Has MOE achieved its objective with the new PSLE scoring system?

I. Introduction

A rite of pas­sage for every pri­ma­ry school stu­dent in Sin­ga­pore, the PSLE is the quin­tes­sence of Singapore’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem. That notwith­stand­ing, the PSLE has been under fire for years. Par­ents crit­i­cise the dif­fi­cul­ty of the exam­i­na­tion and ques­tion whether the PSLE is nec­es­sary for stu­dents at such a young age.

Amidst the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the PSLE, the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion (the “MOE”) has reaf­firmed its posi­tion that aca­d­e­m­ic mer­it is impor­tant in sec­ondary school post­ing. The PSLE is need­ed to assess every pri­ma­ry school stu­dent and help them decide on the next step of their edu­ca­tion jour­ney that best suits their pace of devel­op­ment.

In oth­er words, love it or hate it, the PSLE is here to stay.

Instead of doing away with the PSLE, the MOE has cho­sen to over­haul the PSLE scor­ing sys­tem. The new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem with its wider scor­ing bands broad­ly aims to (1) reduce exam stress and results obses­sion, (2) elim­i­nate com­pe­ti­tion among stu­dents and (3) recog­nise the strengths of stu­dents so as to bet­ter match them to sec­ondary schools that would be a good fit for their apti­tudes.

Three batch­es of Pri­ma­ry 6 stu­dents have already gone through the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem. It is per­haps time­ly to share our thoughts on whether the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem has or will achieve the three broad objec­tives that the MOE has set out for it.

II. Objective 1: Reduce Exam Stress and Results Obsession

“We made a delib­er­ate shift away from the old T‑score sys­tem so stu­dents do not chase the last mark. An obses­sive over-empha­sis on exam results is not healthy for the devel­op­ment of our chil­dren.”

Mr Wong Siew Hoong

MOE’s direc­tor-gen­er­al of edu­ca­tion

Because of the way the old PSLE aggre­gate score (or T‑score) was cal­cu­lat­ed, every mark lost or gained in any of a child’s Eng­lish, Math­e­mat­ics, Sci­ence and Moth­er Tongue paper mat­tered. This piled undue pres­sure on stu­dents to attain sub­ject mas­tery, avoid care­less mis­takes and pur­sue per­fec­tion. In com­par­i­son, the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem has wider scor­ing bands, sup­pos­ed­ly giv­ing stu­dents more room to make mis­takes.

For exam­ple, a 5‑mark range score from 80 to 84 would be equiv­a­lent to an Achieve­ment Lev­el (“AL”) of 3. In this regard, not every mark mat­ters now as stu­dents would have a 5 mark cush­ion. Fol­low­ing the log­ic adopt­ed by the MOE, this would cre­ate less stress and obses­sion over exam results.

Chasing Every Mark

Three years on, from what we have observed, the out­come is not what the MOE had envi­sioned. While full of good inten­tions, the wider scor­ing band has done lit­tle to ease the “chase for the last mark.” From our expe­ri­ence as edu­ca­tors, we are still wit­ness­ing stu­dents stress­ing over every sin­gle mark. This is because they do not know exact­ly what they are going to score or how exact­ly the PSLE papers will be marked. With the wider scor­ing bands, the issue is that one sin­gle mark could be the dif­fer­ence between an entire AL, which would be more detri­men­tal than a dif­fer­ence of a few marks in the T‑score.

We too had hoped that the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem would ease the stress and obses­sion over exam­i­na­tions and stu­dents’ per­for­mance. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we have seen min­i­mal to no improve­ment in that respect when inter­act­ing with our stu­dents and par­ents. As edu­ca­tors, we do our best to align our­selves with MOE and what it tries to achieve. In this regard, we have pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about how par­ents can help their child pre­pare for the PSLE so as to take some stress off their shoul­ders 

As par­ents find ways to sup­port their chil­dren in their aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney, we hope our words of advice can not only pro­vide them with much need­ed guid­ance, but also give them some com­fort that we too are with them in this jour­ney.

The Valley of Death

Fur­ther, as we go low­er down the AL ranges, it is clear to see that the mark range becomes big­ger. This fact has not escaped our stu­dents and their par­ents. A vast major­i­ty of them share the same sen­ti­ments. Stu­dents do not want to score 74 marks and be at the same lev­el as anoth­er stu­dent who scored only 65 marks. Sim­i­lar­ly, they do not want to score 64 marks and be award­ed the same AL as anoth­er stu­dent who failed and scored 45 marks. In fact, a par­ent of ours once described the ALs 5 and 6 as “The Val­ley of Death.” This metaphor cor­re­sponds with our expe­ri­ence. The new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem has cre­at­ed an army of anx­ious par­ents who have made it their mis­sion to ensure their chil­dren avoid these two dread­ed ALs.

More­over, the unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty is that a large num­ber of stu­dents actu­al­ly hov­er around the 60 to 75 mark range and it is per­haps no sur­prise why we are see­ing a surge in demand for our enrich­ment class­es. More and more par­ents are des­per­ate to have their chil­dren improve so as to get out of “The Val­ley of Death.”

