School Immersion – A Taste of Singapore School!

Do you know that the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) has an Immersion Programme for Singaporean students who live overseas? We (including our children) highly recommend it!

One of the major adjustments for TCKs returning to Singapore is entering a Singapore school after living overseas. The Singapore school system is unique, and the children’s school overseas will almost certainly be quite different.

Over the decade we lived overseas, we arranged school immersion for our daughters three times (P2/P4/P6 and P4/P6/S2) during their summer vacations. Immersion is a low-stakes and low-stress (no exams!) introduction to Singapore school, it’s only for a limited period, and grades don’t matter! We emphasised to both the children and the teachers that the main aim was to make friends and become familiar with Singapore school culture; academic catch-up was secondary.

What we did to make school immersion a good experience:

•         “Sold” the idea of immersion as a cultural adventure, to learn about school culture and make friends.

•         Made it a family game – they would make observations at school and ask us questions about anything they found strange.

•         Helped them prepare simple answers to questions such as “Where are you from?” and “Why do you have a funny accent?”.

•         Taught them “conversation starters” to help them make friends.

•         Asked the form teachers to appoint a buddy for each child, at least for the first few days.

This paid off when we returned for good and they entered Singapore schools at the ages of 14 and 16. Even though they didn’t return to the same schools as before, the familiarity with Singapore schools in general made adjusting far less difficult. Seeing that made the effort of arranging those immersions worth it!

* A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is someone who has spent a significant part of their childhood living outside their passport country.