Chitchat Massive Schools Merging Exercise 2019: A Flurry of Internet Responses

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

A rumor brewing for several months became a reality on 20 April 2017 when the Ministry of Education announced that come 2019, 28 schools will be merged; for the first time this includes 8 junior colleges being coalesced into 4 surviving institutions of pre-university learning. It certainly got folks on the internet discussing excitedly, with much of the online chatter observed to be focusing on the fate of the affected junior colleges.

Some analyzed/questioned the rationale behind the schools being cannibalized, others were a tad critical of why top-tier JCs like Raffles Institution and Hwa Chong Institution remained unscathed. Existing students and alumni members of the affected schools were also perplexed as to why some combined entities are scheduled to migrate to seemingly more run-down campuses. While MOE has maintained that the mergers were based on geographical proximity considerations in an attempt to ensure a healthy spread of schools across the country, not all are convinced. One thing is almost for sure though: steadily declining birth rates certainly compelled the ministry to take action, however unwilling it felt. Aggregated below are a series of opinions served up by Singaporeans in various forums such as Kiasu Parents and Reddit, as well as social media avenues including Facebook.

By Catmoon:

"Don't really understand MOE's move.......... ?

If the reason was truthfully all about "falling enrollment", then why start another new JC (i.e. Eunoia) if there are not enough students? Surely they had done their homework earlier????

Editor's Note: Eunoia Junior College is an Integrated Program JC, whose machinations are different from the merged JCs which typically accept 'O' Levels students.

But I have to say it was clever of MOE to put a stop to "appeals" and then turnaround and put the blame on "falling enrollments".

I assume that they are really serious about cutting down the number of students going on to universities. Unless they are going to force the universities (besides SIT) to open up more spaces for poly graduates - which would definitely be good news indeed.

I guess in the future, JCs will become even more elitist than before - since there will be fewer students taking the 'A' Levels.

The smarter students will have more doors open to them (more places in Integrated Program JCs) but the average students will find it much harder to receive the same opportunities and resources.

I wonder if this will result in more average students falling through the ever-widening education gap?"

By CaptainOmen:

"Merging of JCs due to declining birthrate but can open Eunoia JC (IP & SAP schools are affiliated). Hmmmm, would love to see how MOE explains its way out of this without acknowledging elitism. Plus, why not wait for the merger and then convert a vacant school into Eunoia? Save $$$"

By dentedwing:

"Why is Innova going to Yishun??? I don't really mind a merger, I'm just shocked that we are moving into YJC when IJC's school building is so much newer..."

To which AsianTeen concurs:

Even people here in YJC are baffled by this announcement. I went to IJC for a band exchange yesterday and your school is way newer and much more spacious than mine; in comparison and our school's facilities are so much older, classrooms rather poorly ventilated. Utterly shocked."

zathralos offers a possible explanation:

"Innovian here, my teacher told me that YJC's lecture theatre(~800) are much bigger than ours(~600), that's why its more feasible to conduct lectures there to comfortably accommodate the larger number of students."

A whole damn lot more at http://www.domainofexperts.com/2017/...cise-2019.html , copy and paste till my hands want to break.


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