Senior educators appointed Sinda and Mendaki chiefs

TWO ethnic self-help groups have appointed senior educators as their new chiefs.

Veteran teacher T. Rajasegar will lead the Singapore Indian Development Association (Sinda) from December, while former principal Moliah Hashim will head Mendaki when the new year starts, said the organisations in separate statements yesterday.

Mr Rajasegar, 47, who will succeed Mr S. Manogaran, is currently No. 2 at Sinda.

He joined it last year, bringing with him 12 years of experience teaching in government schools, polytechnics and private institutions, and eight years serving in management roles at MediaCorp, the Institute of Technical Education and the Defence Ministry.

He told The Straits Times his main focus when he assumes the top job is to raise the standards of mathematics and science of Indian primary and secondary school students to the national level.

The passing rate of Indian students in maths is 10 percentage points below the national average, he said, and it is five points below for science, although the results gap has narrowed considerably since Sinda's formation in 1991.

It is important for the students to do well in both subjects because about 70 per cent of courses in tertiary institutions require maths and science, he said, adding: 'If you are not strong in these subjects, many doors are shut to you.'

Sinda helps about 10,000 members of the Indian community, providing primarily tuition classes and bursaries to needy students.

The current chief executive, Mr Manogaran, will return to the Education Ministry to take up a senior appointment on Dec 14, when he completes his three-year secondment from the ministry.

The 50-year-old was praised by Sinda president Balaji Sadasivan for his outstanding work and inspiring leadership.

He had, among other things, launched new programmes, including one to strengthen the reading skills of Primary 1 to Primary 3 pupils, said Dr Balaji, who is Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.

At Mendaki, Madam Moliah, 51, will take over from Madam Zuraidah Abdullah, who will return to the police force, said its statement yesterday.

Madam Zuraidah, 47, was Jurong Division commander in December 2006 when she was seconded to Mendaki.

During her three-year stint, she improved management practices and led Mendaki to win several awards, including a Manpower Ministry award last year for implementing work-life balance benefits for employees.

Reflecting on her stint, Madam Zuraidah expressed gratitude to community leaders for their guidance, ideas and support of efforts to help 'the disadvantaged exit from their cycle of hardships'.

Madam Moliah, a school cluster superintendent, said education was key to engaging the Malay- Muslim community.

'People don't know the choices they have. Values education, not just grades, is a social lever to better equip people for employment, parenting...and to enable people to make informed decisions about their own lives,' she said.

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SP tops social enterprise award

MAKING life better for families in a village in Batam is one of the ways by which students from Singapore Polytechnic (SP) are making a difference to the lives of the less fortunate.

Following their efforts, the village on the Indonesian island now has a fresh source of income - a fish farm converted from an abandoned sandpit.

Annual household income for each of the 11 families in Mata Ikan involved in the project is expected to go up by 57 per cent, from 10.9 million rupiah (S$1,580) to 17 million rupiah from September last year to September this year.

Finding a new use for the pit has also stopped it from being a breeding ground for mosquitoes and reduced the risk of villagers getting dengue fever or malaria.

This was one of SP's community projects which helped it clinch the top spot in the Students in Free Enterprise (Sife) national competition last month.

At the annual competition, teams from tertiary institutions here outline community projects they have initiated and are judged by the impact of their work.

There are Sife groups at three universities and four polytechnics in Singapore. SP's group has 437 students from different disciplines involved in a total of 14 local and overseas projects.

Final-year environmental management and water technology student Lim Renhui, 18, is among those involved in the Batam project.

He said that a few members of his group had done a site visit earlier and brought back photos but it was hard for the rest to visualise the actual situation.

'The sandpit was quite big - about the size of two to three football fields - and deep, which we couldn't tell from the photos. The ground was also not as strong as we thought,' he said.

This meant they had to tweak plans by building a floating bridge across the sandpit instead of an anchored bridge.

At this year's competition, the polytechnic also presented two other community projects.

