More schools turning cosmopolitan too

Aug 17, 2008

More schools turning cosmopolitan too

Meet the class of 5/1 at MacPherson Primary School.

There's Chun Yuan, the chatty Malaysian boy.

And Frederikke, the nice Danish girl who shares her cookies with the class.

Then there's Liu Lin, the Chinese whizz who always tops the class in Maths.

Of the 37 pupils in the class, about half are foreigners.

With more foreigners moving to Singapore, it is not just neighbourhoods that are being transformed. MacPherson Primary - where one in four pupils is from overseas - is among the growing number of schools which are starting to resemble the United Nations.

About 4 per cent - or over 20,000 - of the 521,000 students in primary, secondary, junior colleges and centralised institutes now are foreigners, the Ministry of Education said.

Principals interviewed said they began noticing the influx of foreigners about a decade ago.

The foreign student influx has helped children here, as they are getting exposure to different cultures and practices.

Local students are also spurred to study harder by Koreans and Chinese students, who tend to excel at exams, say teachers.

But while there are no problems at the primary school level, things tend to get a little hotter at the higher levels.

As Mrs Cheong Ye Ling, principal of Tanjong Katong Primary School where 14 per cent of the pupils are foreigners, put it: 'Young children are quite colour-blind.'

Australian Pepe Bingham-Hall, 11, for example, has no problems fitting in at Tanjong Katong Primary. She said: 'Singaporeans are very nice and my class is very united. We think of each other as brothers and sisters.'

That sentiment is turned on its head at some secondary schools.

Hwa Chong Institution student Chan Chee Shuan, 15, said: 'Some of my friends dislike foreign scholars as they feel they snatch all the opportunities.'

Half of Chee Shuan's Secondary 3 class are foreigners.

But a Hwa Chong spokesman said the school tries to create a cosmopolitan environment. He added: 'I think our students have a much broader outlook, and it is our hope that they graduate as world-ready youth.'