I admit that my own first reaction to SBB was, “Wouldn’t it be mayhem to lump the different students together in one class? How would the teachers teach?”
I had to call myself out for automatically assuming that the students who would take most of their subjects at the G1 or G2 levels would be the naughtier ones.
Mr Tan, a teacher whose school has been piloting SBB for the past three years, shared that very often when teachers walk into a new class, they cannot tell the difference between the students in the Express stream and those in the Normal streams.
Over time, certain differences may emerge – for example, Express-stream students may be more concerned about their academic performance, while their N(A) and N(T) counterparts may be less interested in their studies or may not follow instructions as readily, he described.
But he added a caveat that this could also be stereotyping at work, admitting that both groups of students are more similar than we think. For example, he once met a student who was very well behaved and polite, and later found out that this student was from the N(T) stream. Such experiences have helped him realise that these categories really do not matter.
THE BEAUTY OF SUBJECT-BASED BANDING
When it comes to understanding the whys behind this new system, no one can fault its aim to remove the stigma of unhelpful labels that have resulted in a division between “haves” and “have-nots” at such a formative age.
SBB treats every student as an individual, and seeks to maximise each person’s potential.