Abstract
Singapore’s education system is globally recognized for its high academic standards. In this paper, I explore how Singaporean parents navigate sentiments of uncertainty and risk in relation to their children’s education. While academic achievements are still considered crucial to foster a competitive population, there has been a shift of attention in education policy towards social-emotional skills and holistic education. This reconceptualization of learning is partly grounded in a concern about children’s psychological well-being, but it is also construed as essential to thrive in the 21st century. The findings show that parents’ sentiments of uncertainty and risk management are complicated, and indeed heightened, by the paradoxical expectations with regard to children’s education. Sentiments of fear of regret and guilt were particularly conspicuous in the parents’ narratives and heightened during specific educational transitions, such as the Primary School Leaving Examination.
Introduction
During my fieldwork in Singapore, I met Priscilla, the mother of three primary school–aged children. Priscilla spoke on several occasions about the challenge of finding the right balance in supporting her children in their education. On one hand, she does not want her children – or herself – to regret that they did not do their best in school. On the other hand, she wants her children to cultivate a genuine desire to learn and have a happy childhood. At the time of my fieldwork, her son’s teacher had advised that he needed to put in more effort to keep up in one of the core subjects. Priscilla asked herself if she was too lenient as a parent. ‘I don’t know’, she said, ‘have I been letting him play too much? Have I not been pushing him hard enough? Mommy guilt’.
Singapore’s education system is often celebrated for its high academic standards (Koh and Chong, 2014; Ng, 2017). The city-state is consistently a top performer in international rankings and surveys of student achievement, such as the OECD’s PISA survey or the IEA’s TIMSS (see Mullis et al., 2021; OECD, 2018). 1 The academic performance of Asian countries is usually assumed to be a result of rigorous examinations and competitive schools, but it should be noted that over the past two decades many East Asian countries, including Singapore, have in fact initiated extensive educational reforms aimed at promoting a more holistic notion of learning and reducing the emphasis on exams and grades (Bach and Christensen, 2017, 2021; Bregnbæk, 2016; Cave, 2016; Choo et al., 2017; Tan, 2014; Tan et al, 2017). In 2010, Singapore’s Ministry of Education introduced a 21st Century Competencies (21CC) framework for its national curriculum, aimed at preparing students for the demands of the new century. The framework emphasizes so-called social-emotional competencies, including self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, social awareness and relationship management (Ministry of Education Singapore, 2022a), abilities believed to be crucial to thriving and enduring in a fast-changing and unpredictable world. This holistic notion of learning highlights the importance of learning through play and natural exposure, rather than mechanical rote learning (Bach and Christensen, 2017; Ng, 2017). However, as noted by Ng (2017) this new direction in education has not meant the demise of meritocracy altogether. Minister for Education Chan Chun Sing recently emphasized in a speech that ‘[w]e do not want to be merely a country which is known for excellent PISA scores. We want to be a nation where everyone’s potential is maximized, regardless of their starting station in life. We must do so by broadening the definition and pathways of success, and move away from a meritocracy of grades, towards a meritocracy of skills’ (Ministry of Education Singapore, 2023). This reconceptualization of learning and education should be understood in light of wider global tensions between the emerging shift towards holistic and value-based education (in Singapore framed as 21CC) and education governed by modernist paradigms of predictability, certainty, and standardized testing. Both positions, though contradictory, are evident in recent initiatives and publications by leading actors in global education governance, including the OECD (e.g., OECD, 2018, 2020).
Tensions are also manifest in parents’ educational care work. Priscilla’s dilemma, balancing school and play, was widely shared among the parents I encountered during fieldwork. While a first-class education is still considered crucial to foster a competitive and competent population, childhood is supposed to be happy and stress free. In a famous National Day Rally speech, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong cautioned parents against overscheduling young children’s free time: ‘Instead of growing up balanced and happy, [the child] grows up narrow and neurotic. No homework is not a bad thing. It is good for young children to play and to learn through play’ (National Day Rally, 2012). However, as will be illustrated in this analysis, such proclamations by policymakers and experts are not entirely reliable, since high-stakes examinations still determine the child’s route through the competitive education system. While parents of young children remain convinced of the importance of academic performance, they are increasingly encouraged, and indeed expected, to also cultivate their children’s genuine passion to learn and in general ensure them a happy childhood (Göransson, 2023). Balancing these two expectations is a major source of anxiety for parents.
