Raja Shahridah Escaped Poverty Through Education — But What She Does for Students Who Stop Showing Up Is the Real Story
SINGAPORE — Before Raja Shahridah Raja Suhaini became the teacher who refused to give up on students who stopped coming to school, she was a child who desperately wanted to escape the classroom herself.
The 35-year-old Beatty Secondary School educator has now been named one of four National-Level winners of Singapore’s Caring Teacher Awards 2026 — an extraordinary turn for someone who has openly acknowledged that she once hated school, struggled to read and failed almost every subject during her early primary years.
But the award may be the least remarkable part of her story.
Behind it is a childhood shaped by poverty, parents with limited formal education and years of academic struggle — experiences that now influence how Shahridah deals with some of the most vulnerable students in her school.
FROM A ONE-ROOM RENTAL FLAT TO THE CLASSROOM
Shahridah grew up in a one-room rental flat in Singapore.
Her father spent the first five years of her life incarcerated over drug use. After his release, both of her parents worked as cleaners, while the family sometimes struggled even with basic expenses.
Financial pressures were so severe that relatives had to help care for Shahridah's two younger sisters.
She did not attend kindergarten and often accompanied her parents while they worked. When she eventually entered Primary 1, she had limited English and could not yet read.
School quickly became frightening rather than exciting.
Shahridah recalled crying when asked to read aloud because she could not understand much of what was being taught. Until Primary 4, she failed every subject except Malay.
Yet her parents refused to accept that their lack of education or money should determine their daughter's future.
They took her to libraries to practise reading. They watched English-language television programmes and movies with her while trying to understand the dialogue and subtitles together.
And when they could not solve her homework themselves, they did something unusually humble: They asked other people for help.
At McDonald's, her parents would sometimes approach strangers and ask whether they could explain a difficult school question to their daughter.
The lesson stayed with her.
Education, her parents repeatedly told her, could become the route out of poverty.
By Primary 5, her grades began improving dramatically.
She eventually entered Temasek Polytechnic to study Consumer Science and Technology and earned a gold medal for her academic performance — a remarkable reversal for a student who had once struggled to read.
SHE NEVER PLANNED TO BECOME A TEACHER
After polytechnic, Shahridah faced an unexpected career choice.
She received offers to become a Central Narcotics Bureau officer or a Food and Consumer Education teacher.
Her mother helped make the decision.
Shahridah entered teaching.
She began at Balestier Hill Secondary School, which later merged with Beatty Secondary School, and has now spent about 13 years in education.
Today, she teaches Food and Consumer Education to lower-secondary students and Nutrition and Food Science at the upper-secondary level.
But her most important work often begins when the formal lesson ends.
WHY COOKING BECAME A WAY TO KEEP STUDENTS IN SCHOOL
About eight years ago, Shahridah joined her school's disciplinary team, dealing with cases including fighting, bullying and absenteeism.
She soon realised that punishment alone could not solve many of the problems she was seeing.
Four years later, she started what became known as the Cooking Sense Series, a weekly programme aimed particularly at higher-risk students and students with additional needs who struggled to attend school regularly.
Her strategy was strikingly simple.
Give them a reason to come back.
With support from the school, Shahridah bought ingredients that some students might rarely encounter at home — including steak and prawns — and invited them to cook, eat and talk.
Every Wednesday afternoon, roughly 15 to 20 students dealing with a wide range of behavioural, developmental and personal challenges could gather around food rather than a disciplinary table.
They learned to clean fish, prepare chicken and make viral food trends such as cloud bread and a Milo adaptation of Dalgona coffee.
Something else happened around those meals.
Students began talking.
They discussed their families, siblings, anger, responsibilities and problems they might not reveal inside a conventional classroom.
Shahridah has described the sessions as developing into something resembling a support group, where students realise they are not alone.
Some continued to struggle with daily attendance. But according to Shahridah, a number still returned for their examinations and managed to complete secondary school.
SOMETIMES SHE GOES LOOKING FOR THEM HERSELF
Food cannot bring every student back.
So sometimes Shahridah goes to their homes.
She has repeatedly visited students who stopped attending classes, even when families turned her away or doors were slammed in her face.
Her reasoning is that even when students reject the help, they should know someone noticed they disappeared.
That persistence has occasionally placed her in difficult situations.
CNA reported that while trying to reach a student who had run away from home and was staying with an older boyfriend, Shahridah was confronted and shoved by the man.
The student later returned to school seeking help when the relationship became more aggressive.
For Shahridah, such cases are not abstract disciplinary problems.
They can resemble parts of her own childhood.
She remembers periods when her family could not pay the electricity bill and she had to shower by candlelight. At another point, her family shared interim housing with another household because they could not afford a home of their own.
That history appears to have shaped one of the central principles of her teaching: Find out what is happening behind a student's behaviour before deciding what that behaviour means.
ONE STUDENT WAITED THREE MONTHS BEFORE REVEALING THE TRUTH
Trust can sometimes expose far more serious problems.
One student who had lost his parents repeatedly waited outside the staff room after school and spoke casually with Shahridah for months.
Eventually, after she sensed he was holding something back, he told her that he and his siblings were being physically abused.
Shahridah worked with the school and relevant agencies, and the siblings were subsequently moved to safer living arrangements.
The student is now 18 and preparing to enter polytechnic, according to CNA.
Berita Mediacorp separately highlighted the case while profiling Shahridah's approach to building trust with students, reinforcing how central patient relationship-building has become to her work.
MORE THAN ONE AWARD HAS RECOGNISED HER WORK
The Caring Teacher Award is not Shahridah's first major recognition.
In August 2025, she was also among 20 educators who received the Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan's LEAP Award, selected from 329 nominations.
The award recognises teachers for positively influencing students in both character development and education.
A year later, her work received national-level recognition again.
The 2026 Caring Teacher Awards attracted 18,122 nominations from 301 schools, according to the National Institute of Education.
That represented a 39 per cent increase in nominations and a 16 per cent rise in participating schools compared with the previous edition.
Only four educators received National-Level awards, while another six received National Commendation Awards.
The biennial awards, launched in 1996, are organised by the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University with support from Singapore's Ministry of Education and ExxonMobil Asia Pacific.
THE REAL MEASURE OF SUCCESS
Shahridah now owns her own flat and supports the parents who once struggled to provide for her.
For the students she teaches today, however, she does not define success only through grades, awards or elite academic pathways.
Her ambition is more fundamental.
She wants vulnerable young people to leave secondary school capable of supporting themselves and becoming decent, independent adults.
Some eventually return to Beatty Secondary years after graduating simply to visit.
For the teacher who once dreaded walking into school herself, that may be the most powerful reversal of all.
The child who once needed strangers to help with her homework has become the adult searching door to door for students who might otherwise believe nobody is looking for them.
And perhaps that is why Raja Shahridah's story resonates beyond one teaching award.
It is not simply a story about escaping poverty through education.
It is about what can happen when someone who was once nearly left behind decides to spend her career making sure the next child isn't.