Hi all

My kid will be attending primary 1 soon. I am thinking of sending her to Chinese primary school hoping that she will be good in mandarin and more discipline.

My wife prefer her to go to private school with national syllabus instead, mainly she thinks my child will get more attention (because of less student) and will be more outspoken in personality. She feels that Chinese primary school is too packed nowadays and not good for our kid. But I am worried that she will be a spoilt child going to this private school.

Just want to ask, if there is no financial concern, will you all send the kids to private school with national syllabus? Other than smaller teacher to student ratio, is there any other benefits going to private school?

Thanks in advance.

Sent both my kids to Chinese primary & secondary. Me and my wife both from Kebangsaan school. Zero Mandarin. The one thing I noticed was that the kids were rajin and disciplined. Who knows, maybe its the chinese school system

Got money to spare till Uni, go private. Usually their no per class not exceeding 26 person. Some Chinese school, classroom no can go up to 40

You also need to consider this, school, private lesson, extra curriculum - all need to be taken into account.
At the end of the money, ada $$$ - you got lots of option to play with.

Me banana,
wife chinese,
my family members all go chinese ed, except my sister (english ed)and me (kebangsaan),
my wife side all chinese ed,

i send my kids to chinese school.
Why? becos of the daily life encountered alot using chinese language when i growing up and i dont understand when ppl bullshit in conversation in school life and work.
so i take it as unfair advantage la.

sumore now with China Chinese coming to our country, better to have some strong basic in chinese ed. at least another 100 years will be Chinese economy power house.

if u got lots money to spend for private school, i would suggest you send them to there, different exposure and still can take chinese language education.
but make sure you able to send them to overseas university to for them to continue from the private school after SPM or O level, otherwise the effort, time and $$$ is wasted.

I have friends teaching in international schools. They hardly have anything good to say about international schools.

Private school:

Benefits
- Your kid can gain connections to other richer kids (think of Jho Low)
- Nurture your kid to speak up
- You get what you want (It goes to the first point under Cons which will make your kid lazy)

Cons
- It's all about spoonfeeding in international schools. May not be a good learning environment in the long term. All of my friends consistently complained about this. Need to spoonfeed the kids all the time to avoid complaints from parents. Well, it just make the students lazier.
- Lack of discipline
- Expensive

At least in Chinese schools, they still enforce discipline among the students. Anyway, there are still gang and disciplinary issues in both chinese schools and international schools. But at least, the students are more disciplined in chinese schools.

Chinese schools

Benefits
- Better discipline
- Get to learn mandarin

Cons
- More homework
- May stifle creativity and the students tend not to speak up

The choice is yours

Don't waste money on private or international schools for primary.
Send the kid to a SJKC, finish Std 6 then only consider sending to a private or international school. The money saved can be better spent there or for future tertiary level education.

And don't go for those small time shophouse based ones.

Good luck bro !