This article explores how Singaporean parents navigate sentiments of uncertainty and risk in relation to their children’s future. The analysis is guided by two questions: How do parents construe and negotiate risk in relation to high-stakes examinations and educational transitions, such as the Primary School Leaving Examination? How do parents balance conflicting desires around their children’s futures? Studying children’s learning and education through the lens of parental concerns is a productive approach because everyday parenting is increasingly targeted in public discourse and policy-making (see Faircloth, 2014; Furedi, 2008; Macvarish, 2016; Macvarish et al., 2015; Vincent and Maxwell, 2016). Parental action is ‘considered to have a determining impact on a child’s future happiness, healthiness, and success’ (Lee, 2014: 2). This study focuses specifically on parents of children aged 12 and below, a cohort that is particularly interesting given the widespread claim that early childhood is the most critical period of cognitive and emotional development (Macvarish, 2016; Smyth and Craig, 2017). Moreover, previous research indicates that in Singapore parent’s involvement in their children’s education is most intense during this period, as compared to parents with older children (Göransson, 2015, 2016; Lai and Huang, 2004; Teo, 2022).
We proceed next to a discussion of empirical material and methods. The analysis itself focuses on two over-arching themes: parenthood as a site for risk management and exams as risky events. I conclude by discussing parental efforts to balance or reconcile conflicting notions of risk.
Material and methods
This article is based on data generated through ethnographic fieldwork in Singapore conducted between 2018 and 2019. 2 A shorter (post-pandemic) field visit was conducted in 2022. As is common in ethnographic research, I recorded several types of data: interviews and informal conversations with parents; observations of settings and situations related to children’s learning, including homework support sessions, homeschooling cooperatives, extracurricular activities and home environments. It also includes supplementary interviews with social workers and education and policy professionals. Different types of records, such as policy documents and brochures relating to learning, education and parenting were also gathered in the course of fieldwork. These records are not analysed systematically but have been useful for illustrating current notions about children’s learning and education and parents’ roles therein.
Ethnographic fieldwork is characterized by an extended and first-hand engagement with the field and its members. While ethnography is usually associated with participant observation, much of the information gathered during fieldwork consists of talk (Atkinson, 2015: 92ff). For this study, the data generated through interviews and conversations with parents are particularly important. Twenty-three in-depth interviews were conducted with 24 mothers and 5 fathers of pre- and primary-school-aged children. The interviews lasted between one and two hours and focused on the parents’ involvement in and conceptions of children’s education and learning. Mothers and fathers from different educational and socio-economic backgrounds were included to gain insights into ways parenting norms may intersect with gender and social class. 3 All parents were in their 30s or 40s. While some interviews included both mothers and fathers, most were individual. In addition, I conducted one group interview with three mothers.
Previous research has established that mothers take more responsibility for children’s education and learning than fathers, and Singapore is no exception (Hays, 1996; Lai and Huang, 2004; O’Brien, 2007; Reay, 1998, 2000; Yeoh and Huang, 2010). Education is a matter of serious concern in Singapore, and when recruiting participants, I quickly found that mothers were especially interested in talking about their children’s learning and education. The fact that the sample includes comparatively few fathers is a reflection of the gendered nature of parents’ educational work. Parental involvement in education is usually associated with the middle- and upper-class (e.g., Lareau, 2003; Reay, 1998, 2000; Vincent and Ball, 2007). It should be noted here that the low-income parents I interviewed prioritized school and stressed the importance of formal education, often even more than the middle-class parents, but they lacked the economic, academic and social capital of the more resourceful middle-class families, who invested substantial money, time, energy and emotion in raising nimble and creative children who can thrive in the 21st century (see also Göransson, 2023).
Parents in this study were primarily recruited through personal networks and referrals. Existing contacts in the field helped me get in touch with parents who were willing to participate, and they were then asked to recommend other potential participants. Access is always shaped by the researcher’s positionality, including social characteristics such as gender, age and marital status. Being a parent myself, I was generally expected to be able to relate to the experiences and concerns raised by the participants, which facilitated the building of rapport and collaboration.
Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim with the permission of the participants. Quotes included in this article have been slightly edited for readability. Participants were informed of the purpose of the study and ensured confidentiality. All names used are pseudonyms, and personal data that could put participants’ anonymity at risk, such as workplaces or residential areas, have been excluded.
Singapore is a multilingual country with four official languages: English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. English is the administrative language and the principal medium of instruction in schools, while Mandarin, Malay and Tamil are official ‘mother tongue languages’. Mother tongue language is a compulsory subject. In everyday life, English is most widely spoken, especially among younger Singaporeans. All interviews were conducted in English.
