Education in Singapore is gaining recognition for being one of the most significant learning systems around the world, especially after the advent of digital modes of education. Teachers, schools, and students play vital roles in the system, but there is another party that plays an equally important role in Education. That is ‘Parents or Caregivers’.
The involvement of parents of students is inevitable, and they allow this ‘give and take’ of intelligence to flow streamline, and enhances the quality of grasping the knowledge of their children by providing them with the basic needs and wants. This is why one should never overlook the parent’s role in the education system, especially when the system is now digitising at every minute passing by.
Read this article to understand the role of a parent or a guardian in online education in Singapore.
The Education System in Singapore
The certified Pisa tests that are conducted on a global scale acknowledged Singaporean students to be topping all education standards of other countries in 2016. Random 15-year-old students were selected and tested for their mathematical skills, reading skills, and science skills. The students in Singapore showed outstanding results in this regard, making them even smarter than students in Japan. Visit this link to see what BBC news reported about this event https://www.bbc.com/news/education-38212070. This shows how the education system of Singapore has sparked the nourishment of the students’ critical thinking abilities. Frequent amendments in the curriculums and enriching education with technological upgrades have allowed students to successfully face more challenging tests and examinations which can be more challenging to students who are not from Singapore. Singaporean Culture too is partially responsible for this growth, since it encourages children to focus more on education since early childhood stages.
Online Education in Singapore
The need for more holistic approaches in teaching students in many Singaporean educational Institutes has increased. Hence, they embraced technology to deliver quality education for their students. Online Education was given even more importance after the upsurge of the COVID19 pandemic, where students were under deep protection to avoid getting contaminated by the COVID19 virus. The most accessible option that teachers were left with was online learning systems that will allow them to provide services for their valued students via the internet. Therefore, the rate of online education in Singapore which was already at play in schools, met sky-high limits, since the Singaporean culture enlightens the fact that ‘children must be educated regardless of the pandemic’, it became the most obvious of means of education.
The role of Parents
How did online education affect parents? Parents’ engagement in their children’s education in Singapore cannot be missed! Many parents’ have their children’s education as their foremost priority, which is why they should not be ignored. The students who sense that their parents are actively aware of their progress usually perform well in studies. Some children study for the purpose of living up to their parents’ expectations. Parents acknowledgement would affect the children in the:
- Improvement in education
- Enhancement their probability to graduate
- Encouragement of students to continue to higher-level education.
- Declining rates of school dropouts
Now that you know the standards of education in Singapore, the need for online education, and how the role of parents can affect children, let’s focus on e-Parents or e-Carers is facilitated by online education systems.
E-Parents- who and how are they benefited by technology?
E-Parents are the guardians of online students that provide educational facilities to help them study more comfortably at home. As mentioned above, online education is, at times, the best-fit for education systems during these times, parents must be aware of the benefits that are given to them through online education systems. Given below are 7 instances where e-Parents can use online education to perform their responsibilities as supportive parents.
- Being in touch with their children’s educational journey Many parents of the 21st century are more concentrated on motivating students based on their skills and field of interest. Technology allows parents to research online or seek counselling from the schools via School Management Systems (SMS) to collect intel on what are the possible pathways that their children can take. For example, if a child is extraordinarily talented in Art, the parent can seek advice through Art veterans, schools, and other parents online to find the best schools and tools that the child can use to develop in that field.
- Not overworking their children. As parents are always aware of their student’s workload via the School Management Systems that allows parents to witness lesson derivations and schedules, good parenting wouldn’t allow children to overload their heads with nothing but work. This will help children to take in enough knowledge and take some time to relax and prepare for the next lesson happily.
- Providing a student-friendly environment at home Parents can adjust the child’s learning backgrounds to help the child study and learn in a noiseless, welcoming environment. Especially when the child is facing exams online, the home environment must be appealing so that the child’s focus will not deviate from the exam.
- Help the students prepare for their homework, assessment, and exams. Parents can log in to portals to get an idea of the activities that teachers have assigned to their children. If the child is a pre-schooler or primary school student, the importance of parent engagement is at its brim. The parent can plan out activities and categorise them into sub-tasks so that the student would not be overwhelmed with work. Teachers can make special notes to parents if the tasks required special supervisions, these notes can be sent as an embedded notice displayed on digital dashboards, a text message, an email, or even a recorded message that can be circulated via web portals conveniently.
- Devising fun learning methods using personal experiences Since the method of learning of most parents was face-to-face, parents can play the role of a fun teacher at home where their children are. They can read the lesson contents and assist the child with an alternative method of understanding that lesson which would be entertaining and educative to the child. For example, parents teach children songs and catchy phrases to keep in mind the days of the week, the contents of the scientific table or cool tricks to remember multiplication tables, and so on, which can sometimes not be taught by online teachers or not effective when taught online.
- Be informed in real-time. Parents can use School systems to be informed about the school activities in real-time, such as:
- Planned holidays
- Reports of their children
- Upcoming school events
- Not-to-be-missed school news
- If their child needs to come home
- Complaints or feedback from teachers
- Make payments easily Also, parents can pay for their children’s tuition without wasting time in queues at the school or banks. They can conveniently make online money transfer directly to the school, which is error-less, faster, and reliable than a face-to-face payment.
Technology has evidently made huge impacts on education, and imparting education has directly given a need to digitising the parent’s engagement in student’s education. Parents are now provided with online support systems, payment reliefs, counselling, and guidance through the internet. Which is why being aware of an online intervention to their children’s education systems must not be overlooked. Moreover, educational institutions must therefore encourage parents to involve with the school via the internet; it would make the institution’s administrative purposes easier too. This way, the children in Singapore will be guarded by both the schools and parents throughout their educational journey.
Learn more on how parents are benefitted by School Management Systems in Singapore.
