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Sunday, May 21, 2006
Schools should be transparent about their fundings
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 11:34 PM --- Post#114822564729418209

I was blog wandering as usual, and found this blog:
0705student.blogspot

This is this entry where the student complain about his $6 school fees not being made use of fully in his college. Ok, lets not talk about those independent schools like RI, RGS, RJ, HCI....just normal secondary and junior colleges. How are funds being made full use of?

After the NKF saga, charity organisations like the Ren Ci Yi Yuan now revealed how they spent their money on. Should schools do the same?

According to some Vice Principal, each JC receives about 1 million dollars each year, excluding the teachers' pay but including the utilities bill. Since each JC receives the same amount of money, why are there so much differences in some colleges or secondary schools? Some schools have more programs, more funding to CCAs, better ventilation (fans, aircon...), yet some others (im not going to name) seemed rather ran down.

In my college, after the years, there is no change facilities, no extra programs that i know of, no improvment in the canteen, classrooms...visualisers and OHP and other AV devices breaks down all the time despite no cases of ppl abusing them...But luckily recently they decided to buy some new computers and repaint the college. At least i see something good done. On the other hand, i keep hearing the authorities screaming the lack of money to decline stuffs like using air con in a concealed (no windows, no fans) classrooms or to do colour prints on posters or even to print lecture notes....

So me and my friends began to wonder...WHERE our money goes to?

Fund management
Perhaps the schools do not have appropiate fund managements? Mostly likely its the management level that decides the funding. The principals had enough to deal with school activities, the teachers need to teach, we do not seem to have any Treasurer in school...So its quite forgivable to mis-manage fundings at times. Maybe we can open the discussion to students? Like advisors or representation from the student body to see how the funds are being used?

Wastage
The teachers often have the impression that the student body is not saving electricity enough. But sometimes, in places like the Auditorium or Lecture Theaters, we have no control over the air con and stuff. From what I know, the ultra air con in the auditorium was left on whole day long, switched off only after 4pm or so. Is there a need for such wastage?

While in my class, my classmates never fail to remind one another to off all lights and fans in the classroom. And...hey....teachers are all having fully air conditioned staff rooms, that stayed on as long as there are teachers inside. Good thing to note that our PE dept showed a fine example of saving energy by using fans like us!

They can help by shutting down air con and closing the door to keep the cool air in when the room is not in use. Also clean the air con regularly (just use water to clean the filters, my dad does it every week) so that it takes less time for the room to get cooled. From my experience, in my room, instead of boosting the temperature to 18 degrees (which the room will seldom hit) and straining the compressor to eat more power, leaving it at 25 degrees and turn on two table fans full blast to circulate the room's air seems to be alot more effective.

If all these could energy bills cold be cut down from the staff's side as well as the student's side, we can save lots and lots of money!

Under-utilised
Remeber me saying my college has got new computers? Yup but they are mostly used only in IT based lessons, which isnt quite common, as we are using normal classrooms most of the time. Meaning the rest of the time, the rooms will not be used. That is a way resources are not fully utilised. Since we all pay fees and taxes, i think all students shld get a chance to use the computers. We do have one Free Access Room, and there is this problem of playing games there. Despite software like iGuard or some other security settings on Windows, students still find ways to bypass them. Some simply copy the whole game folder over to avoid having a need to install the games (which the system will prohibits). Others use removable devices or CDs to boot LIVE versions of Linux. But then, there are also a lot who are doing their projects.

I think thats why the college restrict the use of those new computers. Well actually, if there can be a chart saying when the rooms will be booked for lessons, and these rooms will only be opened when the Free Access Rooms are filled, this can make students make full use of the computers.

Side note: Actually whats the big deal with playing 30 minutes of games during break time? We have no cases of student playing game and skip lessons in my college. Else they will be slacking somewhere else...In this hectice life...we have to take a break...

Back to the issue, in fact a lot of my friends dunno that the computers are brand new. Why? Cos they do not have a chance to use them...

Internally Bias?
Some CCA definitely get more fundings that others. My computer club's mirco mouse section gets roughly $500 a year, and im pretty sure my gahmen based secondary school's mirco mouse team gets a lot more than that and yet do not perform well. Despite us not having enough funds, we still manged to get quite some prizes...and still the school never give us more money. Maybe they think "since u can win with $500 p.a., then so be it!".

Wait wait...other CCAs like volleyball, basketball....are receving much more funds! It seems to have a bias towards sports CCA! I can proudly say my sec sch spent their fund quite equally among all the CCAs.

So I propose schools drawing up a chart letting us see how funds are used among CCAs!

Be Transparent
Well, if schools can give us a list of activites they do and where the fundings goes to, we students, we might be able to work out some way and maybe vote for the piority of activites. If they post it on the net, we can even see how funds are used in other schools and see how we can improve ourselves. And it can prove that MOE is not bias (I always believe so). We can see how well spent our $6 school fees are spent on. And dun come crap say "its only $6, it cant even cover..."..eheh, my dad is paying taxes, which contributes to the nation's spending on their ppl, which in turn goes to the SCHOOL!

Conclusion
No, im not here to defame or slander...etc...and im definite not intending to whine...but i believe for certain students who are not happy with their schools, proper fundings to bring in some BALANCE will do more good than harm. Be transparent!

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