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I’ve always thought that tuition is solely for the children of kiasu parents, coming from the perspective of a mother with 3 very young children going into primary school.

But it was only once one of my sons got in to Primary One that I realized tuition is actually a necessary evil. It’s something that you can’t do without if you want to ensure your child does well in school.

In the current education system, teachers can’t give individual attention to their students in the classrooms, so parents need to make up for that at home. Hence the need for tuition.

Additionally a lot of emphasis is placed on academic assessments starting from Primary One. A child only does well in this when he/she is drilled in doing assessment papers.

First time parents especially won’t be privy to what sort of knowledge is really needed for this. So it’s necessary to send your kids to the experts so you’ll know that you’re on the right path.

The crux of the problem is that, as a parent, we also struggle with the fact that we want to give our kids time to play. Basically I want my children to be holistic individuals.

We send our children for non-academic enrichment activities like swimming, badminton, speech & drama etc., but there’s not much time a child can have for that, is there? But we’ve had to forgo some of these activities for tuition.

Parents like me are really struggling with whether we should send our kids for tuition or not. We need to think about what kind of education we want to give the children, but at the same time we have to be very pragmatic about academic excellence.

I’ve come to realize that we really can’t do without tuition. My child is only Primary One and I’m already feeling the stress. Let alone what happens when my child progresses to Primary Three or Primary Four or even PSLE at Primary Six.

Looking for tuition isn’t simple. You can’t say, “Ok I want to find an English tutor.” There are so many tuition centres in Singapore (495 to be exact!), you really have to do a lot of research if you want to find the right tutor and programme for your child. In that sense, it’s a challenge of a neverending pursuit for parents when it comes to tuition.

The only party benefiting out of tuition is actually the industry – the tuition centres. Not our children, because of the stress experienced by the parents, and, in turn, the children.

But it’s something that we can’t change, unless the fundamentals of primary school education changes. Even though lesser emphasis has been placed on pen and paper exams, all student will still have to sit for PSLE at the end of 6 years. The system is based on meritocracy and there’s no way we can escape that. So it’s practically impossible to eradicate the existence of tuition.

And also because we’re part of a larger Asian culture, where countries like Japan and Korea have cram schools, tuition will always be around and it will always be a struggle for all parents to go through.

So my advice for parents whose children have not yet entered primary school: Give children a good headstart, so that there’ll be less of a struggle when they do enter school. Oh and earn more money so that you won’t be stressed by the financial burden.

Jenny Wee is a working mother of three. Her children range in age from 2 to 7 years old. She is also a District Councillor with Southwest CDC.

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