Which country has the better education system: the UK vs Singapore?

Hi guys, I want to discuss a topic today that  have been following another discussion on a Facebook group which raised the topic of the education system here in the UK vs that of Singapore - this was a mother with two young children in primary school. She is currently in Singapore but her British husband has received a great job offer back in the UK and that would mean moving the family to the UK, however, she is worried about the impact it may have on her children's education. After all, whilst she acknowledges that she is worried about the amount of stress her children would suffer in Singapore, but at the same time she is also worried about the opposite happening in the UK - that her children wouldn't be pushed hard enough under a far more relaxed British system and her children wouldn't learn as much (and not reach their full potential as a result). In an ideal world, parents would love to have a perfectly balanced education system where the children are pushed just hard enough but not subject to too much stress, but this mother is dealing with a hard choice between two extremes. I can see why she feels concerned as she was educated in Singapore and no doubt was pushed very hard as a student back in the day; but is that kind of pressure absolutely necessary to get the best out of her children or is the British system different and better? Let's find out, my answer to this question may actually surprise you. 

Firstly, allow me to outline some of the genuine concerns that this mother has: the first issue is funding. In the UK, parents have two choices: government schools which are funded directly by the government and  private schools which are funded through (much higher) school fees. Just to confuse matters, there are "public schools" which are fee-charging elite schools for people like the crazy rich elite and royalty - they are known as "public" schools because they are open to anyone who can afford their ludicrous fees even though they are beyond the reach of the vast majority of the population. Allow me to use an analogy to help you make sense of it: on most commercial flights, you would have three different classes - first class, business class and economy class. Thus these classes are priced differently and would reflect the kind of experience you can expect to have corresponding to the price you paid. Needless to say, if you can afford to fly first or business class, you can always expect to have an excellent experience but if you fly economy then be prepared to lower your expectations - you get what you paid for. However, a similar situation can be found in Singapore where you have independent schools vs government schools - the school fees for the independent schools are a lot higher but parents are willing to pay that as their children receive a much higher quality of education whilst the government schools are pretty much reliant on the government for funding. Hence there is also a two-tier system in Singapore when it comes to education and it is the wealth of the parents rather than the academic ability of the student that gives you access to a better education. This has come a long way from my generation, so let me take you on a trip down memory lane to see what things were like back in Singapore a generation ago. Before the partial privatization of education with the introduction of independent schools, all schools in Singapore were government schools, funded directly by the government but not all schools were equal - there was a ranking system that produced a league table and naturally, the schools on the very top of the league table received the most funding as the government wanted to invest the most in the best and brightest talents that would become the future leaders of the country whilst the schools at the wrong end of the league table suffered from under-funding and neglect as it was considered the dumping ground of those who were destined for the worst paid jobs in our society, so why bother spending good money on bad students. Thus students were subjected to streaming and the competition to get into the best schools was so intense, which explains why students back then were under a lot of pressure to perform well in the exams, as they all wanted to get into the very best schools. 

It was not like the information these kids were studying at school was particularly useful to their future careers or even that future employers would look at their primary or secondary school results, it was simply because of the streaming system: the only way to get a good education at a school which received plenty of government funding was to ace your exams and gain entry into one of these elite schools which only accepted the best of the best. There was a sense of fairness to this system that appealed to the working classes, after all with this system, there were some rich kids in terrible schools because they performed badly in the exams and there were also some poor kids in the best schools in the country because they aced their exams - in fact, working class parents would dream of their kids one day gaining admission to one of the top schools in the country. I remember this story from the 1980s, this rich boss hired a security guard at the factory, both men had sons the same age so the rich boss would sometimes feel sorry for the security guard and give away some of his son's old clothes and shoes to the security guard, knowing that the security guard could never afford to buy nice things like that for his son. When both the boys received their PSLE results which would determine which secondary school the boys would go to, the boss' son had mediocre results and had to settle for a very average neighbourhood school whilst the security guard's son aced his exams and got into the top school in the country. When the security guard found out the good news, he declared that it was the happiest day of his life - outperforming the boss' son in that exam was more than just a matter of pride but it was what it meant for the boys' future. The boss' son had access to all the resources that his father's money could buy, but the boy just couldn't perform at the exam. On top of that, the security guard knew that his son would spend the next four years at a much better school and receive a much better quality of education than his boss' son - that was the kind of opportunity that money couldn't buy. The security guard told his friends, "today I have to work for the boss at the factory, I am just a humble security guard because I am uneducated, but in the future, 20 years from now, his son may have to work for my son."  Now whether or not that statement was true is a moot point, but the fact is a lot of poorer working class people in Singapore put so much faith in the education system there because it levelled the playing field - rich kids had to leave their parents' money at the door of the exam hall and compete on a level footing with the poorer, working class kids. The system rewarded the smartest and most hardworking students and it seemed fair to everyone. Back then the only way for the rich kids to get into a better school would be ace their exams and get straight As too, there were no shortcuts just because they had plenty of money. 

