Miss Greenwood and Whaea T share their experiences visiting our partner school Edgefield School in Singapore

Miss Greenwood's experience...

I was the teacher at Southbridge School who was lucky enough to be selected to form a relationship with a teacher from Edgefield School in Singapore in 2019. I spent the first week of the July holidays in Singapore visiting my "buddy teacher" and many children at Edgefield School. 

Initially, I struggled a bit with the heat when visiting the school as it wasn't airconditioned, while most shops and our accommodation were. I pushed through and enjoyed a day experiencing a P4 (11-year-old) Science class, Co-Curricular Activities, Science classes and visited their brand new "Maker Space" classroom where they physically create things and also learn to code. I was amazed by the physical size, as well as the roll size of the school. They also have a school cafeteria where most students and staff buy their food each day. The food was truly amazing in Singapore, so fresh, so much flavour and such incredible variety. The amount of land we have at Southbridge School truly blew the students' and teachers' of Edgefield's minds! As Singapore is such a small country, everything is built up. This also meant that their Sprints track ran along a corridor!

I learnt a lot about the Singapore Education system and saw some similarities and extreme differences within our systems. Each teacher specialises in one or two subjects and only teaches those, while in New Zealand primary school teachers teach all 7 curriculum areas. School began at 7.30am each day and finished at 1.30pm. After school, most children stayed for Co-Curricular Activities or other extra lessons.

I am so grateful for such an amazing experience! I highly recommend this for anyone who is offered the opportunity in the future. I'm looking forward to hosting Miss Para at Southbridge School in November this year!

Whaea T's experience...

I am extremely fortunate to say that this trip would be my fourth visit to Edgefield School over the last few years.  The major difference this time was that I took my three children, Southbridge students themselves, along for the adventure!  We arrived at Edgefield just in time to help them kick off English Language Week and even got to join them in dressing up at as Book Characters - something we also enjoy doing at our school!

We were very well looked after by our Edgefield friends and we loved having the opportunity to learn about all the differences and similarities between the Singapore education system and the New Zealand education system.  Some of the things that stood out the most to my children and I were...

- they start school at 7.30am and stay at school for extracurricular activities every day until approximately 5pm

- they have 140 teachers and 1400 students!

- they have an amazing cafeteria with exotic food from many different countries and cultures

- each class stays with their homeroom teacher every year right through until they graduate, they teach them literacy, science and maths. They then have specialist teachers for all other areas e.g. PE, art, music, dance, STEM, languages

- every student has 'mother tongue' lessons every day where they learn to speak and write in their mother tongue/own language e.g. Malay, Tamil, Mandarin

- they have amazing specialist rooms for specialist classes, like science labs, an indoor rock climbing wall, music & dance studios, Makerspace & STEM classroom, art studios

- they only have a tiny amount of outdoor space to play, no fields, no playgrounds, but all concrete courts

- it is VERY hot and humid!  There is no air conditioning in the classrooms and it's hard to imagine having to teach and learn in that hot environment every day, as they don't have seasons like us and it is basically the same hot temperature all year round.