[ChatGPT Extended Pro generated images and summary of presentation script]

Introduction

The study is part of the Parent Matters project, which examines parents’ engagement with their primary-school children’s assessment activities. While the broader project focuses on parents, this presentation uses the teacher dataset to understand how teachers perceive parents’ motivations, behaviours, and communication challenges around assessment reform. The study uses qualitative methods, including teacher interviews, and frames the findings through the concept of emotional labour.  

The central claim is that although Singapore’s assessment reforms were intended to reduce exam pressure and promote holistic learning, teachers still perceive parents as highly anxious about assessments.

Findings

The presentation identifies three main findings.

First, teachers often act like customer service representatives. They spend time calming, reassuring, and managing anxious parents, especially when parents are distressed by assessment outcomes, challenge marking, or make demands. Even if negative encounters are not frequent for every teacher, they can leave a strong emotional impact.

Second, teachers also function like social workers. They worry that parental anxiety harms children, especially when parents respond to academic pressure by adding tuition, extra worksheets, and practice papers. Teachers and parents both care about children, but they often define care differently: teachers focus on children’s present well-being and learning, while parents worry about children’s future survival and opportunities.

Third, teachers are positioned as the face of policy. Parents may question or misunderstand reforms, and teachers are expected to explain and defend policies such as removing exams, using bite-sized assessments, and promoting the message that “every school is a good school.” However, teachers and parents often do not share the same understanding of reform intentions. Parents may treat bite-sized or formative assessments as high-stakes, especially when they count toward grades.

Discussion

The presentation argues that assessment reform has not reduced parental anxiety because it has not addressed the deeper social roots of the problem. Teachers see two parallel forms of schooling: a teacher-led school experience focused on formative assessment and holistic development, and a parent-led school experience focused on test performance, tuition, and PSLE-like preparation. As a result, children are effectively experiencing two school systems at once, which contributes to fatigue and pressure.

The discussion also challenges the idea that parental anxiety is simply a “mindset problem.” Instead, the speaker links it to Singapore’s broader meritocratic structure, human capital ideology, inequality, scarcity, and competition. The argument is that parents are not naturally “kiasu”; rather, anxious parenting has been shaped by social, institutional, and political conditions. Assessment reforms may change the rules, but if the rewards and hierarchy remain the same, parents will continue to compete for scarce advantages.

Suggestions

The presentation offers practical suggestions for teachers working within their scope of influence.

Teachers are encouraged to first develop clarity and conviction about what holistic learning and meaningful assessment look like. This internal clarity helps them offer parents a trustworthy vision of education beyond exam scores.

In communication with parents, teachers can ask what evidence parents need to feel assured about their child’s progress, then introduce broader forms of evidence beyond test results. They can also explain what exam scores do and do not mean, clarify whether small changes in marks are meaningful, and help parents understand that numbers are limited proxies for learning.

Teachers are also advised to set boundaries with unreasonable parental demands, such as requests for weekly updates or marking extra work. They can teach parents how to monitor learning using school-provided materials, such as daily classwork, worksheet files, and textbooks rather than relying only on tuition or extra assessments. Finally, teachers are encouraged to create classroom spaces where students can experience joy, curiosity, and learning beyond the weight of assessment.

Three key takeaways

1. Assessment reforms have not automatically reduced parental anxiety. From teachers’ perspectives, parents remain highly concerned about grades, PSLE, and evidence of academic progress.

2. Teachers carry significant emotional labour. They are not only teaching and assessing students; they are also reassuring anxious parents, protecting children’s well-being, and explaining or defending policy changes.

3. The problem is structural, not just individual. Parental anxiety is tied to broader social beliefs about meritocracy, scarcity, competition, and future survival, so communication strategies help, but deeper change requires addressing the system that sustains the “education arms race.”