At one project in the town of Concepcion in the Philippines, 25 Sife team members taught 28 women the art of making kaya, or coconut jam. These women will in turn pass on the recipe to 400 others in the area.

Since 2004, more than 200 students have also helped in the replanting of mangrove saplings along the coastline to increase the catch for about 7,000 fishermen.

SP's third Sife initiative was a competition for secondary school students to come up with innovative business ideas which they then had to present to a panel of judges. About 4,300 students have participated in this project since its launch in 2004.

The SP team will represent Singapore in the international leg of the competition in Berlin in October and compete with 40 other teams.

The pressure is on after SP's seniors came fourth at last year's Sife World Cup - the highest ranking attained by a Singapore team.

But Mohamed Abbas Sheyed Ebramsa, 18, a final-year banking &finance and applied business psychology student who will go to Germany to co-present the projects, said the real success is helping others: 'It's not just about winning. It's about impacting lives. Even if we lose, we will still continue with the projects.'

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China learns lesson from fake degrees

BEIJING: One hour and about US$40 (S$60) are all it takes to get a fake degree in China, but the chances of fooling an employer or foreign university have diminished following a crackdown in recent years.

While the trade in counterfeit Hermes handbags or Windows software is well known, marriage certificates, driving licences and diplomas are also seen as fair game by the forgers.

Measures put in place by the Chinese authorities have made it possible to limit cheating and many counterfeit diplomas are detected by authentication procedures.

But allegations of a trade in diplomas by students intending to enrol at several French universities, if confirmed, would echo a widespread practice in China, where access to higher education is selective and a degree opens doors to a career.

The crackdown on counterfeiting may have driven the trade away from the city centres but in certain districts it is still easy to track down forgers.

In Beijing, they can be found in the suburbs. Half an hour after taking a photograph and details, the forger returns with the requested diploma.

It costs between 200 and 300 yuan (between S$44 and S$66) for a bachelor's or master's degree, depending on the fame of the university, the seal of which is reproduced on the forgery.

The package deal includes report cards.

'I got a false diploma from the Beijing Commerce Institute in 2001 for 100 yuan,' a young executive said.

'I had it after waiting for about 30 minutes in front of an alley where many migrant workers live.'

But since the installation of computerised anti-fraud systems by the Education Ministry, the provincial authorities and tertiary institutes, getting a government job with a forged diploma has become increasingly difficult.

A growing number of foreign companies and universities that welcome Chinese students also systematically check the authenticity of diplomas.

'All the papers are checked. You find about 3 per cent to 4 per cent of diplomas are forgeries' among prospective students wishing to study in France, according to a person involved in the university exchanges, who asked not to be identified.

'Before 2003, you could buy a fake diploma on the street corner,' the source said. In 2002, the Education Ministry estimated that at least 500,000 people had forged degrees.

Developed countries then began establishing procedures to check the authenticity of diplomas, the source added.

Ms Li Ping, director of one of three departments in charge of certifying diplomas at the ministry, said they were receiving increasing numbers of authentication requests, 'especially from people who want to go abroad to continue their studies'.

'Last year we had 30,000 requests, that's an increase of 54 per cent,' she said.

But most private companies still do not check the qualifications of would-be employees.

And in 2004, the Chinese media carried reports of a fake Internet site that checks counterfeit diplomas, with a domain name very close to that of the official sites.

There are also cases in China of real degrees being bestowed on false students.

And it is not unheard of for civil servants whose career progress depends on a prestigious diploma to use connections to register for a degree, and graduate without ever attending the course.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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FAST AND EASY

'I got a false diploma from the Beijing Commerce Institute in 2001 for 100 yuan. I had it after waiting for about 30 minutes in front of an alley where many migrant workers live.'

A young Chinese executive

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In jail, but he scores 5 distinctions

LIKE many other O-level students, Sean (not his real name) used his free time to revise and discuss his school work with friends from a study group.

However, he and his friends are not regular secondary students but inmates at the prison school at Kaki Bukit Centre.

