Meritocracy does not equal fairness, but at least it should be realistic.

Meritocracy is the promise that you are rewarded solely based on skill and effort, hence the word merit, as in meritocracy. Perhaps the most harmful societal ideal, meritocracy is the elephant in the room. People grow up being told that the system is fair, yet they learn otherwise. Personally, I don’t put my faith in such an ideal, nor do I attempt to place it in disrepute. As it stands, the modern appearance of meritocracy has deviated from what it initially set out to be, and in turn, became whatever we unmeritoriously wished it were.

For society leaders, politicians, and believers, the magic phrase is “levelling the playing field”, where what’s worth fighting for is the awards in life: status, money, jobs, admissions, all supposedly meant to be distributed equitably. This idea of meritocracy is an appeal to morals. After all, it is only sensible that a morally right system exists in order to combat its morally wrong antecedant. Presented as an opponent to dynastial aristocracy, meritocracy was presented as a way to award merit, and for the layman to triumph over the immoral lottery of birth - in short - luck.

Yet, to me, Singapore seems to have forgotten the value of luck. Practives and procedures currently set up with the naive goal of supporting meritocracy’s merits seem instead to hamper its sole goal.

Surely anyone who has completed at least a few years of schooling would be able to affirm Singapore’s questionable vision of meritocracy. Indeed, if our current setup was believable, we would have no problems at all, but alas we have multitudes of problems that begin from young. Raffles, Nanyang are the household brands for top education institutions that parents strive so unabashedly to put their children into by vying for spots through whatever means necessary.

For context, Singapore’s admission system for primary school offers multiple phases for the different conditions. Above all is the consideration of the student’s residential distance from the school. At each phase, students living in the vicinity of the school are given priority over those who live further away. The effectiveness of this geographical-centric admissions is readily seen in the value of real estate in their vicinity.

To me, such a system would make sense in other nations where parts of a country are sufficiently separated by distance, like in United States. Only then would it make sense to place certain bars on cross-region admissions to ensure efficient allocation of educational resources. Indeed, the non-material costs of moving across regions would become apparent: families have to endure the drastic change of migrating from a place of stability to another, presumably moving away from a community where they have initially settled. Given the vastly smaller size of Singapore, the effectiveness of such a form of admissions pales in comparison. The affluent in Singapore can readily afford to move across the country-state as it stands - there is no drawback of such a short-distance “migration”, if it could even be described as one.

In the recent slate of changes aimed at reducing the impacts of an overemphasis on academic performance, the Ministry of Education has outlawed the administration of mid-year exams in all primary and secondary schools to reduce said academic emphasis and these exams will be “progressively removed” in higher education institutes as well. Indeed, there is a prima facie case to be made out here: for the regular household student with a modicum of respect for their academic performance, there is nothing more numbing than to prepare for an exam. The Singaporean parenting practice will see children being removed from their entertainment devices and other venues of “fun” and having academics placed on their tables. The duration of studying will then depend on their parents’ virtues. This change was advertised as the chief way to “nurture joy of learning”.

I agree, not in the implementation of these changes, but in the rationale for these changes. Given Singapore’s overemphasis on education outcomes, it is clear that something has to goal, and the government appears to have landed on the solution to remove intermediary examinations. But I argue this is unmeritocratic for obvious reasons.

Firstly, the removal of in-school mid-year exams have been replaced by an uptake in what is insidiously sold as “mock” mid-year exams at tuition centres. Parents instead pay a fee for their children to experience a simulated version of what used to be a school affair. The delegation of exams to an external third-party, to a tuition agency no less, has made academic prepartion an affluent affair now, where before it was administered equitably for every student.

Secondly, the removal of this intermediary exam have placed further weight on pinnacle exams. For those not in their graduating years, these exams come in the form of end-of-year exams, which are exams that examine a more comprehensive list of content and skills when compared to the mid-year exams. For those in their graduating years, their time in respective education institutes culminate in national exams. In both cases, the pinnacle exams have arguably been accorded a greater stake than before.

Sure, schools have substituted this intermediary exam with weighted formative assessments. These assessments may come in the form of quizzes, presentations, projects or miniature tests that count towards a student’s final grades (although the school may use these performances). The difference lies in that these formative assessments serve as alternatives to purely academic affairs, which can be seen as a step towards the holistic assessment of a student.

On the other hand, one cannot overlook the circumstance that pinnacle exams are now accorded higher stakes. Eliminating intermediary exams have now reduced the amount of practice that a student will have in preparation for their pinnacle exam. The fact is that administration of said intermediary exams have been made profitable for tuition agencies, and parents are readily accepting these now-paid arrangements in hopes that their children will be better prepared for their pinnacle exams.

The irony is that what was meant to meritocratically determine a student’s academic aptitude has been replaced by means now only accessible to the affluent. The package of reduced exams as advertised is one that is made to combat the undue weight placed on academic performance, but such weight is not alleviated, but instead substituted by the weight of not being sufficiently prepared for a high(er)-stakes pinnacle exam.

Further, the government attempts to align its pinnacle exam system to supplement its package of lowered academic focus. For the Junior College level, A-levels have now removed Project Work and a fourth content-based subject from the computation of a student’s rank points used in university admissions.

To me, simplifying the computation of rank points makes more sense as a solution to an academic overemphasis over the elimination of intermediary exams. This is a simple counting exercise: when we remove the opportunity to accustom to the environment of an official exam but also take into account fewer grades, the implication is that exams are arguably more important to a student now that there is less room for universities to differentiate between the aptitude of their applicants.

