SINGAPORE: One local is now seriously questioning whether parents are simply burning money on tuition after witnessing just how many students either don’t participate or don’t even bother showing up at all.
In a post on r/SGexams on Sunday (Nov 16), the local shared that she recently stepped into a “top tuition class,” the kind of place parents supposedly fight tooth and nail to enrol their kids in, only to be greeted by a room full of what she described as “zombies” staring blankly into space.
“The zombies were just zoning out,” she wrote. “Parents are paying S$100+/hour for their kid to take a very expensive nap.”
Also, according to her, many of these so-called “kiasu overachievers,” who already know most of the syllabus by heart, are not there to learn anything new. “They’re not there to learn; they’re just there because their parents are terrified that if they don’t go, some other kid will get one mark higher,” she said.
Then there are the students who don’t even turn up. She said some parents continue paying the non-refundable monthly fees without question, while their children are nowhere to be seen.
“Parents dutifully pay the fees every month, non-refundable, of course, and the kid? Who knows. Maybe at home playing games, maybe at J8. They’re not in class, that’s for sure. The tuition centre doesn’t care. They got paid.”
“We’re burning out our kids, emptying our wallets, and for what?” she asked. “Are we just setting stacks of cash on fire? Is anyone else seeing this, or has the whole country gone mad?”
“Tuition is somewhat like paying for assurance.”
In the comments, one Singaporean Redditor shared, “The thing about parents worrying about someone getting a mark higher than their kid is concerningly accurate, at least in my experience. A guy in my class quit tuition. I asked why, and he said, ‘My mum found a better tutor whose students all get 90 and above’. Mind you, this guy consistently scored 80-85.”
Another user, who sounded like a parent themselves, admitted that the cost of tuition has been hitting their wallet hard. “Yes, I think we are spending too much money on tuition for my kids…. Really, money flies away… Why are all the subjects so much tougher than I remembered for PSLE….. 70 marks is AL5 already.”
A third added, “Tuition is somewhat like paying for assurance. Rather than benchmarking your child against the school’s cohort, joining the tuition centre will mean that child is now being benchmarked against the cohort within ‘top’ tuition centre.”
In other news, a frustrated fresh grad took to social media to rant that after breaking his back to land a “prestigious” job at one of the Big Four firms, he ended up dealing with bosses who seemed more obsessed with his outfit choices than the actual work he was doing.
In an anonymous confession on the NUSWhispers Facebook page on Friday (Oct 31), the fresh grad said his bosses, whom he described as “toxic as hell,” had reprimanded him for wearing a plain T-shirt on a Friday, even though there were no client meetings or important events scheduled.
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