Despite several public opinions by Ministers against excessive tuition in Singapore, around 7 out of 10 Singaporean parents still currently send their schooling kids packing for tuition.
Rather than continue to dismiss the importance and relevance of tuition in Singapore, why not take a closer look at the practical reasons why parents continue to send their kids for tuition despite the high costs?
1. Busy Working Parents
Society has changed. Most modern families in Singapore have two working parents. When working parents get home from work in the evening, they are either too tired from their work or simply want to spend those precious moments chit-chatting and having dinner with their kids rather than supervising their work.
According to latest studies, working parents hardly spend over an hour giving their kids one-to-one attention. The fact is, young kids in primary school and lower secondary need to be supervised. But with both parents working, there is simply no way around it. Therefore, there is a practical need to have private tutors take over and help supervise their young kids and make sure they keep up with their learning.
2. To Catch Up
With the ever-increasing and unforgiving pace of the school curriculum especially for upper primary, upper secondary and JC students, it has become nearly impossible to catch up once you fall behind because there are always new topics to learn.
In order to catch up to their peers, private tutors are engaged. With 1-to-1 attention, the student can clear his or her doubts and accelerate their learning, leveraging on a private tutors’ knowledge and years of specialized experience to boost their grades and catch up to their peers.
3. Weak Subjects
Another practical reason for home tuition is when students have particularly weak subjects. This could very well be a childhood thing, for instance when the kid is from a Chinese-speaking family and simply do not speak English enough.
In such scenarios, their parents are often not equipped to coach them in their weak subjects as well. Thus, specialist tutors are hired. For example, a bilingual tutor can engage a weak student and teach English through conversation, customized practice papers, and by guiding through workbooks in a one-to-one setting.
4. Inadequate Guidance in School
Most school teachers are doing a good job. However, sometimes a student simply needs more attention and is not getting it enough. In a class of 40 students, teachers simply cannot afford to spend too much time on one kid.
Moreover, MOE teachers are often involved in many activities including daily meetings, CCAs, which reduce their available time to specially coach weaker students. Thus, for students with special needs, private tutors are needed to supplement the teaching in schools.
5. Learning Preferences
Sometimes, the child simply cannot learn conducively in school. This could be due to many reasons. The child could be too shy to ask questions in class. Or, perhaps the kid cannot really understand the teacher’s style of explaining concepts.
When a child has the desire to learn but is unable to understand what is being taught, he or she can get frustrated and end up losing interest in studying. While parents cannot choose their kid’s school teacher, they can pick a private tutor they are comfortable with by engaging a good tuition agency!
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