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ABSTRACT
Parents around the globe are increasingly understood to contribute to educational inequality through their choice of schools. This important critique risks minimising the way choice systems may favour certain parents over others. A case study of Singapore and its primary school enrolment process helps illustrate how parent’s interactions with school choice systems reinforce some parent’s privileges leading to structure-reinforced privilege. Using a discourse analysis of newspaper coverage and a Singaporean parent website to observe how parents communicate their preferences, we demonstrate that the complex primary enrolment system creates confusion and anxiety among parents, and allows privileged parents to gain an admissions advantage in perceived elite schools. Numerous admission preferences, while initially intended to strengthen family-school ties, rewards those with resources, furthering the perception and reality of economic inequality. The Singaporean primary enrolment case offers ideas for how to simplify school choice systems giving priority to families with limited resources.
随着择校在全球范围内的兴起，父母作为孩子教育的主要选择者，逐渐被认为促成教育不平等。这种对家长的批评固然重要，但可能极大程度上低估了择校制度的设计方式偏袒特定家长而不是其他家长。作为一个全球教育的典范，新加坡及其小学入学程序的案例研究有助于说明家长与择校系统的互动如何容许“结构强化的特权”，即择校结构设计本身强化一些家长的现有特权。为了更好地了解家长之间如何解释和交流他们的偏好，我们对报纸报道和新加坡家长网站进行话语分析，并证明具有多项选择和复杂偏好的择校系统造成家长们的困惑和焦虑，最终使有特权的家长在公认的精英学校那里获得入学优势。尽管众多的招生偏好政策最初旨在加强家校联系，但奖励了拥有资源的家长，加深对经济不平等的看法与现实。新加坡小学入学案例为如何简化择校系统使资源有限的家庭得到优先考虑提供了思路。
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Laik Woon Teh, Madeline Pérez, Meredith McNocchie, Stephanie Wong, Elise Castillo, Xiaoling Lin, Rayner Ng, Natalie Sutanto and students of the Yale-NUS Comparative International Education seminar for their insights and editorial suggestions; Dinesh Ayyappan for data assistance and Chris Tang for rendering library search support.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The term ‘elite schools’ is controversial in Singapore, and politicians often substitute ‘popular’ or ‘sought-after’ schools (Ang Citation2018). We observed parents online using ‘branded,’ ‘popular’ or ‘hot’ schools versus ‘generic’ or ‘neighborhood’ schools, rather than acknowledge the elite or non-elite statuses. In our project, we highlight both the material differences between schools and the parental perceptions that reinforce these differences, We use ‘elite’ intentionally to describe this status-hierarchy.
2 Defined as students whose economic, social and cultural status (ESCS) on the PISA index are among the bottom 25% within their country, and schools in the bottom 25% based on the average ESCS index among students in a school.
3 An additional 500,000 people are permanent residents and 1.7 million are guest workers.
4 Malay and Tamil immersion schools, set up by community groups, were not part of the SAP school initiative and moved from 7% of enrollment in 1959 to completely closing in the 1980s (Goh and Gopinathan Citation2008).
5 Regardless of the funding structure, primary school tuition is fully-subsidized by the government, but parents pay for school transportation and a small monthly fee for school materials. This analysis excludes international schools, and the six Islamic Madrasahs, which are not regulated by the MOE.
6 We used the global news search engine Factiva. Search phrases include ‘phase’, ‘MOE’, ‘2A or 2A(1) or 2A(2)’, ‘2B’, ‘2C’, ‘primary one’ and ‘elite or ‘volunteer’ or ‘grassroot’ or ‘ballot’ or ‘school choice’.
7 A parent website shares updates to help parents track school construction projects, https://elite.com.sg/school-change.
8 Most primary schools offer Chinese, Malay and Tamil as a second language.
9 Registration for non-permanent resident foreigners occurs at the end of the Primary 1 registration after Singaporean citizens and permanent residents have been enrolled. These children are assigned to an available school closest to their homes.
10 Singaporeans can use a relative’s address if they are a primary caregiver for a child of working parents.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mira Debs
Mira Debs is the Executive Director of Yale’s Education Studies Program and a lecturer in the Department of Sociology. In 2020, she was a Visiting Professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. Her research focuses on how parents choose schools in a variety of schooling contexts including the US and Singapore, and the impact of individual choices on school segregation.
Hoi Shan Cheung
Hoi Shan Cheung is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale-NUS College. Her research focuses on social stratification in Singapore schools in relation to children’s academic self-concept and aspirations, as well as the effects of parental expectations on academic stress.