According to the national Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) released on Tuesday by the Institute of Service Excellence at SMU (ISES), education has taken a beating in consumer satisfaction. Satisfaction with private education dropped by 7.3 per cent last year compared to 2011, the largest fall among nine sectors in the CSISG, while public education satisfaction fell by four per cent.

On why private education satisfaction fell, ISES Institute Director Ms Caroline Lim said that the Government had called for stringent controls to clean up facilities in commercial schools in 2010. Hence consumers were more assured and confident, leading to higher satisfaction in private education in 2011. The dip last year from 2011 was likely due to “normalising after a contextualised hike.” She added, “As for public education, what we found was the customers’ expectations were not met, prompting them to look for more negative aspects of the sector to criticise.”