2026 marks a new beginning for our family. We are moving off from homeschooling to the mainstream. J himself wanted to return to the mainstream and experience life with the schoolers. We respect his decision, though I feel a little reluctant as I know that I will miss his presence with the family 24/7. Anyway, as a father, I will still need to release him.
Having said that, we are ready to homeschool him for his secondary school years, if any unforeseen situation arises.
Homeschooling his primary school years was no small feat. Kudos to my wifey! The reason is that you cannot avoid the sacred cow of PSLE in Singapore. In other words, you cannot deviate too much from the local education syllabus. You cannot truly enjoy the goodness of learning for learning's sake.
Throughout these 6 years as a homeschooler, J had experienced his fair share of unfair treatments.
I always remind him, "Life is unfair. But God is always good. If we want life to be fair, we deserve hell. But Jesus saved us."
He understood this statement. Yet he kept encountering unfairness in his life despite putting in hardwork and diligence.
We don't teach him that hardwork and diligence equate to success. Because we know that it is often untrue in life. Elitism and wealth bring impartiality in life. That's the reality.
We teach him that God wants us to be diligent and faithful because it's the right attitude and character of the Kingdom. It doesn't always mean success in life in the world's definition.
However, in Secondary 1 school posting, we were surprised to discover an ugly truth. While homeschoolers are unable to participate in S1 posting exercise (we also don't have the S1 Portal), we didn't know that we would be treated as 'second-class' citizens during the school posting exercise.
During the oral exams for both languages this year, J experienced unfairness. There was one set of easy oral exam question for each language, while another set of difficult oral exam question for each language. The disparity is really great. He came out of the exam hall feeling a tad disappointed when he realised that his friends got the easy questions and they could answer easily.
This is the huge flaw of our local education system. It is political in nature (if you still didn't know) and is meant to sieve out the rest of the children from the elites aka the wealthy ones who have unlimited resources. It is never a level-playing field to begin with. And we already knew that years ago.
As a result, his PSLE results dropped from his usual standard, but we were still very proud of what he managed to do as a homeschooler. He was disappointed though, as he couldn't go to the school that he desired to go, which has a low COP of 6 points.
During the selection of schools, we discussed, listed the choices and submitted. To our surprise, J was not placed in the school where the COP is higher than his result. This ought not to be the case.
We found out that homeschoolers are placed based on vacancies, after the mainstream schoolers have been fully posted based on merits, choices and vacancies. In other words, there is no meritocracy involved. If you intend to homeschool, please note this important information.
We were indignant at such injustice. As parents, it broke our heart as we didn't want J to go through another unfairness in his life. Yes, life is always unfair but God is good. He knows this statement.
But we didn't want him to feel jaded in life as he had been working hard. We didn't want him to reach a place in life where he felt, "What's the point of being diligent in life?"
So we decided to fight for him. We spoke and wrote to the placement officer, but we received the typical govt robot answer. We wrote in to MOE and we received the same typical robot answer. We wrote in to the higher authority because we want them to know that this does not just concern our child, but the whole community of homeschoolers. Homeschoolers should NOT be treated as second-class citizens, below the PRs and foreigners in the mainstream schools. Since they always preach about meritocracy, we want them to keep to their words.
Don't just have plenty of public talks without following through with actions.
By God's grace, we received a call from the school. They granted J a place because his result was better than their COP.
This is the desire of J's heart. The next school that he always wanted to go. He was so delighted. We wanted him to know that God and his parents will always fight for him, because we love him.
Jesus!
