"This book challenges a major stereotype about Singapore that circulates around the world that it is a uniformly prosperous meritocratic society. The book contests this stereotype by providing a rich ethnographic account of the everyday lives of Singapores socio-economically disadvantaged families, with a particular focus on the ways in which they experience and negotiate its highly competitive system of education." - Fazal Rizvi, Emeritus Professor, The University of Melbourne and The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"This book makes a significant contribution to the scholarship on education policy in Singapore and similar states. Through engaging the often-unheard views of disadvantaged families, this book provides a compelling account of families' lived experiences in a highly meritocratic, neoliberal-developmental state. It draws on families' perspectives to deeply analyse policy logics, including the logic of meritocracy. Chiong reaches into key policy issues relating to educational equity and meritocracy, and offers fresh ways of thinking about these issues. I commend it to scholars and practitioners interested in understanding and tackling such issues." - Saravanan Gopinathan, Academic Advisor, The HEAD Foundation
''There is a great deal written about Singapore and its education system which derives from the performance of its pupils on comparative tests of pupil performance that portrays it as a model of best practice for others to emulate. This book provides an insightful critical perspective through its in depth focus on the experiences of socio-emotionally disadvantaged families. It reveals how the families became dependent on the state, internalised responsibility for ensuring their children's success and how this exacerbated inequality." - Paul Morris, Professor of Comparative Education, University College London
"Drawing on in-depth sociological research, this book vividly captures the complex relationships between the state, the family, and schooling in Singapore. Reading against the grain of normative scholarship on the state-citizen compact, Charleen Chiong offers a sensitive and grounded account of how disadvantaged families navigate educational inequalities. This is an important addition to global studies in education; a must-read for scholars and practitioners working across sociology and public policy." - Arathi Sriprakash, Professor of Education, University of Bristol
"This book makes an exceptional and significant contribution to the academic literature on the Singapore state in more ways than one. It is an outstanding text for academics and students of educational policy and its implications for ethnic minorities and equity in general, as well for those with particular interest in Singapore educational policy. As a model approach to (educational) policy analysis, it is a text which deserves to have a significant impact on future studies of educational policy and its implications for equity and individual families." - Clive Dimmock, Professor of Professional Learning and Leadership, University of Glasgow
"Weaving together poise, humility and critical analysis, Families, the State and Educational Inequality in the Singapore City-State is a powerful interrogation of state discourses of meritocracy and educational visions from the perspectives of socio-economically disadvantaged families. In taking up this task, Charleen Chiong illuminates a set of tensions and contradictions around policy reception and negotiation that are felt even or especially in the contexts of "strong" states. This book offers a great deal to scholars and researchers working in the interstices of education policy and the sociology of education." - Leonel Lim, Policy, Associate Professor, National Institute of Education, Singapore
