The Education ministry has put parents in a conundrum. It has given the option to schools to close early for the year-end holidays so that students need not go back to school for one week after the Deepavali/Hari Raya break (31 October to 6 November). In order to make up for the early closure, the five days of 7-11 November have to be replaced by Saturday classes. Since the September Saturdays have already been booked to replace the Haze emergency holidays and extra festival holidays (one day for Deepavali to replace 31 Oct and one day for Hari Raya to replace 2 Nov), it looks like all the October Saturdays may end up as school days.If you don't have school-going children, I don't expect you to understand this complicated class-replacement affair. For those of us who do, it's already a headache and it's causing a huge mess up in our time-table.
1. Students who have tuition or extra-curricular classes such as music, taekwando, swimming on Saturdays have to reschedule.
2. Parents who have children in more than one school have to juggle the kids' different schedules if one school decides to close early on 28 October (before the one week festival break and one week early closure) and the other decides to go with the original date of 12 November.
3. As it is the 7-week year-end holidays is already way too long. If the schools close early, that'll make it a 9-week break if we count the one-week festival break. What are we going to to with the children for NINE long weeks? I'll be glad to invite an Education Ministry officer to stay in my home so that he'd get a taste of four kids running around the house, alternating between endless computer games, tv, internet surfing, getting into each other's hair and groaning, "it's sooooo booorrrring...."
Here comes the crunch. After all the hassle the schools go through to arrange Saturday classes, attendance is poor. Many students play truant, especially those studying in Kebangsaan schools. "After all, the teachers don't teach what," they say. "Why go and waste time there?"
6 comments:
Hi, When is STOMP in KL? Is it over yet? COINCIDENTALLY, I work in a company that markets STOMP in Singapore!
Hi, Lydia from Spore. Stomp is on from 13-25 Sept in KL. Did you see it? How was it?
lydia KL - i am glad i am past that stage of worrying abt saturdays - but my son - who goes to sunday class siad same thing thing or similar - he goes late - i asked , why? because the teacher is usually late and lessons doesnt start until 10!
Kak Teh, Replacement classes aren't the real thing. They're imitation - poor quality. But Chinese schools different, you know. Replacement ke, week before school holiday ke, lessons as usual.
LOL lydia...you sound exactly like my mom !! Love it!!
(part of four kids running around the house )
u see I ALWAYS have kids running around the house because I homeschool. I get crazy sometimes but I guess I've learned to block it off. But I do run away too sometimes..make deal with hubby hehehe
Nadia, You homeschool your kids? Wow! I can't do that. Will probably go bonkers. Yes, you must have your off-days, to keep from scratching walls, ya?
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