Singaporean mother sets up online high school for gifted children
Singaporean entrepreneur and mother Pamela Lim has set up an online high schoolfor gifted children, writes Clara Chow
A few years ago, a Facebook note posted by Pamela Lim went viral in Singapore.
In the post, the businesswoman turned stay-at-home mum recounted her struggles with Singapore's mainstream education system after a principal and teachers branded her son a troublemaker, and school therapists misdiagnosed him with autism. He was suspended from school for almost two years for misbehaviour.
It turned out there was nothing wrong with him: he was merely gifted. When she took him out of the conventional school system, he thrived intellectually and emotionally, she wrote in the post.
Once a high-flying entrepreneur, Lim became a symbol of hope for those frustrated with an education system that comes across as too strict, too unyielding and uncomprehending of individual needs and talents. Her Facebook community page has more than 11,400 likes.
Last July, Lim set up an online All Gifted High School, which is self-paced and regionally accredited. Its US High School Diploma programmes take in students who are usually about 15 years old and take three years to complete The school's website says it also admits students "as young as 10, [who can] finish the diploma in a year and make it to top universities at 12 years old".
Since the school was launched, it has enrolled "a few hundred students" from Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and the US, Lim says. "The response has been overwhelming on two levels. First, more students have enrolled than expected. Second, the students are progressing much faster [three times faster] than we anticipated," she wrote in an e-mail interview last week.