Fast forward to 2024, the kid from the rich family can easily pay for a place in one of the expensive independent schools in Singapore whilst the kid from the poor family will have to apply for a scholarship at one of these exclusive schools - now these exclusive schools do have such charity programmes for a number of reasons. Firstly, if they simply accepted students on the basis of wealth rather than merit, you could well end up with a bunch of students who are really stupid but have rich parents and the school would struggle to get anyone to pass any exams. Secondly, this is good PR, to give back to the community by offering help to the poor. Finally, it is important to make sure that you have enough extremely intelligent and gifted students in your cohort because they would be a positive influence on the others and inspire them to achieve more. Nonetheless, it is a lot harder to get a scholarship like that because the school is effectively losing money with each scholarship they give out - every student they accept on a scholarship is taking the place of one who is paying fees and the school is dependent on charging these students fees to make money as the school is run like a profit-making business without any additional government funding. Thus such schools only give out a very small number of scholarships each year, let's say for example you are that poor kid with great result applying for a scholarship to gain admission to that expensive independent school - well guess what? You are competing with so many others in the exact same position and if the school only intends to give out five scholarships that year, then you absolutely need to be in the top five of all the applicants and if all the applicants in the top ten have straight As, then it will come down to other factors like the ability to speak a few foreign languages, play a musical instrument or demonstrate your ability to win gold medals in a sport. This is why the students from rich families in Singapore today have a much easier time gaining access to quality first class education because of their ability to simply pay for a place in these expensive independent schools, whereas you could have the scenario where the really bright boy from a working class family fails to win a scholarship because of the really intense competition that year, so he ends up in a poorly funded government school and suffers the consequences of a mediocre education because of the poor facilities, unmotivated teachers and a lack of opportunities to explore interesting options outside the syllabus (such as work experience programmes). By that token, this makes the Singapore system pretty much the same as the British system today, but really, should that be a surprise to you at all? 

Thus ironically, this Singaporean mother's view of the situation may be too strongly influenced by the way things were a generation ago before the privatization of education in Singapore - that process took a while to actually have a real impact as privatizing these schools didn't transform them over night, the changes took a while to kick in so at least in the early days of privatization, the difference between the independent schools and the government schools in Singapore was not that stark. Hence I really don't think it makes that much of a difference whether or not this mother chooses to educate her kids in the UK or Singapore, what really matters is whether or not she has the money to pay for the best private education available. As it turns out, this woman isn't super rich, so that isn't an option which begs a different question now. Allow me to use an analogy: Singaporean expats in the UK are often looking for a reasonably priced way to fly back to Singapore for a visit. If money wasn't an issue, then they would all be flying first class with Singapore Airlines but in the real world, that option is simply not affordable for most people. Instead, they look for the most reasonably priced economy price ticket where you get a decent level of service and a bargain at the same time. Thus many Singaporeans opt for an mid-price option Emirates or Thai, but they wouldn't fly with one of the Chinese airlines. This is because even though the Chinese airlines can often be the cheapest option, the conduct of the other passengers along with the poor service usually makes the experience so bad that Singaporeans would gladly to pay more to make the journey less torturous. This is a perfectly reasonable discussion to try to ascertain the best value for money when it comes to the economy class option for this route, because you would still want to pick the best option within your budget to have the best possible experience on this journey. Hence for this mother, if she isn't rich enough to access expensive private education for her children, then she would like to know if the government schools are better in Singapore or in the UK. This is not a straight forward comparison as it would be erroneous to treat the schools in these two categories as if they were a monolithic, cohesive entity. In the UK, the quality of these government schools vary a lot and have a direct correlation to property prices - for example, the neighbourhoods of Wimbledon, Richmond and Fulham are more expensive than other poorer neighbourhoods in London like Tottenham, Peckham and Brixton. Hence the government schools in these richer neighbourhoods perform better because of their catchment area, the richer parents can afford to invest more in their education to supplement what they receive in the classroom whereas the poverty in these much poorer neighbourhoods can cause all kinds of problems for the students and that can affect their academic performance. 

