3 ways to get disadvantaged students up to speed

Adolescence is a good window to energise them, school design is a powerful tool and listening to them helps.

- Loh Chin Ee

Prime Minister Lawrence Wong spoke recently about the need for Singapore to continue to narrow inequality, by ensuring opportunities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Efforts towards closing the opportunity gap have already begun and a lot of resources have been poured into early childhood education, as research shows this can lay the foundation for cognitive development and lifelong learning.

However, it takes more than intervention in the early years to close the substantial gap between children born in well-off families and those in struggling ones.

Better-off parents try to secure an advantage for their children through tuition and learning materials so that, by the time they reach their teenage years, they can be ahead of their peers with fewer opportunities and resources.

USE THE ADOLESCENCE WINDOW

But adolescence offers a second window of opportunity to bring these children up to speed. Developments in neuroscience have shown that the teenage brain is particularly ready for specialised learning. The key here is to help adolescents develop a joy of reading.

As part of the Reading Futures Study, a longitudinal study of teen reading practices, my team and I conducted focus group discussions with students in different schools. Previous survey data had shown that students with fewer books at home and lower language proficiency were more likely to be disengaged readers. But this can be turned around.

In one school that created opportunities for reading enjoyment, students who might otherwise have lagged behind told me that they enjoyed reading more in secondary school compared with primary school. That’s because the school’s reading programme had piqued their interest.