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The education system in Singapore could be termed as one of the worlds leading and notably it was chosen by the British Education Minister Michael Gove, to be praised as one amongst the top educational systems in the world. There also exists a political ideology in Singapore called Meritocracy, which advocates the principle of grooming and nurturing potential young students for leadership positions. The present education system in Singapore calls for extra effort from the students to come up with meritorious results, doesn’t matter how prestigious or highly acclaimed the school is. This happens because the student to teacher ratio is weaker in the schools, and it becomes very difficult for the teachers in these schools to provide individual attention to the students. According to statistics in the Singapore Education Statistics Digest 2008, numbers of students enrolled in various levels of schools are more than 500,000 and the number of teachers employed in these schools is less than 28,000, which makes the weak teacher to student ratio evident. So, students, to remain competitive and score good grades, resort to home tuition. Many studies and surveys have revealed that over 90 % of students in Singapore rely on tuition, be it through a tuition center or by a home tutor.

What are the advantages of home tuition?

Learning mathematics can be boring for children. The reason is not because mathematics is hard to understand. Mathematics can be understood simply. The key is how the teacher teaches the subject. Thus, this is the major concern in a regular classroom setting. Teachers who teaches mathematics in the four corners of the room seldom uses traditional way of teaching the subject. Thus, a lot of students fail the subject and their common resort is for parents to hire a private tutor to assist their child to understand the concept of math effectively.

In this scene, how the child will perform in school, specifically on his math subject lies on the effectiveness of the tutor. Thus, the math tutor must be very resourceful to make every tutoring session as effective as he can. You see, teaching math subjects do not have to be boring at all. As a matter of fact, mathematics is among the subject that can be taught using different materials and teaching styles. It is up for the tutor to be creative and resourceful.

One way to make learning mathematics fun is by using simple things that can be seen around the household as an example for a math equation. For instance, if you are teaching multiplication, you can use the number of people in their household and their pair of shoes. You can ask the child to count how many are they in their house and how many pair of shoes are their. Ask them to multiply the pair of shoes to the total number of person in the household.

Many families need to locate low-cost homeschool curriculum rather than pay the higher, retail prices. There are several useful home school curriculum providers that offer educational resources, such as books, science equipment, art supplies, and games at a discounted price.

Places to Look Online:

• Academic Superstore
• Amazon
• Book Peddler
• Christian Book Distributors
• R.O.C.K. Solid Inc.

Offline Places:

• Christian Book Stores
• Borders, Books-A-Million or Barnes and Noble Bookstores
• Library Book Sales
• Teacher’s Book Stores

Used Resources:

You can also purchase used curriculum materials if buying new resources presents a challenge in any way for you. Many used book fairs can be found at the end of the school year and during the summer months where you can find great prices on popular homeschool curriculum.

Check All Possibilities:

I have only listed a few of the sources I have used to purchase curriculum for our children over the years. You may have to become creative and think of innovative ways to obtain curriculum. For example, some publishers offer examination copies of their resources or will sell copies of resources at a lower cost when they first publish books. Always be on the lookout for discount prices and offers available to educators, including home schoolers in many cases. Register for and sign up for the discounts offered at bookstores and other places.

Choose carefully from the available types of resources to get the best homeschool curriculum materials for you and your family for a successful school year. You will be glad you invested the time to make an informed decision.

Many people, both homeschoolers and others, have asked this question or some form of it. If you homeschool, you may have asked it yourself. Will homeschooling hinder my college chances? There are a couple of issues behind this question that you have to address first, but ultimately, homeschooling does not hurt your chances of getting into a good college, and here’s why.

The underlying question, and the one that seems to cause more difficulty than anything else for non-homeschool families, is really a question of validity. If you homeschool, the thought goes, you might not be doing “real” school, and therefore you may not be accepted by a college. This is the question that’s really being asked by outsiders, including college admissions officers. Homeschoolers themselves will occasionally ask this question because the pressure to conform to a standard is so great. If you are doing real school, however, then there will be real results.

Real school should be verifiable in real learning. As with any other school student, homeschoolers will have to prove their learning; they will have to provide evidence of their work. Public school students do this with transcripts and grades, but most often, colleges will look at standardized tests, such as the ACT and SAT for the “proof.” There is just too much variety between school districts as to what is actually taught in the public and private schools around us, so good or bad, these standardized tests become the common filter. Likewise, this is true for homeschool students, too. They are subjected to the same filters for college admissions as everyone else. The value of scoring well on these tests cannot be understated. This isn’t because the test itself is such an accurate reflection of ability, but rather an evidence of learning.