Exposing Weaknesses

Stress lev­els do not abate under the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem. In fact, it is the reverse that is true. The new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem is more unfor­giv­ing and expos­es stu­dents’ weak sub­jects even more than the T‑score sys­tem, caus­ing greater stress and wor­ry over aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance in exam­i­na­tions. Under the old sys­tem, a stu­dent in the top flight who scored high As for 3 sub­jects and a low A for 1 sub­ject could have very pos­si­bly got­ten a T‑score of at least 250, mean­ing he qual­i­fies  for the Inte­grat­ed Pro­gramme (the “IP”) stream. In con­trast, under the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem, that same stu­dent would have nar­row­ly missed the cut for the IP stream. This is because he would have scored AL 2 for three sub­jects and an AL 4 for the fourth sub­ject, giv­ing him a PSLE score of 10.

The MOE intend­ed well when it con­cep­tu­alised and intro­duced the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem. It hoped to slow­ly change our cul­ture of exam stress and obses­sion. How­ev­er, it does appear that the MOE may have com­plete­ly missed the mark in this regard. The MOE has iron­i­cal­ly wors­ened exam stress and obses­sion lev­els with wider scor­ing bands. It has unwit­ting­ly cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion where stu­dents are pun­ished more severe­ly for their weak­ness­es. More­over, instead of fight­ing against the reliance on tuition, the MOE has in fact solid­i­fied the very need for tuition as a means not just to get ahead but also to get out of the low­er and wider ALs.

We help our stu­dents steer clear of “The Val­ley of Death”, climb up the AL bands, and achieve their fullest poten­tial by rely­ing on our strengths. One of our great­est strengths is help­ing stu­dents make big improve­ments in both learn­ing atti­tude and exam­i­na­tion per­for­mance. We achieve this by ded­i­cat­ing our­selves to the for­mu­la­tion of nov­el and unique tech­niques that allow our teach­ers to Teach Smart and our stu­dents to Learn and Think Smart. With our tech­niques, learn­ing becomes excit­ing, effi­cient and effec­tive!

In addi­tion, every par­ent of ours is auto­mat­i­cal­ly includ­ed in our TTA Par­ent Sup­port Pro­gramme where we send out com­pli­men­ta­ry sum­marised notes, exam­i­na­tion guides, sup­ple­men­tary prac­tices and teach­ing videos etc to give our stu­dents the extra boost they need for the PSLE. We also gen­er­ous­ly share our tech­niques on our YouTube chan­nel as well as in our blog arti­cles.

As edu­ca­tors, we com­mit our­selves to the suc­cess of our stu­dents. Often­times, we find that mak­ing big improve­ment in grades sim­ply requires a fine-tun­ing of the learn­ing tech­niques and strate­gies one employs to study and pre­pare for exam­i­na­tions. We know we have the right tech­niques. Suc­cess sto­ries of our past and present stu­dents are a tes­ta­ment to this fact. This is why we hope that every stu­dent in Sin­ga­pore gets to expe­ri­ence learn­ing with us!

III. Objective 2: Eliminate Competition 

“The new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem will mea­sure how well a stu­dent has learnt and not how he has done in com­par­i­son to his peers.” 

Mr Ng Chee Meng 

Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion in 2018

Under the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem, the noto­ri­ous bell curve which pegs stu­dents in the same cohort to each oth­er will be abol­ished. This was unequiv­o­cal­ly con­firmed by Mr Sng Chern Wei, deputy direc­tor-gen­er­al of edu­ca­tion (cur­ricu­lum), when he labelled the bell curve as “a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion among par­ents” and  said that the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem will impose “no quo­ta for the num­ber of stu­dents who get AL1 or AL2.”

This is a wel­come change as stu­dents would not feel that they are in com­pe­ti­tion with their peers. As the MOE had hoped to achieve, stu­dents can final­ly just focus on them­selves. In our class­es, we are def­i­nite­ly see­ing the cul­ti­va­tion of a more col­lab­o­ra­tive cul­ture. As com­pared to pre­vi­ous years, stu­dents and par­ents are more will­ing to share their school exam­i­na­tion ques­tions and papers with us so that we can use and share them with oth­er stu­dents. More­over, we are see­ing a surge in the num­ber of ‘same year’ refer­rals. Pri­or to 2021, when par­ents referred their friends or fam­i­ly to us, it would more often than not be for chil­dren who are either younger or old­er than their own chil­dren. These are just pieces of evi­dence that can be used to show the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem is suc­cess­ful in reduc­ing the feel­ing among stu­dents and par­ents that they are in com­pe­ti­tion with one anoth­er.  

