Singapore Math - Successful Meeting!

As I mentioned in these last 2 posts, one of my honeymoon destinations was Singapore.  I had wanted to contact their Ministry of Education to set up a meeting to talk about their math education.  My wish was granted!  There were some small hiccups along the way, but what's important was that I got some questions answered.

I had drafted some short questions to ask, and they were the following:

1. I read that you have made problem solving the main focus.  How do you achieve this?
2. How are your secondary mathematics curriculum structured?
3. What are the sample lessons like in a typical secondary math classroom?
4. How are students assessed and evaluated?
5. What do your textbooks look like?

Unfortunately I did not get to talk to a specialist on these topics.  Instead I had a meeting with someone who was knowledgeable about everything in general.  I won't put in any of my opinions in this post.  Instead, I will just try to summarize what I've learned.

Answers:

1. This question was not answered that well.  It seems that problem solving has been made the focus.  Most teachers still have their own individual touch to the lessons, so it was difficult to identify how it is achieved within each classroom.  It seems that the problem solving is primarily driven through textbooks and/or each teacher's approaches.

2. It is an interesting way of organizing.  The curriculum is separated by topics, but there are different levels of mathematics that students can take.  In Singapore they have standardized testing, and after elementary school, an exam score is collected and those are given to parents for consideration.  Each high school specializes in different areas.  So if your child is excellent in mathematics, but not humanities, then there would be a selection of schools recommended for your child.  The scores are ways of helping this.  The specialization is similar to the structure in Universities.  On top of this, students have 3 main streams that they can enter.

N(T) Level - Normal Technical Level, I was told.  These are for students who are doing courses that would be structured to be more application based.  This takes 5 years to complete

N(A) Level - Normal Academic Level.  The in-between level.  This takes 5 years to complete.

O Level - Ordinary Level.  These are for high academic achieving students.  This takes 4 years to complete.

Within each level, like O level, there would also be differences between each classes in terms of academic rigor.

3. I was not able to get a sample lesson since these differ from class to class (as I expected, I guess?) and depends on the teacher.

4. Students are primarily assessed through tests (I cringed a bit when I heard this, but that's ok.  There are still plenty of other things I can learn from this experience)  Students have 4 semesters in each school year.  At the end of each one there is either a test or national exam.

5. I was directed to a book store that pretty much specializes in selling textbooks.  When I got there, I was extremely surprised to see that 4 years (or 5) worth of material has been condensed into either 1 or 2 books.  They are not even that thick!  I opened them up and found it to mainly be summaries of concepts, followed by exercise questions.  While the questions are well made, I was a bit surprised to see that there are no activities within the textbooks being outlined.  I am guessing that these textbooks are meant to supplement, and that the teachers do their own activities?  I bought 3 of these textbooks for reference.  I have not had the chance to go through them all yet.  Something good caught my eyes in each of the textbooks that I bought (which is why I bought them...).  They are tremendously cheap!  Less than 20 dollars per book, compared to the 100+ dollars for the textbooks that we buy here.

All in all, it was a good experience.  We had some good conversations about their education system.  There were definitely things that I liked, and aspects that I did not like as much.  It was unfortunate that I could not set up something more substantial where I would be able to see a good lesson from a teacher (similar to the Japanese lesson studies that are out there), but maybe next time.  My wife was already a bit angry at me for taking time out during our honeymoon to go meet with the Ministry of Education for 3 hours.