Parent Volunteers Putting In Hours In Primary Schools

App-titude lessons: Engineer Chong Lip Min (above, right), a parent volunteer, teaching a class how to develop iPad apps at South View Primary School. — ST PHOTO: DESMOND FOO
By
Huang Huifen

Mention parent volunteers at primary schools and most people would imagine kiasu parents frantically trying to clock in hours by doing duties such as directing traffic and arranging library books, just to get their kids into popular schools.

In reality, not all of them perform mundane tasks and some even go above and beyond what is required of them.

Research and development engineer Chong Lip Min, 35, teaches pupils of the media club at South View Primary School to develop applications for the iPhone and iPad. Housewife Katherine Wong, who is in her 50s, continues to facilitate reading and mathematics remedial sessions at St Hilda’s Primary School long after her daughter got into the school.

Background story

‘It was tiring because it was a commitment you had to fulfil every week. But I pushed myself because I did not want the kids that I was helping to be disappointed.’

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Under the Ministry of Education guidelines, parents who are not alumni of a school or who do not have any other ties to the school, can register their children under Phase 2B if they join the school as parent volunteers by a specified date and have given at least 40 hours of voluntary service, also by a certain date.

Straits Times