There is another ST article today:
https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/on ... e-for-psle
There seems to be an official propaganda drive to de-emphasize academics judging by the newsflow lately. It seems that if you excel in CCA and outside interests, you should be lauded and celebrated. But if you excel in academics and related interests, you are like a 过街老鼠，人人喊打, and go hide yourself in a hole. It seems MOE new policy to uplift the weaker students is to ask the stronger students to slow down to wait for the rest. If academics is not important, then the civil service should take the lead and not ask for grade transcripts when they hire, and base purely on the certs achieved, experience, and the interview.
In the IP dropout article, it is unnecessary to bash IP. Mr Chaw was correctly selected for the IP programme. He did very well for Sec1-4. If anything, he's an early bloomer, who has peaked early. The only criticism of the IP program at HCI (or some other IP school) is that they don't offer a dual track 'O' level program to fall back on. This still does not affect Mr. Chaw though because he started doing badly only in JC1. So the ST article is biased in that the journalist single-mindedly wants to deliver her message and just mix-n-match the evidence and ignore the facts.
MOE reveals there is a not insignificant 6% of IP students who left the program from various secondary school years, with a significant number of them who DSA into the schools by non-academics. For the last 10 years, we've read about the horror stories of these students left to fend on their own. MOE knows this, the IP schools know this, and yet they have done nothing to prevent these from happening and still accept non-academic DSA students whose PSLE score is way below the COP. Why the reluctance to change? Instead, these students should only be accepted conditional on their PSLE score being not more than 5-10 points below the COP, and mandate all IP/IB schools offer a dual track O levels for them to fall back on.
The DSA program is a farce. It should be reserved for true talents who have spent lots of time horning their skills to achieve international standards, at the expense of their studies. We also have the Singapore Sports School and SOTA who have the proper facilities and adjusted curriculum to take in all the possible sports and aesthetics talents our tiny nation can unearth. If you are serious about sports and the arts, you should go there instead and not the top academic schools. If you want to uplift the have-not students, then all the more the DSA system is unfavorable to them. They have no time and family support to pursue these interests to qualify to DSA. DSA is just a backdoor entry to the top schools for the haves. If parents can spend thousands of $ and hours to horne a skill to try DSA, why don't they just spend the same $ and time to lift their grades, as the payoff and effects are more lasting and beneficial in the long run?
There is also the mistaken notion that top schools offer a good environment and curriculum. What is one man's meat is another's poison. Only if you are up for the competition. What makes a school good is the students. The presence of similar peers raises the competitive spirit that leads to productivity and intense competition. This is what's happening in our local top schools and similarly playing out in top schools and universities through the world. Harvard, MIT etc are top because the top minds go there, and they tailor the curriculum that these top minds can accept. If you move all the students from RI/HCI/NYGH to XYZ school in the neighborhood, then XYZ school would be the top school, even if the teachers are unchanged. In fact, it is likely that such top schools teaches less and expect the students to be independent. There is no need to squeeze a square peg in a round hole, if you are not a good fit.
In today's article that questions whether the PSLE is unfavorable for late bloomers, our education system does not shut anyone off from achieving their maximum potential. No matter how late bloomer they can be, it just take a longer time than usual to complete. NA, N, O, Poly then U.
Did he enter via DSA? 
Yesterday she said she sensed her child’s top school is trying to 平民化 everyone. Maybe really govt’s direction to be less elitist.