It can certainly then be argued that universities will turn to other holistic forms of assessing a prospective applicant, which in turn encompasses forms of training in various domains that can yet again be supported by affluence. I avert from addressing this because meritocracy is not uncapable of fault: any system that aims to evaluate students by any means: qualitatively such as through a student’s interests, or quantitatively through performance in academic fronts; will be prone to the impacts of affluence. Let’s not fool ourselves - wealthier families will be able to support their offsprings better than those that are less well-to-do, and that is a fact.

What can instead be done is for institutions to evaluate a student based on their access to opportunities and the extent to which they have made use of opportunities made available to them - an “equity” judgement, if you will. The principle of an equitable and holistic evaluation of a student that Singapore aspires to work towards is more than capable of supporting such an equity judgement made by higher institutions. These institutions, when considering a prospective applicant individually, will be able to roughly qualify the quality of opportunities available to the applicant based on the quality of institutions that the applicant has been in and the applicant’s affluence. Such a system places a heavy emphasis on a student’s readiness to maximise the value of opportunities made available to them. Assuming a blank state in extracurriculars and equal affluence, an applicant attaining full rank points in a low-tier college will be preferred over an applicant attaining likewise in a top college.

In imposing systemic changes that affects how institutions evaluate its prospects, the government needs to be sure that its changes do not shift the state of equitability from one where opportunities and resources are readily available to all students to a state where things are now shielded by a paywall, accessible only through affluence. At the root of it all, the government is reacting to societal expectations whereby it justifies its slate of changes by countering what parents have been imposing on their children. This is not to say that the experiences of stressors as reported by learned students are invalid, but that these stressors can be greatly attributed to two subjects independent of their individual agency: firstly, parental expectations, and secondly, expectations of future prospects.

In the first case, a student faces not just their internal stress, such as the ability to cope with their studies in school, but also academic expectations from their parents. It is not uncommon for parents to place undue weight on the final grade attained by their children. After all, why would a parent invest heavily in sending their children to tuition if their children in turn perform only just as well as their peers without tuition or in less expensive tuition? In the second case, as students mature and move along their education pathway, they realise that there are quantitative and qualitative markers that evaluate their readiness for higher education. For the ambitious families, it is not sufficient that their children attain a higher education, but that their education is received in a quality institution, better yet from those with a brandname known by most prospective employers.

Removing intermediary exams and simplifying the computation of rank points can be seen as two means to have students experience the morals of education. To promote joy, as the ministry and its minister claims, is to first encourage the appreciation of learning through reducing the emphasis on assessment and so this coerces institutions and employers to reframe their evaluations in the long-run. But for now, this begs the question: who’s emphasis?

Certainly, it is not that of the government’s as quantitative assessment has been a revered way of assessing a student’s subject mastery since antiquity. Neither it is of a student’s individual agency: it is plainly unrealistic to claim that a youth under the age of 16 would understand the stakes of an exam if left unadvised. It is only through their parents’ prompts that they understand that pinnacle exams are tied to their future prospects. Even without yet experiencing the finality of a pinnacle exam, schoolchildren are conditioned to perceive exams to be of utmost importance, so much so that their personal development is to be placed on hold to make way for a macabre affair they have no awareness of.

It is also ironic that as parent’s echo concerns about overstretching their schoolchildren, they actively undermine the ministry’s efforts to reduce said stressors by further imbuing their children with other stressors, such as in signing their children up for mock exams after schools have ceased to administer them officially. It seems to me that it is a case of parents crying wolf - while it is not likely that these parents are the same as those who advocate for reducing stressors, it is appropriate to still address parents as a singular group, similar to the way the government has imposed solutions on the whole student population by combatting the actions of a subset of their parents - and that it is simply a game of shifting the goalpost. Parents are more than willing to score their children the best opportunities if it meant that their children are seen to be more valuable or apt by prospective institutions and employers.

No matter the expectation nor the attempt to combat these undue expectations, students experience education as something done to them without their inputs. It is concerning to me that the focus around education restructure has been placed on reframing the outcomes of education to modify whatever expectations that are placed on them, and that these expectations are independent of a student’s wishes. In doing so, students have had education defined for them before they even understood what education means. Who’s to say that gainful education is fulfilled only when a student has had the opportunity to explore fully other domains completely irrelevant to their own interests, as is the case where students have to take up “contrasting” subjects?

The fault lies not just in parents who actively combat the ministry’s efforts, but also in the nation’s leadership for falsely misaligning education outcomes with parental expectations. It is not a coincidence that education reform at has raised questions as to the equitability of education at every turn. I say with conviction that education reform will continue to be hampered by the shifting of goalposts by entities beyond the student’s field of view if students are never had the chance to define education for themselves. To do better, let us begin not by telling future generations what education is, but what education feels like. After all, that is what meritocratic education should be: an endearing process that affords youths unfettered development as they explore the world around them while soaking in organic opportunities that expand their worldview by their own merit. The proper outcome for education would then be to develop upright citizens of the world no matter their specialisation as opposed whatever artificial means of attainment that has been defined for them before they are even cognisant of what is being done to them under the guise of “education”. It has always been schoolchildren that are harmed by our unfair expectations of what education should look like. What is unmeritocratic has always been our expectations for education.