The 27-year-old's hard work paid off yesterday when he was named one of the top two inmates who sat for the O levels last year. He scored five distinctions in English, Combined Humanities, Combined Science, Elementary Mathematics and Principles of Accounts.

This year, 78 per cent or 99 out of 127 candidates who registered for the O levels while in prison did well enough to qualify for tertiary education. This is a 5 per cent improvement from last year's figure.

Out of the 97 candidates who sat for the exams while in prison, 83.5 per cent scored three or more O-level passes, a 4.5 per cent drop from last year's figure.

Sean, who was sent to prison in 2006 on drug-related charges, said he was motivated to study when he saw how many inmates in their 50s and 60s kept returning to jail and could not hold stable jobs.

'I saw their predicament and...I did not want to be like them. If I had no qualifications, I would not be able to get a good job to support myself and my family.'

Sean dropped out of school when he was a Secondary 3 student at Bukit View Secondary. He worked as a floor supervisor at a nightclub before he was jailed.

He will complete his sentence in July and will apply for a course in hospitality at Temasek Polytechnic. In the future, he wants to work in a hotel.

'Many inmates might want to give up because life is very strict in prison. I want to tell them to persevere. Learning how to be disciplined will be good for them.'

AMELIA TAN

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MOE to hire 7,500 next year

MORE than 7,000 teachers and support staff will be hired next year despite the slowing economy.

The Ministry of Education (MOE), which will aim to add 7,500 employees to its payroll next year, also plans to give the economy a fillip by speeding up its scheme to equip every school with an indoor sports hall by 2014 and to look into building centralised facilities for arts, music and sporting activities.

In addition, it will go ahead with plans to build six schools, which had been put on hold earlier because of spiralling construction costs.

These announcements, made by Education Minister Ng Eng Hen at the appointment ceremony for school principals yesterday, make the MOE the latest government department to launch a major recruitment drive or projects to stir the economy.

Earlier this month, the Home Affairs Ministry said it would hire about 1,000 people and, last month, the National Development Ministry said it would push ahead with key building projects.

Dr Ng said: 'In these difficult times, where we can afford it, what we spend may actually achieve more. This is the stance MOE will adopt in the coming year... across all levels - in schools, ITEs, polytechnics and the universities.'

Of the 7,500 new hires next year, 3,500 teachers and teaching support staff will be placed in the schools, up from the 2,200 teachers now being recruited every year; another 4,000 posts will open up in tertiary institutions and kindergartens.

The MOE had planned to have 2,800 teaching support staff - such as counsellors and special- needs officers - in schools by 2015, up from 600 now, but that time frame has been advanced.

The ministry has been recruiting teachers aggressively of late so class sizes can be smaller, and also because more schools will be going single-session.

Dr Ng said that besides recruiting fresh graduates, the MOE is hoping that retrenched professionals or those looking for a stabler career might switch to teaching.

This group has already registered its interest. A recent MOE recruitment drive at Raffles Place drew 1,200 applications in four days.

To ease mid-career applicants into jobs in kindergartens, for example, the MOE plans to sponsor their training fees and accelerate their training programmes.

Mid-career entrants can also become vice-principals of administration and education policy analysts in schools or the MOE's headquarters.

Although the recession is a good time to make investments, the ministry should trim unnecessary spending and help needy students, Dr Ng said.

To make savings, the MOE has been running its building projects in batches and timing schools' upgrading projects with the building of their sports halls.

The MOE will also be more flexible in giving aid to students whose families may have hit a temporary rough patch, such as when their parents are laid off.

Dr Ng said the economic crisis had brought 'unique opportunities' for the MOE and its institutes of learning to take advantage of, 'which will put us in an even better position when the economy recovers'.

Headhunter Foo Chuan Yong, 40, who has seen business in his company shrink by half this year, is thinking of becoming a teacher for the job stability.

He said: 'I've also always been interested in shaping the minds of young people. However, taking a pay cut will be a point I will consider seriously.'

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