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, while the removal of the bell curve elim­i­nates peer com­pe­ti­tion in exam­i­na­tions, it does not affect com­pe­ti­tion for sec­ondary school admis­sion. In the past, stu­dents were clear­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed by their T‑scores. With the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem, how­ev­er, it is entire­ly con­ceiv­able that many stu­dents would end up with the same PSLE score as Mr Sng had con­ced­ed when he remarked that “the like­li­hood of stu­dents hav­ing the same PSLE score is high­er under the new sys­tem.” This brings com­pe­ti­tion back into play. In order to out­mus­cle their peers dur­ing the crunch, stu­dents would feel more com­pelled than ever before to take High­er Moth­er Tongue and care­ful­ly choose their schools. If they do not, they either risk los­ing out on a cov­et­ed spot in their dream school to their peers or resign to leave their fates to luck as they reduce them­selves to a name in a bal­lot box.  

It is impos­si­ble to design the per­fect sys­tem. In our hon­est opin­ion, the MOE has done well to remove the bell curve and reduce com­pe­ti­tion. We too believe that stu­dents should focus on them­selves and their own learn­ing instead of wor­ry­ing about their peers. The issue with sec­ondary school admis­sions should be set aside until after PSLE results are released. We always remind our par­ents to focus on the task at hand and wor­ry about sec­ondary school admis­sions lat­er. After PSLE results are out, we arrange talks with our par­ents and advise them on their children’s options.  We weigh the schools by tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion (1) child’s pref­er­ence, (2) dis­tance of school from home, (3) aca­d­e­m­ic track record of school, (4) CCAs offered, and (5) gen­er­al rep­u­ta­tion of the school. It is always a holis­tic and com­pre­hen­sive chat that we have with our par­ents. We do this because we want the best for our stu­dents.   

IV. Objective 3: Recognising Strengths

“We hope that the new AL scor­ing sys­tem, togeth­er with the changes we are mak­ing under the full sub­ject-based band­ing in our sec­ondary schools over the next few years, will make stu­dents’ learn­ing even mean­ing­ful.”

Mr Wong Siew Hoong

MOE’s direc­tor-gen­er­al of edu­ca­tion

There is cause to cel­e­brate for stu­dents post­ed to the Nor­mal Aca­d­e­m­ic (“NA”) and Nor­mal Tech­ni­cal (“NT”) streams. The wide scor­ing bands in the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem recog­nis­es and cel­e­brates stu­dents’ strengths. It would be used as an indi­ca­tor as to whether stu­dents can take sub­jects at a lev­el high­er than their streams. For exam­ple, in pre­vi­ous years, a stu­dent in the NA stream had to take all his sub­jects at the NA lev­el. That has now changed as a stu­dent despite his stream is eli­gi­ble to take sub­jects at the Express lev­el as long as he scored AL 5 or bet­ter for that sub­ject in the PSLE. This is great news for NA and NT stu­dents, as they would not be deprived of a stan­dard of edu­ca­tion that suits their apti­tude just because of the stream they are in.

The same pos­i­tive impact of the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem is not felt by stu­dents who are scor­ing high­er up the ALs. Unlike an NA or NT stu­dent, an Express stream stu­dent does not have the option of tak­ing sub­jects at the IP lev­el even if he had scored AL 1 for that sub­ject in the PSLE. The only way to take sub­jects at the IP lev­el is to score 9 points and below and qual­i­fy for the IP stream. At this junc­ture, it would be most apt to bring back the exam­ple of the top flight stu­dent who scored AL 2 for 3 sub­jects and AL 4 for 1 sub­ject.

That stu­dent is clear­ly strong in at least 3 sub­jects. At the AL 2 lev­el, he should be primed to study those 3 sub­jects at the more chal­leng­ing IP lev­el. How­ev­er, he would be denied that oppor­tu­ni­ty because his over­all score of 10 rel­e­gates him to the Express stream. Thus, the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem is nar­row and lim­it­ed in its impact. While an argu­ment can be made that it recog­nis­es strengths and makes learn­ing more mean­ing­ful, this pos­i­tive impact is not felt across the board and only applies to stu­dents in the NA and NT streams.

There is a clear imbal­ance in what MOE has man­aged to achieve with the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem. We hope that the MOE recog­nis­es this and makes pro­vi­sions for a more robust sub­ject-based band­ing in sec­ondary school. We sug­gest a sys­tem where no stu­dent gets left behind. Express stream stu­dents should also be allowed to hone their strengths in their stronger sub­jects at the more rig­or­ous IP lev­el.

V. Final Thoughts

There is no doubt that the MOE had their best inter­ests at heart when they decid­ed to revamp the PSLE scor­ing sys­tem. The pur­port­ed objec­tives of the new sys­tem shows that the MOE is head­ing in the right direc­tion. Right now, we just have to accept that the new PSLE scor­ing sys­tem has its flaws and chal­lenges.

Rather than throw stones from a glass house, we choose to embrace the new sys­tem and the chal­lenges that come with it. The jour­ney to PSLE suc­cess will be a long but ful­fill­ing one. Whether it is Eng­lish, Chi­nese, Math­e­mat­ics or Sci­ence, from Pri­ma­ry 1 to 6, we will be there for you and with you, every step of the way.

This arti­cle was proud­ly writ­ten for you by the Think Teach Team. Every year, we impact over a thou­sand stu­dents and empow­er them with our smart tech­niques to achieve exam excel­lence in their school exams as well as the PSLE. We want your child to be our next suc­cess sto­ry!