Sunday, May 11, 2008

What are supplementary lessons?


J and C have just finished their semestral examination and then they announced that their supplementary lessons will still continue after the examination. For a long time I've been wondering about the purpose of supplementary lessons. I did a quick check on a couple of dictionaries and the meanings of supplementary that came back were "Added or serving as a supplement: additional" and the second "Added to supply what is wanted; additional; being, or serving as, a supplement". This is where I am a little confused. I've always thought that supplementary lessons are additional lessons. And if they are additional, they should be optional. But they are not. These supplementary classes are compulsory and they are usually conducted twice a week for about two hours. Most of the time, the teachers were using these classes to catch up on classes. It seems that the normal curriculum hours are not sufficient to cover the syllabus.

A couple of years ago, MOE's Teach Less Learn More (TLLM) was every principal's and every teacher's mantra. Teachers were to be given greater flexibility by reducing curriculum content so that they get ‘white space’ or more room to customise their teaching within the same curriculum time. I am not sure whether this has happened yet.

Do not get me wrong - teachers are working very hard and they are introducing various teaching methods to engage the students - project work, problem-based learning, investigative field work. I am very thankful for all the dedicated teachers who put in extra hours to ensure that their students get the most from these activities. However, due to the nature of assessment (pen-and-paper-do-or-die) in the education system, they need to prepare the students to tackle the traditional exam questions. Many of them are using the supplementary lessons to do just that.

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