Analysis of the empirical material has been an iterative process (cf. Atkinson, 2015), to a large extent guided by what Emerson (2004) calls ‘key incidents’, that is, ‘particular [in-the-field] observations that play a central role in identifying and opening up new analytic issues and broader lines of theoretical development’ (p. 429). By reviewing interviews and fieldnotes repeatedly both during and after fieldwork, and by taking notice of key incidents, the data has both informed, and been informed by, analytical ideas. The transcripts were organized and processed with the help of Nvivo software for qualitative data analysis.
Uncertainty, risk and imaginaries of children’s future
A common sentiment among the parents I encountered was the fear of regret – fear of making the wrong decisions and thereby causing lifelong negative consequences for their children. Or as one mother put it, ‘There is a fear that if I don’t do all I can for my child, if they don’t succeed, it’s my fault’. Decisions around children’s learning and education, then, appear fraught with risk. That contemporary parenting is as a key site for risk management has been well established in previous research (e.g., Cooper, 2014; Faircloth, 2014; Furedi, 2008; Joelsson 2019; Kipnis, 2011; Lee, 2014; Lee et al., 2010; Rosen and Suissa 2020; Shirani et al., 2011; Talbot, 2013; Vincent and Ball, 2007). The concept of risk is intimately entangled with uncertainty; risk ‘can be understood as a framing device which conceptually translates uncertainty from being an open-ended field of unpredicted possibilities into a bounded set of possible consequences’ (Boholm, 2003: 167). Uncertainty and risk are essentially concerned with the future, whether near or distant, and as pointed out by Rosen and Suissa (2020: 127), in our risk-centered society, parents are ‘understood to be uniquely positioned to project the consequences of today’s actions into the future, through concern for and imaginaries of their descendants’ lives’. The conviction that parents’ actions, or lack thereof, have a determining impact on their children’s lives is evident in the empirical data analysed in this article. Not only do parents worry about their children’s exam results, admission to preferred schools or finding the best private learning centre, they are also uncertain about how to interpret and respond to frequent changes in the education system, such as curriculum revisions and new scoring systems.
Parental risk management is heightened at specific points in time and space, such as when preparing children for high-stakes exams and educational transitions. This article addresses one such transition, the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), which determines the child’s transition to secondary school. Building upon current ethnographic research on education and aspiration, this article highlights the affective dimension of parents’ aspirations for their children’s future: ‘the senses and sentiments, desires and anxieties, inclinations and intentions’ that underpin experiences and manifestations of educational care work (Froerer et al., 2022: 180; see also Dost and Froerer, 2021; Jakimow, 2016; Skoggard and Waterson, 2015). To shed light on the cultural logics and subjective aspirations around high-stakes examinations and educational transitions, the analysis also takes inspiration from Howlett’s (2021) study of college entrance exams in contemporary China, where he employs Erving Goffman’s (1967) notion of fateful situations. A fateful situation is at once consequential and undetermined. Goffman puts forward this conceptual framework in ‘Where the Action Is’ (1967), a paper based on his field studies on gambling in Las Vegas. While gambling is a prime example of fateful action, Goffman emphasizes that fatefulness is not unique to gambling; as we will see in the analysis below, everyday life is full of risk-taking with uncertain outcomes and far-reaching consequences.
‘The big crossroad’
In Singapore, all students must sit for the PSLE at the end of their sixth and final year in primary school. The examination assesses their proficiency in English, Mother Tongue, mathematics and science. The stakes are high given that students’ scores determine their choice of secondary school and channel them into one of three secondary school streams: Express, Normal (Academic) or Normal (Technical). 4 The PSLE has been criticized for its narrow scope of assessment and for taking a toll on children’s mental health. While the Ministry of Education has taken measures to reduce the emphasis on grades by revising the PSLE scoring system and removing mid-year examinations for primary and secondary schools, there are no plans to abolish it. The Ministry of Education Singapore (2022a) maintains that the PSLE ‘remains a useful checkpoint’ and ‘helps to determine where each child’s academic strengths lie’ and consequently ‘guides the child to a suitable academic programme in secondary school’. The three courses offered at the secondary-school level are said to be tailored to match students’ interests and learning abilities; nevertheless, there is a firm conviction among parents and students that being channeled into the Normal streams, and not the Express one, is detrimental to the possibility of future university studies. It should be noted that the Ministry of Education will remove the current streaming in secondary schools from 2024 onwards. The Express, Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) streams will be replaced with a subject-based banding, where students take different subjects at different levels. Instead of grouping students into form classes based on their stream, classes will be mixed (Ministry of Education Singapore, 2022c). The new subject-based model, however, is not the end of streaming as such; it is just a different method of sorting students according to their ability.
