Family pursue slower life in Thailand and Malaysia, away from Singapore's education 'arms race'

Elise Liang, 17, did not enjoy studying at her top-tier secondary school.

- Venessa Lee Senior Correspondent

She found the transition from South View Primary School to Methodist Girls' School (MGS) tough.

"It didn't feel good that I was lagging behind. Because everybody there is very good academically, even if you're doing okay, you feel like you're not enough," she recalls.

"I placed a lot of importance on getting good grades and had high expectations of myself. I didn't do much apart from studying."

She says she held back tears when she scored 50-something in her English examination at the end of Secondary 1 in MGS. Even though she scored 85 and higher for subjects like science and geography, she had shifted from being in the top class in Primary 6 a year earlier to languishing at the bottom of her Integrated Programme class, a six-year course that leads to an International Baccalaureate diploma.

Elise did not know it then, but a few months later, her parents would make the decision to uproot their family of four from Singapore.

It started when Covid-19 struck early in 2020, the year Elise sat the Primary School Leaving Examination.

Her mother, mathematics tuition teacher Corrine Ang, 44, had a revelation during the almost two-month circuit breaker, which was meant to curb the spread of the pandemic.

Ms Ang says: "I felt the circuit breaker was a very beautiful period in our lives, contrary to others' experience. Even though it was Elise's PSLE year, we spent most of the time playing Subbuteo (a tabletop football game).

"It sparked the thought that maybe this was the way to do life together, having a lot of family time."

Ms Ang is married to Mr Joash Liang, a 46-year-old service engineer, and they also have a younger daughter, Eleora, 13.

SLOW LIVING

By early 2022, the couple were ready to relocate elsewhere in Southeast Asia to explore a different, slower way of life.