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SINGAPORE: Despite changing schools, the 16-year-old student from China simply could not adapt to life in Singapore. In the end, the stress proved to be too much and he decided to return home.
His case is not unique. For every 40 to 50 foreign students that teacher Mohd Farid Mohamad sees, on average, one will have problems adapting to life here. Mr Mohd Farid is head of department for pupil well-being and management at Bowen Secondary School.
While the reasons for the problems vary — from the student's personality to his relationship with his peers and guardians — they do raise the question as to whether Singapore's social support system is prepared for the ever-growing numbers of foreign students, according to the school counsellors and psychologists who spoke to TODAY.
Such a support system will be even more crucial in the coming years, given Singapore's ambitions of becoming an education hub.
Now, about 21,000 of the 530,000 students in primary and secondary schools, junior colleges and centralised institutes are foreign students, said Mr John Gregory Conceicao, Singapore Tourism Board's (STB) director of the education services division.
By 2015, Singapore hopes to play host to 150,000 full-fee paying international students.
"International students are generally well-looked-after in Singapore," Mr Conceicao said. Services catering to their needs include orientation programmes, financial aid, accommodation and counselling offered by educational institutions.
The STB has also introduced "alternative accommodation options", such as living in private homes, condominiums or HDB flats.
Staying with a family would help younger students integrate into the new environment with the family acting as a guardian to them, said Mr Conceicao.
But the STB does not have "any programmes or activities catered specifically for younger international students as most of them have parents or guardians taking good care of them", he added.
The schools themselves have their own programmes to help the foreign students, such as English-language classes, parent/guardian-teacher sessions, a buddy system and outings to integrate the young foreigners.
Hostels, such as Raffles Institution Boarding and Hwa Chong Boarding House, also hold events such as sports tournaments and celebrate major festivals. Some teaching staff stay in the hostels to act as mentors.
As for the private education sector, which attracted 37,000 students last year, the bigger private schools are more likely to offer counselling services while the smaller ones may not have the resources to do so, said Mr Daniel Chu, president of the Association of Consultants for International Students.
At the Management Development Institute of Singapore (MDIS), for example, there is a student care unit whose staff offer students with problems a listening ear. The school has more than 12,000 students, both part- and full-time, from 55 countries.
"With so many foreign students, the school tries to be more active in getting them to adapt to living in Singapore," an MDIS spokesperson said.
Despite the existence of the various support programmes — and several schools and hostels said their foreign students are coping well with their new environment — some counsellors believe more needs to be done.
For example, family service centres and after-school care services are often targeted at locals only, said Woodlands Primary School counsellor Juliana Johari.
Bowen teacher, Mr Farid, noted that there are no targeted programmes for troubled foreign students. Schools often have programmes for all foreign students and hope that the troubled ones will "latch on" to these programmes.
And while schools may have counsellors who are ready to help troubled foreign students, some may be too afraid to seek help, said Ms Hema Gurnani, programme director at Wings Counselling Centre.
The usual adjustment problems foreign students face could become more prevalent as the "other support or social systems are not intact", she added.
Then, there is the problem of segregation in schools between local and foreign students. Mr Farid noted that cliques based on nationalities are starting to form — although the development may not necessarily be a bad thing as it allows foreign students to seek comfort in each other.
He cited an account of how two Korean girls in Bowen, which has 57 foreign students, have become good friends and are doing well in school.
Psychologist Daniel Koh suggested that one way to help reduce the gulf between local and foreign students and generate two-way interaction is to cultivate interest in the foreigners' culture.
For example, Tanjong Katong Primary School allows foreign students to share their traditions and cultures with their Singaporean counterparts during International Friendship Day.
Many foreign students told TODAY that their main problem during the first few months was learning to communicate in English although the situation has become better over time.
Hong Sung Hoon, a 14-year-old Korean student, said that when he first arrived in Singapore last year, he could not speak English and he communicated using body language. The St Andrew's Secondary School student coped with his loneliness by reading books, listening to music and calling his parents every day.
Sung Hoon said: "Although I felt very lonely initially, it is much better now because I have made a lot of friends from both my class and Boys Brigade, and we play soccer during recess." - TODAY/ra
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