In an ethnographic study of China’s national college entrance exams, known as gaokao, anthropologist Zachary Howlett (2021) employs Erving Goffman’s (1967) notion of fateful situations as an analytic lens for understanding the cultural logics of meritocracy and individual motives and desires. Just like other fateful events, the gaokao represents a rite of passage that is at once consequential and undetermined. Examinees, as well as their families and teachers, invest tremendous moral labour in preparing for the exam. It would be simplistic to argue that they are duped into believing in the ideology of meritocracy. On the contrary, the personal accounts chronicled in Howlett’s study suggest that people are well aware of the uneven chances to succeed in the test, yet they feel they have no choice but to compete. Like the gaokao, Singapore’s PSLE represents a crucial milestone, where risk gets distilled to a single event. Families invest substantial time, energy, emotion, and money into preparing children for the exam. The perceived need for supplementary education outside school is widespread. Private learning centres provide a myriad of courses, from mathematics and science to English and Mandarin, as well as motivational sessions and bootcamps – all to prepare students for the PSLE. Parents, at least middle- and upper-class ones, often purchase supplementary assessment books, which are available in local bookstores, to do their own spot-checks and drill the child. Parents also circulate past years’ exam papers among themselves or buy them from online stores of educational materials. The continuous growth of Singapore’s private tutoring market presents a contrast to the increasingly popular notion of a stress-free childhood and admonitions against overscheduling children’s free time (Göransson, 2023). In the latest Household Expenditure Survey (2017/2018) Singaporean households spent 1.4 billion Singapore dollars per year on private education services, more than twice as much as fifteen years ago (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2019).
Nancy, a mother of two, was preparing for her youngest child’s PSLE. Up until Primary 5 he had only received private tuition in Mandarin, but as the PSLE drew closer Nancy decided to enroll him in science and English training, too.
Then during the parent-teacher meetings, I will just ask the subject teachers, how is he doing, do you think he needs help? Which are the areas he is weak at? I also openly tell them that I am asking this because I want to see if he needs tuition. Like some kind of help from a proper teacher. And the math teacher said he is fine. He was scoring 98 marks so I don’t think that’s a reason. That is why in math, he has no tuition. Science he was also doing not too bad, he was 80 something, 85 marks. Because science is a subject I can’t teach, [. . .] so I’d rather let him go to a proper tuition center that is more aligned so he can score well. This tuition center, I think from April onwards, they do revision [study for exams], so it is just in time. So, we will just do revision with the tuition center. So at home, I won’t need to do extra practice. So that is my plan.
‘Secrecy’, or the withholding of information, is another characteristic of Goffman’s (1967) fateful situation. As the PSLE approached, Nancy felt that parents got more tense and reserved. In Primary 4 the parents’ community at her son’s school had been very supportive and helpful, but that changed in Primary 5.
In P4 there was no competition [among the parents]. After that, then we started to have competition. So in P4 everyone was helping each other to cope. And we were very strong. That is why in P4, we knew each other very well. There was this group chat and sometimes people would share things: ‘Oh tomorrow the kids need to do this, bring this’. Some parents say, ‘Oh my daughter told me this and this happened in class’, so we get updated all the time. Before I reached home, I already knew what happened in school. So that helped. So that group was really helpful. But then when it came to P5 [. . .], they started to compete.
Another mother, who was especially critical of the over-emphasis on academic achievement, pointed out that it was hard not to get ‘sucked in’ and that peer pressure can be ‘detrimental’.
It is fear driven. Once you are in P1, you are sucked in ‘til you cannot get out. [Parents] tell me it is so hard because of the group chat and everyone is like “Have you signed up for Berries [a popular private learning center]? Have you signed up for this math tuition? Have you done this for your child . . . blah blah blah. [. . .] It is a group thing, they get sucked in. So, you have to be so strong and you need to have no fear, and to me, I feel you need to know what . . . where is your goal post. If you don’t know, if I didn’t know, if I wasn’t 100 percent sure where my goal post was, you would be swayed by all the other people through peer pressure. Especially if you can afford it.
