Just received an e-mail from my sister, answering one of her old friends (and copying me on it). The school where I spent 11 years of my life, St Nick’s (the long name: CHIJ St Nicholas Girls’ School) is going through a bit of a crisis. It’s been a high-ranking school, academically, for a long time, and parents used to do pretty much anything to have their kids attend (volunteer to teach after-school activities, donate money, etc.). St Nick’s is a SAP school, and this is why my mother enrolled my sister and I there (but our Chinese still sucks, although I get to practise these days). Now, however, it’s facing a kind of competition that (it appears) the administration and (active) alumni are having trouble dealing with.

Singapore’s Ministry of Education began an Integrated Programme in 2004, allowing certain ‘elite’ schools to tie up with JCs — qualifying students get to skip their ‘O’ levels and study through to their ‘A’ levels (the equivalent would be the Highers in the UK, TEE or HSC in Australia, high school diploma in the US). Top-ranked schools RGS and RI have tied up with Raffles JC, and Chinese High and Nanyang Girls have tied up with Hwa Chong JC. Dunman High School, National JC, Temasek JC, and Victoria JC are also offering the Integrated Programme in their own way. St Nicks now feels obligated to do the same, but its traditionally-affiliated schools, Catholic High and Catholic JC (where my sister and I went after St Nicks) do not have stellar academic reputations.

So, the originator of the e-mail wants us to discuss and maybe raise some ideas on what we can do for St Nicks, because we want to be proud of the school we went to, and for it to become a ‘third-rate school’ would be shameful, with former St Nicks girls choosing to enrol their daughters elsewhere, making the situation worse.

I won’t print my sister’s response, but I certainly echo parts of it. I’m not proud nor ashamed that I went to this school — its academic reputation means nothing to me*. I spent most of my childhood there, so I have good and bad memories of the place. My teachers were both good and bad. The same with Catholic JC — I am neither proud nor ashamed that I studied there. I spent two very important teenage years at the buildings on Whitley Road. I have good and bad memories of the place. My lecturers and tutors were both good and bad.

Students from ‘elite’ and ‘regular’ schools may not receive the same levels of attention smothering, but if you’re a concerned parent or teacher, you know no amount of nagging will entice a student to work for good results unless they’re motivated.

If St Nicks wants to start offering the Integrated Programme, they should do it because they think they can contribute something to education, not because they need to keep up with the Joneses Rafflesians. If they are going for the former, why not work together with Catholic High and Catholic JC? The three schools can work towards streamlining and improving what they’ve got to create a better learning experience for kids, because that’s what’s important. It may be a struggle at first, but when is the provision of a quality, well-rounded education supposed to be a breeze? If the principal and teachers at the school think it’s too much work, then we’re all better off if St Nicks ends up a ‘third-rate school’.

And that’s my $0.02 on the matter.

* This may be because, like my sister, I went overseas to study at university. I don’t know.