that will be useful. Then there may be requests for information about performance of students in Ang Mo Kio and various other districts. Is there any significance to that? What we have generally seen is that Singaporean students have benefited from the competition that they have faced in the classrooms and schools, as a result of the presence of non-Singaporean friends. I am not sure whether it will benefit them. We will consider this if it is useful.

Mr Low Thia Khiang: Does the Senior Parliamentary Secretary agree that what is deemed not useful or beneficial from the point of view of the Ministry may be useful and beneficial to others who are interested in the subject, in terms of statistics?

Mr Hawazi Daipi: I would generally say that what we think is beneficial would be

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beneficial to the students and people that we serve in our schools. We release information on the students' performance by race because the self-help groups would be able to help reach out to them with targeted programmes so that the students would be able to improve. That is useful. But if the information can give a wrong impression that, for example, foreign students are performing better at the expense of local students, then I do not think it will help anybody at all. I am just citing an example of how information may be useful or not useful.

Prof. Ivan Png Paak Liang: Sir, the Senior Parliamentary Secretary has responded to my supplementary question by saying that self-help groups have asked for this race-based information. But this is a somewhat circular argument because self-help groups were set up precisely because it was thought that race was the major factor in poor education performance. If indeed it is not the major factor, then I feel that the whole basis of this argument falls apart.

Mr Hawazi Daipi: Sir, I do not think we are here to argue whether race is a major factor affecting students' performance. Race may correlate with educational backgrounds and socio-economic status of the families. But race may not necessarily be, and I believe it is not, the major factor affecting the performance of students in school. So I do not see any reason why we need to argue about this, and by association, we should release information based on the educational backgrounds of the parents.