As noted earlier, these sentiments of fear among parents are heightened in specific situations, like the transition from preschool to primary school or the PSLE. Derek, a father of two, described the PSLE as ‘the big crossroad’. At the time of fieldwork his oldest child was preparing for the End of Year Examination in Primary 5. I asked Derek if he was nervous about the exams, which assess the students’ proficiency in mathematics, science, English and Mother Tongue.
I am not really nervous. [. . .] Because for us, or at least for me, this exam is not the crucial one. This exam is just a pre-exam for PSLE.
The PSLE seems to be the big thing.
That is the big cross, the gate, the big crossroad. So she still has time, she still has time. I don’t think right now she is mature enough to be on her own, to study on her own, to know where she is [academically]. And she is really depending on us. And we are helping her. So to me, this exam is not so crucial but it may be a learning one for her to show . . . You know kids are, okay, I didn’t do well this time; they will forget that. They will forget that, so we just need to remind her.
Derek and his wife try not to worry too much about the PSLE just yet, but they strongly believe that outside-school tuition is fundamental. ‘We do try to look for good tuition centers, good tuition teachers to help her’. As noted, parental involvement in children’s education and learning is highly gendered, in the sense that mothers more than fathers oversee homework, research school rankings and private learning centres, network with other parents and so forth. This was also true in Derek’s case. It was his wife who stayed informed about potential supplementary classes and did the necessary research, but she would sometimes ask him to visit trial classes or demos. Recently Derek visited a learning centre demonstrating a device that allegedly measures the student’s attention level. ‘There is this device that [the students] have to wear and you are able to determine if they are focused or not. [. . .]. They measure the brain waves. [. . .] And the school guarantees your child will get an A star [in mathematics]. Not an A, not a B, not improved, but an A star’. Derek had no intention of enrolling his daughter in that class – it was very expensive – but his account is illustrative of contemporary (middle-class) parenthood in Singapore. Parents devote substantial time and energy into staying informed, searching, checking and evaluating the massive supply of private educational services available to prepare their children for the demands of the education system and, ultimately the ‘big crossroad’, the PSLE.
While the PSLE is not the only high-stakes examination Singapore students face, parents perceive it as the most critical, and consequential, one. As Shu Ping pointed out, at the age of 12 children are not mature enough to take responsibility for their own school work. Parents feel the need to be much more involved in exam preparations for the PSLE compared to the national exams in secondary school or junior college. Shu Ping, whose daughter had recently sat for the PSLE, described the pressure as almost unbearable. The 1–2 years leading up to the PSLE had been packed with private classes in the four core subjects. Not only did Shu Ping and her husband invest substantial money in these classes, the mental and emotional load was also significant, at least for Shu Ping. In addition to transporting her daughter to the many classes, Shu Ping attended webinars to learn how to support her child psychologically and emotionally during this stressful phase. ‘I felt like I just wanted my life back after the PSLE’, Shu Ping said.
‘The popular thing to do is to be chill’
However, parents’ concerns around their children’s future were not just about scores and grades, but also emotional wellbeing and resilience (Göransson, 2021, 2023). Priscilla, quoted in the introduction, was particularly candid about the conflicting and contradictory expectations surrounding contemporary parenthood. Not many parents, she said, would openly subscribe to so-called tiger parenting. ‘Sometimes people are very Tiger Mom and they don’t dare say so. Because right now, the popular thing to do is to be chill’. Personally, Priscilla felt conflicted. She illustrated her point by referring to an initiative that went viral a few years back. In 2016 Singaporeans began sharing their PSLE scores and current careers on social media to fight ‘exam-shaming’ and to demonstrate that your PSLE score does not need to determine the rest of your life, that you can succeed in life even with a mediocre score (see BBC, 2016).
[It’s] like I take a picture of my [PSLE] score and write down ‘now I am a Doctor’, or ‘now I am a Business owner’ . . . to try and show that the PSLE score is not determining your whole life. Somebody started that and had good intentions, then a lot of celebrities, medicorp stars, media personalities started to also do that. So a lot of these media personalities didn’t score very well, but now they are doing well in their own field. So they are trying to say it does not determine your life. Last year, some people started to criticize it, [saying that] yes, it is good intention to say it doesn’t define you, but you can’t say it doesn’t matter at all. Because it does matter. It matters which school you go to; it matters how high you score, or whether you go to a polytechnic or university, it does matter. Whether you have a university degree or a polytechnic diploma. What job you get. We don’t want to send a message to the kids that it does not matter at all! Because it does matter.
