tickleandrose wrote on Apr 4
th, 2016 at 1:53pm:
Well, its no secret that examinations as they stand at the moment, have their faults. They can be learned, and countered. It has been like this forever.
At age five, those who grow up here tend to have home court advantage, as English is our first language. However, this advantage gets lesser, as other ethnics catch up. And by 16, home grown English students usually (not always) only knows one language, but the ethnic students would know two language. Language units usually attract more favourable adjustment in terms of ranking points, and all of sudden English students are a foot behind.
And then, you get the weekend tutorials. Its not so bad in private schools, as we tend to have very seasoned teachers who can coach us for the exams. But one can imagine, this is not so in public schools where resources are very limited. I heard most good teachers in public schools eventually get recruited in by private schools with better pay and condition. So you get, generally a bunch of teachers just teach to curriculum in Public schools. In which case, the ethnic students will have the edge, because their parents put them through weekend tutorial classes.
Of course, this is just generalization. Some selective entry / zoned high school have very high quality teaching as well. But you pay for it but getting into the school zone, and plus most of them are ethnic family as well.
Some interesting comments there, Tickle.
In my day private schools were called Public Schools, and public schools were called Secondary Modern schools - or Grammar schools for the genuinely bright kids.
Now I believe there's a proliferation of something called 'Academies' - fercrissake.
As for most Secondary school teachers switching over to privately-funded schools, I'm not convinced that a whole lot of them do this - and the reason I say this is because at these private schools the teachers are expected to work 6 days a week and possibly do rostered work on Sundays.
It's the only reason my niece who is a teacher does not want to make the switch despite huge financial rewards. 5 days is enough - plus the hours at home preparing exams and marking exercise books.
And yes - as you say - the ethnic parents pressure their kids to do WAY more hours of hard slog at their books than the locals.