Does Singapore have enough schools?

As everyone knows Singapore's population is growing. It is growing by policy. Each year more and more foreigners are enticed to come to work here. Some settle down. Some take Permanent Residency (PR status), others become citizens, but most, however, do not and are content just to work (then leave when they find somewhere else to go to, that offers more).

Perhaps this is part of the answer to a problem I have noted. You see, Singapore doesn't seem to have enough schools for the children it has. This can't be because Singaporeans are having too many children - for, in the main, Singaporeans are reluctant to have any children at all, with the Total Fertility Rate floating around 1.2 or so. This is one of the lowest in the world (exact figures available, but not to me, today, at this minute). So, perhaps, many of the children here are imported, with the foreign talent who come here to work.

Now, why do I say that Singapore doesn't seem to have enough schools? Well, it is a simple deduction from a local practice that has puzzled me from the moment I first heard of it. Many schools here operate two sessions. That is a morning session starting at some ungodly hour (7.30 am, for instance) and an afternoon session at 1 pm or so. I was startled when I first encountered this phenomenon, because I have never heard of another country doing this. When I grew up in London, everyone went to a school that had only a single session - starting at about 9 am (or 9.15/9.30 depending on school). There was no such thing as a two session school.

Why would a school need two sessions? Well, logic leads us to conclude that it can only be because there are not enough schools or school classrooms and attendant teachers, to teach all of the students in one session. If there were enough schools, there would be no need for two sessions. So, the existence of two sessions is proof that the number of schools is insufficient.

As always, I have a reason for addressing an issue. The existence of two sessions presents a problem that I have never seen before, in any other country. Quite simply, the morning session starts far too early for the children who have to endure it. This morning, my son Ainan, started back to school. To get there, he had to get up at about 5.30 am in time for a bus at around 6.20 am. This strikes me as much too early for a young boy to be going to school. There is such a thing as sleep and I rather think that it is more important than breaking world championships in "Earliest School Day", events.

All nations have to provide the educational infrastructure for their youngest citizens. Yet, there are various ways to achieve this. Singapore had a choice between building enough schools - or building insufficient schools and using them twice, in the same day, to make up for it. Singapore has clearly chosen the latter option. No doubt, this must have seemed an eminently efficient use of resources, since then they can build half the number of schools, yet still find space (at different times) for all the students.

This may seem to work just fine. However, it has one important consequence: grotesquely early school starts for half the nation's kids. I find this worrisome. There are likely to be health impacts of waking up half a nation's children so early, for school. Then, of course, there are also the social effects on the family, of having to prepare a child for school while even the sun has yet to rise.

Ever am I reminded that Singapore is not as the nation of my birth was. Things are done differently here. While I understand that the decision to have insufficient schools would have been made for economic reasons, so as to save on investment in infrastructure, this does have serious consequences for the nation's children. Which is more valuable: saving money, or saving the health and happiness of the children?

I know which I would choose.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and no months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and five months, and Tiarnan, twenty-two months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)