Pat's Schoolhouse

Last week, I was at Halifax Road, checking out the facilities of the Chiltern House branch there. There was a Pat's Schoolhouse just 2 doors away and I decided to take a look.

Was telling my cousin before about our shortlisted choices of pre-nursery schools and she told me to consider and check out Pat's Schoolhouse too. So there I was, even though I wasn't having any high hopes, carrying out what I thought would be necessary due diligence.

The school occupied a bigger compound, compared to the other schools that were lined up along that stretch of Halifax Road. I made my way in through what was supposed to be the front door and tread in an empty stretch of corridor, in search of the usual reception lobby. There was none. I saw an open door with 2 persons inside and knocked hesitantly on the door before explaining the reason for my interruption.

The woman sitting nearest to me was chirpy and friendly. She bounced up and started to talk to me, bringing me on a tour of the school for about 1/2 an hour. I was skeptical right from the beginning, quick to dismiss it as one of the usual run-of-the-mill type of school. At the end of that half hour, I changed my earlier opinion. I was actually excited about the prospect of the school.

What strike me most about the school was its philosophy and teaching method. In all, none of the schools took pains to run through the curriculum with me in detailed. But this lady took me into an existing class and started to show and explain to me about the alphabet charts stuck onto the walls of the class.

I can't remember what was the method of teaching called, but it was adapted from a person from the UK, who had first developed it for under-privilege students (similar to the Montessori story). Instead of placing emphasis on learning to recognise and write all 26 alphabets, children were encouraged to associate words & stories to each of them. For example, C is for Clever Cat, H is for Harry Hat & K is for Kicking King. The beginning sound that the tongue makes in pronouncing all the words is the same as what the alphabet would sound like i.e. C makes the sound "ker".

The idea behind it is to lay the foundation for each child to be able to then use the alphabets to construct and deconstruct words in order to help them to spell and read in future. This concept became clearer when I went into the classroom of either a N2 or K1 class - couldn't remember which.

In this class, there were works of the children's mathematics assignment pasted up on the board. It was a colourful array of A4-sized papers, with different drawings, drawn and coloured by the children, each accompanied by another small piece of paper on which a mathematics problem was written.

Just as an example, one of the work on the board was of 2 trees; one with 15 green apples and 7 red apples, painstakingly done. On the paper attachment of that artwork was this accompanying paragraph, "There are 15 green apples on one tree and 7 red apples on the other tree. How many apples are there altogether?".

A few things strike me as I looked at all these works by the children. Firstly, these were all grammatically correct paragraphs and written very legibly. Secondly, even though it was only 2 sentences in that paragraph, it required a few skills of the children at that tender age to put together - the ability to transfer their creativity of a thought-out scenario on paper by way of th drawings, to form and construct proper sentences in English, to spell every word and also, to create a mathematical problem at the base of it.

I asked if these problems were all created by every single child and if they had had help at all. The proud reply from the lady was that yes, it was all based on the individual creativity of every child, although there was help given by the teacher for the spellings. That was when she went to a nearby shelf and started to open up a few exercise books of the children to show me what she meant.

Initially, I was a little confounded. In one of the exercises, there were two paragraphs of words written. Top paragraph of words, while in English, seemed to be filled with typos and words that I couldn't decipher. The second paragraph read correctly and mirrored the mathematics problems that were pasted on the artwork.

The lady started to read the entire first paragraph aloud to me and that was when it dawned on me. I couldn't remember the spellings but a few words strike out at me. Friends was spelt "frans" and altogether was spelt "altogada".

In essence, the children were told to construct in English a mathematical problem and write them down on their own. These were the first para of every exercise books, the ones that were filled with wrong spellings, although some were correct. They then go through these with the teacher, who would then help them with the grammar and spellings.

What was incredible was that even though the children might not have learnt to spell every single word at that age, they were using their best efforts to decode and deconstruct the words according to how they would pronounce them. Hence, while "altogada" was the wrong spelling, you can't quite fault the boy for spelling it this way becos it kinda sounded like that. And I thought altogether was a fairly long word to spell at that age.

In short, what was taught to the children at N1 & N2 to learn the alphabets through sounds would later on help them to read and recognise words and in turn, help them to spell.

Coming out from the tour, this progressive teaching was what impressed me most! And it was done in a way that was fun but at the same time, achieving the goal of helping children to prepare for primary school.

Each of the Pat's Schoolhouses also came with a music room with a teacher that was solely dedicated on providing music lessons to the entire 150 students of the centre. That room had a piano and different types of percussion instruments too.

Apart from that, the lady also explained to me that they use a lot of cooking lessons to teach and interest the children, employing the use of the 5 senses like touching and smelling etc.

The outdoor playground facilities weren't much to crow about really. There's just the usual array of outdoor toys in the small little porch out front. The emphasis of the school, as I can see is very much on developing the children academically, albeit in a fun way.

Unlike the long waiting list for SJCK, Pat's SH appears not to have such issues. Registration for N1 in 2010 only opens in Jun 09 and the lady assured me if one registers by Aug or Sept, there shouldn't be any issues about vacancies. Of course, after she shared with me the school fees, I could figure out why. It costs an astounding $909 (nett) before subsidy per month for a half day (starting from 8.30 am to 12.30 pm) session, 5 days a week at N1.

On the bilingual focus, Pat's SH is similar to CH, in that there seems to be an equal spilt of English and Mandarin activities each day.

I found out later that the woman who tooked me on the tour and spent considerable time explaining to me was the principal of the Halifax Road outlet :) No wonder she seemed to know every detail at the tip of her fingers.

I shared this with Louis after the visit to the school. We agreed that the curriculum and teaching method sounded fantastic. Our reservations were of course, the cost and also the fact that for most of all Pat's SH outlets, it is only a single session for 1/2 day classes, which starts around 8.30 am. The only exception is its Claymore Road branch, which has an afternoon 1/2 day class.

Nonetheless, the ranking of the schools have somewhat changed with this visit. We see CH & Pat's SH to be on par, followed by SJCK.