6 independent schools’ funding cut?
I refer to the article “Funding cuts for top independent schools in Singapore” (Straits Times, Feb 3).
It states that “School officials did not want to disclose how much funding was cut, but The Straits Times understands all six schools used to get additional per capita grants for each student on the IP and GEP, but now have had the IP portion taken away. Alumni and sources close to the schools estimate the IP portion is between 4 and 8 per cent of operating budgets, or over a million dollars a year.”
Development expenditure on education decreased 82%?
According to the Ministry of Education’ (MOE) Education Digest 2013 – government development expenditure on education -secondary – decreased gradually more or less, from $353 million in 1998/99 to $83 million in 2012/13.
This is a drop of 76%. After adjusting for inflation, the real decrease was about 82%.
Spend more, instead of spend less to narrow elitist gap?
As to “The raft of changes comes at a time of rising concern over the worsening student diversity in top schools here. Even Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong commented that top secondary schools were becoming “closed circles” last year when announcing MOE’s plans to encourage more students from poorer socio-economic backgrounds to aim for a place in the most competitive schools”
– why don’t we spend more on the normal schools to narrow the elitist gap, instead of spending less on the elitist schools?
Leong Sze Hian
