The PSLE, ( Primary School Leaving Examination ) a national examination in Singapore, is taken by students in the sixth year of their primary school education. Students are tested in these subjects: English, Mathematics, Mother Tongue and Science. Many parents and educators feel that the process of preparing for the PSLE is exerting a lot of stress and anxiety among students, parents and teachers.
The Ministry of Education (MOE) decided to revamp the current scoring system for PSLE in 2016. According to MOE, the changes are initiated to enable wider score bands, which will reflect the students’ performance. MOE also assured the public and parents that the new score bands will better reflect a student’s performance, relative to his peers in his school
The new PSLE scoring system will be replaced by wider scoring bands. Each subject will be scored using 8 bands known as Achievement Levels (AL). AL1 is the best score and AL8 is the lowest possible score a PSLE student can achieve in his PSLE from 2021. The ALs reflect the student’s level of achievement in the respective subject according to his ability and proficiency.MOE’s rationale in initiating these changes is to ‘reduce excessively fine differentiation of students at a young age.’
The PSLE total score is the sum of the marks a student has scored in his PSLE. There are 29 possible PSLE scores, compared to 200 different scores in the current PSLE system. MOE has assured parents that the proposed changes to the existing PSLE scoring system ‘is more educationally meaningful’ and will help them to understand their ‘ children’s learning point in their education journey.’ This will also help them to plan the next step more effectively in their children’s educational journey.
However, according to a Channel NewsAsia article dated 14 July 2016, many parents and educators are still pessimistic about the proposed changes to the PSLE scoring system. They feel that the new changes will still not ‘eliminate pressure, unless parents change their mindsets. Mr Edric Sng, a father of four children, has commented that while he appreciated that ‘MOE is trying to take away the performance treadmill aspect of the school system, he still doubted if the changes will bring positive changes to the mindsets of parents and students in the long run.
Ms Jean Lim, a teacher with 30 years of teaching experience had commented that if parents do not change their mindsets in the long run, the pressure will not be eliminated.
Watch this video to know more about the PSLE scoring system
https://youtu.be/vr-9ctEWnaA