7 Comments

  1. Thanks for writing. I was hoping Singapore would be more enlightened about acceleration, but it seems not. I wish you the best with your son.

    • We are enlightened about streaming for the majority. The top 50% will work at a faster pace, the next 30% will work at a slower pace, and the bottom 20% will take a more technical curriculum. The top 10% will get to study more subjects, and they are able to have some form of differentiated learning, but for acceleration, you are right. It is almost non-existent.

  2. mylittlepoppiescaitie

    Fewer than 20! Wow. I’m sending you good thoughts. Great job advocating for your son!

  3. Sounds like you’re dealing with the hurdles and advocating as best you can. It’s always interesting to hear how others are coping with this journey.

    I’m curious to read about your experiences with the Stanford program. We used it back when it was still EPGY. It helped.

  4. Sarah looks like we were both looking at the giftedandtalented.com at the same time. @TheCommonMom I am also from Singapore and have been working with the giftedandtalented.com team to introduce their programme to Singapore with very limited success. And it was after quite a lot of effort, giving out trials to parents who were from the Ministry of Education, or teachers and principals themselves, across a range of age groups, getting the largest enrichment centre in Singapore to evaluate the programme, plus doing my own research that I realised Singapore’s math is 2 academic years ahead of the US. We start algebra at Grade 5, vs US at Grade 7. So most kids found it too easy.

    Pitching it at the right level was also a challenge because of time difference and ease of switching grades. Comparing syllabus was also challenging even though many say Common Core is similar to SIngapore Math because the terminology used is different. So parents and educators found it difficult to match level to level.

    The other thing is that Singaporean kids are hyper exposed to iPads and are very comfortable with technology. Some EPGY modules are still on CD-ROM so they don’t have much patience if the technology is slow or if the questions are too gated and they cannot accelerate fast enough.

    After about 6-9 months of trials, research, feedback, we figured that pre-school was the most appropriate age group to benefit from the giftedandtalented.com programme. However, knowing how intense the local education system can be, not many parents within my circle with preschool kids were keen to subject their kids to academic enrichment for purposes of acceleration at that age.

    • One of the issues I have encountered is they use inches and feet. It’s so hard to calculate. I forgot to cancel the subscription and have been paying since.

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