Priscilla continued pondering the tension between studying hard to secure good results versus the child’s emotional well-being and resilience.
What we want the kids to do is be responsible for their learning, and to do the best they can. [. . .] It is a balance right? On one hand, [. . .] I told him ‘You have to work hard so that you don’t regret it, but it is also for yourself, to fulfill your potential. I don’t want you to look back and regret it. You only need to take your PSLE once in your life, after that, then that’s it. Even if I wanted to take my PSLE, I can’t go back and do that. I can’t. So you should do the best you can’. On the other hand, I told him, ‘No matter how well you do, we still love you. You are still our son’. So it is a balance.
Joan, the mother of two, expressed similar concerns. While she tried not to put too much pressure on her children, she felt that parents who are too laid-back might regret it.
I also heard stories of other parents who take a very laid-back approach and really regret it at the end of Primary One. Because the kid ends up really behind the other students. Although there are no official exams, a lot of schools still do exams and you still kind of know how the kid is doing. The kid will also know their level: You begin to think you are bad student and it just keeps going downhill from there. So a lot of it is psychological. I also don’t want to end up like that.
In a sense, Joan’s concern reflects the widespread conviction that parents’ actions will have a direct effect on their children’s future, whether or not those actions are aimed at emphasizing or downplaying academic achievement. Regardless of parenting style – ‘tiger mum’ or ‘chill’ – parents’ involvement in their children’s education and learning are ways of coping with sentiments of risk and uncertainty in relation to their children’s future. However, parental efforts and aspirations in finding the right balance cannot be understood as purely strategic and calculating. On the contrary, as illustrated in the examples cited above, parents’ risk management is clearly a moral and emotional venture, entangled with fears of guilt and regret (Göransson, 2021, 2023).
Concluding remarks
In this article, I have explored how Singaporean parents express and negotiate sentiments of uncertainty and risk regarding their children’s future in the light of emerging tensions between social-emotional skills and holistic education (21CC) and education governed by modernist paradigms of predictability, certainty and standardized testing. As noted in the introduction, these tensions are by no means unique to Singapore, but tacit in the wider global education discourse. This reconceptualization of learning should be understood in relation to a growing global concern about children’s emotional and psychological well-being. In 2015, the PISA survey included indicators of students’ well-being in relation to their educational achievement for the first time (OECD, 2019), and children’s well-being is a main priority of UNESCO’s strategy on education since 2016 (UNESCO, 2022). While children’s well-being is serious concern in itself, the emphasis on well-being in recent initiatives by leading organizations in global education governance is, at the same time, a means to an end – namely, to help ‘students embody the desired outcomes of education so that they are able to capitalize on the rich opportunities of the digital age’ (Ministry of Education Singapore, 2022a).
Ethnography offers an empirically founded understanding of parents’ care work in the domain of education, in Singapore and beyond; it takes seriously the subjective desires and aspirations that shape contemporary parenting. Given the global knowledge economy and widespread concerns about children’s education and learning, such insights are vital.
What is particularly striking is that parents’ uncertainty and subsequent risk management are complicated, and indeed heightened, by seemingly paradoxical expectations around children’s education. Children’s psychological and emotional well-being and ‘happiness’ was a recurring topic in interviews with parents, but at the same time they were deeply concerned about their children’s academic performance in school. 5 These findings suggest that the tension between academic achievement and a stress-free and happy childhood appears to generate even more intensive parenting and emotional work (see also Göransson, 2023). The fear of regret and guilt are particularly conspicuous in parents’ narratives especially around specific educational transitions, such as preparing for the Primary School Leaving Examination. This high-stakes exam is construed as a major threshold by both parents and children, and can be conceptualized as a fateful rite of passage (Goffman, 1967; Howlett, 2021), an event at once consequential and undetermined. Uncertain educational transitions can be found everywhere, and contemporary parenting everywhere is shaped by different, and sometimes competing, notions of childhood and learning, risk management, and parental responsibility. However, the level of risk involved in educational transitions can vary. What distinguishes Singapore’s PSLE, as well as China’s gaokao, is that the risk is reduced to a single exam, as opposed to a system where educational transition or promotion is based on multiple and gradual assessments. The conviction among parents and children that the outcome of high-stakes exams has profound consequences for a child’s future educational opportunities is not unfounded, but a reality. In such a system, the demands on parental involvement and educational care work are likely accentuated, as are the pressure on students.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsform (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences) under grant number P17-0499:1.