In Singapore, there are still league tables which rank secondary schools according to their admission scores which I find very bizarre. Instead of ranking the schools based on how the students person at the end of their time there (such as during their O levels exams), no instead the focus is on the quality of the intake. This is based on the assumption that smarter students at the point of intake would always result in the same high quality at the end of the process and this is the GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) principle but this doesn't consider at all the difference that the quality of teaching could have on the students' performance over the period they spend in secondary education. This assumption is inaccurate because children at that age need a lot of help to get through their exams - older students at university level can expect to just get on with their own learning but it would be unfair to totally ignore the input teachers and the school have into the students' performance at this stage. Thus in Singapore, the quality of the government school experience can still vary a lot depending on the ranking of the school and of course, the actual teachers that the students actually get and that's often just down to luck. Even though I went to one of the top schools in Singapore, I had a mix of good and bad teachers over the years and I'm sure that's something most people can relate to. So when it comes to comparing whether or not state school are better in Singapore or the UK, again, it is not a straight forward comparison! Allow me to stick to the airline analogy: if you have paid to fly first class, you can be guaranteed that your inflight meal will be excellent. But if you are flying economy, you get what you're given and sometimes the meals can actually be pretty good and other times, the food can be absolutely terrible depending on your luck. Opting for the cheap option of government subsidized education means leaving things to chance and there will be so many more factors that will be totally out of your control, this is precisely why rich people opt for the expensive option of private education because it means being able to exert so much more control over many important factors that can greatly enhance the experience for the student and thus improve their chances of performing well. So rather than comparing the two systems UK vs Singapore, you really should be comparing the individual schools and that is something this mother really can't do at this stage yet. For the Singaporean option, the quality of the education her children receive will be determined by their PSLE scores (and the schools that their scores can get them into) but in the UK, it will be determined by their parents' ability to buy a very expensive piece of property in a nice neighbourhood like Richmond or Hampstead. Thus we do have some clarity here: do you prefer to put your faith in your children's ability to perform well at the PSLE or the earning power of the parents?

Whilst I can appreciate the way a loving parent would want the best possible option for their children when it comes to their education, this begs the question: if we send a genuinely stupid child to the best school in the world, would the teachers there be able to cure the child's stupidity? Obviously not, no teacher in the world can cure stupidity. It takes two hands to clap in the education process: there is the teacher and then there are the students. What if the child is limited in their ability to process all this information - what if the child is, for want of a better word, plain stupid? Let's not focus on the extreme worst case scenario of a child being so stupid they are borderline mentally retarded, let's just say the child is somewhat below average - what then? Would sending this below average child to the most expensive private school somehow transform this child into a scholar at Cambridge? Hell no. Prince Harry attended Eton College and left with a B in art (disclaimer: he cheated in that exam as a teacher did his course work) and a D in geography. The key difference though is that the rich kids will simply leave their private schools with terrible grades and shrug it off, thinking, "it's no big deal, after all no one cares what I did at school anyway, I'll just find something I enjoy as an adult and make a career out of it when the time comes. I'm confident everything will work out just fine in the end." Whereas the working class kid in Singapore who messes up his A levels and ends up with the same terrible results will probably be totally suicidal, thinking at he has just condemned himself to a life of misery because he has performed badly and failed to get the grades he needed to go to a good university. Hence what these private schools give their students is not so much a sense of entitlement per se, but rather a quiet confidence to tell yourself, "things will be alright, I'm going to find a way to work things out." This is mostly because the students at these private schools are surrounded by rich kids who parents have the ability to pull strings and call in favours when their children need anything from an internship at a top investment bank to getting a job at a prestigious company because daddy plays golf every weekend with the boss there. And if I may be thick skinned enough to use myself as an example, when you do have a really bright kid from a poor, working class family, then the bright kid will figure a lot of things out for himself whether he gets any extra help along the way or not because that's what bright people do - they are smart enough to find the solutions they need whilst stupid people need all the help they can get. So by that token, I do wonder just how smart this Singaporean woman's two children are because that is the most important factor in this process. We don't even know what we are dealing with, so how could we even try to find the right solution for this Singaporean mother without understanding a bit more about her children's intelligence? 

It would be unhelpful for me to end on that note, basically my belief is that it doesn't really matter where she sends her kids to school, what matters far more is whether or not they are naturally intelligent and have the right social skills to thrive in life. A slightly better school isn't going to make that much difference. Rather, I'd encourage this mother to think about life beyond the grades her kids would get at school - does she think they would be happier growing up in the UK or in Singapore? Surely her children's happiness should factor into this important decision? Do the children have loads of cousins they get along well with in the UK or Singapore and would having access to that network in the extended family make them happier and feel more at home? And surely the children themselves must have expressed some kind of preference for one location over the other, how about letting the children actually have a say in this decision? Why does this mother believe that a slightly better education system should be her number one priority? Finally, if we accept that the ultimate solution to this complex challenge is money, then has this mother considered where she and her husband can make a lot more money? Would they be able to earn more in the UK or Singapore, in order to have more money to spend on the children's education? But what do you think? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.