Daughter 'played all day' but gets top school placement, says Singaporean mom in Netherlands
A Singaporean mother who migrated to the Netherlands said her twelve-year-old daughter obtained the highest recommendation for her final assessments, despite not studying.
"I'm glad we escaped Singapore's PSLE (primary school leaving exam)," said the woman in an Instagram post on Dec 7, detailing her daughter's experience in the Dutch education system.
The video was posted on @mandarintree.nl, the account of a Chinese language school in the Dutch city of Haarlem. The woman's family previously made headlines in 2021 for celebrating Chinese New Year with 300 families over Zoom.
"She had no tuition, barely any homework, and played all day," the on-screen caption reads, accompanied by a video of two children riding a scooter and a skateboard.
'A privilege to raise my kids in NL'
In the clip, the mother says she was in tears when her daughter received her results, as they allowed her to enroll in her dream school. "My tears were not only tears of happiness and pride, it was also relief."
She added that she had "zero involvement" in her daughter's studies, even though it felt "uncomfortable and foreign" for her as a Singaporean teacher.
"We did not mess up as parents not being involved in her studies. What we did was focus on teaching our kids the right values and took [sic] them to experience the world and enjoy their childhood like they should."
In the caption, she acknowledged the effort parents and children in Singapore put in to their studies, but added that exams in the Netherlands are not a big deal. Dutch children are encouraged to be independent and inquisitive, she said, instead of regurgitating spoon-fed information, taking charge of their own learning.
"What a privilege it is to raise my kids here in NL, be able to step back, see the bigger picture and change the way we learn/ teach," she concluded.
The woman declined to respond to Stomp's queries.
