How we provide tailored teaching approach for our students

Over recent years, our Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion (MOE) has imple­ment­ed sev­er­al key edu­ca­tion reforms with the aim of reduc­ing the empha­sis on aca­d­e­m­ic results, divest­ing more time for stu­dents to devel­op holis­ti­cal­ly, har­ness­ing their skills & tal­ents. Teach­ers will have more time to design var­ied learn­ing expe­ri­ences, stu­dents will have high­er band­width to dis­cov­er their inter­ests & strengths.

For pri­ma­ry school stu­dents, a new ¹PSLE Scor­ing Sys­tem was imple­ment­ed from 2021 which tran­si­tioned from the tra­di­tion­al, bell-curve mod­er­at­ed and fine­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed T‑Score sys­tem to a less com­par­a­tive Achieve­ment Lev­el (AL) Band­ing frame­work. There has also been a grad­ual removal of tests and exam­i­na­tions, cul­mi­nat­ing with the most recent­ly announced ²removal of Mid-year Exam­i­na­tions across all lev­els from 2023. In addi­tion to these assess­ment-relat­ed reforms at the pri­ma­ry lev­el, ³Full Sub­ject-based Band­ing (FSBB) and sort­ing of pri­ma­ry stu­dents via ⁴Post­ing Groups for sec­ondary schools come in con­flu­ence with MOE’s vision of reduc­ing aca­d­e­m­ic empha­sis and elim­i­nat­ing fine com­par­isons. There has also been dis­cus­sions on a ⁵“through-train pro­gramme” for pri­ma­ry to sec­ondary school, bypass­ing the PSLE, albeit at its infan­cy stage.

Since our incep­tion, Think Teach Acad­e­my has believed in our ped­a­gogy of Think­ing Smart & Teach­ing Smart. An ever­green approach is to relent­less­ly pur­sue and exe­cute state-of-the-art stu­dent assess­ment meth­ods. From 2023, Think Teach Acad­e­my will be imple­ment­ing our Smart Assess­ment Approach, which fun­da­men­tal­ly aims to com­ple­ment MOE’s approach by reduc­ing the empha­sis on sum­ma­tive assess­ments.

2022 & Before: Our Former Assessment Approach

The for­mer MOE Sys­tem (2022 & Before) inher­ent­ly empha­sise on quar­ter­ly per­for­mance. It main­ly includes two for­ma­tive assess­ments (CA1 & CA2) and two sum­ma­tive assess­ments (SA1 & SA2) for all pri­ma­ry lev­els in the Aca­d­e­m­ic Year. Many par­ents have also been through this sys­tem of assess­ment. As stu­dents, we were high­ly pres­sured to per­form every 3 — 4 months for each assess­ment, and these assess­ments cov­ered mul­ti­ple top­ics and con­cepts from the respec­tive syl­labi in a cumu­la­tive fash­ion until the end-of-year exam­i­na­tions (SA2 or PSLE).

Think Teach Acad­e­my reg­u­lar­ly assessed stu­dents on their aca­d­e­m­ic apti­tude pri­or to each school assess­ment via four quar­ter­ly Inter­nal Assess­ments (I — IV), updat­ing par­ents on their child’s progress before every school termly assess­ment. This approach com­ple­ment­ed MOE’s approach then. Stu­dents could seek extra help and sup­port in areas where they fell short, lev­el­ing up to be well-pre­pared for their school’s quar­ter­ly assess­ments. Par­ents could get a rough sense of their child’s strengths and weak­ness­es, which were bench­marked via our quar­ter­ly stu­dent report cards.

From 2023: Our Smart Assessment Approach

With the com­plete removal of school CA1, CA2 and now ²Mid-year Exam­i­na­tions across all Pri­ma­ry Lev­els from 2023, stu­dents are instead assessed on their under­stand­ing and con­tent mas­tery through more spread out and less-intense weight­ed assess­ments, reg­u­lar assign­ments, quizzes and class­room inter­ac­tions.

Our Smart Assess­ment Approach is fun­da­men­tal­ly designed to assess our student’s apti­tude in a more spread-out and fre­quent man­ner. One key fea­ture is the Block Diag­nos­tic Quiz (BDQ) will be con­duct­ed at the end of every Block of 4 lessons, in a less for­mal way that quizzes stu­dents on top­ics cov­ered in the past three lessons. This will sup­port stu­dents in a more con­sis­tent and reg­u­lar fash­ion, prepar­ing them for their school’s for­ma­tive quizzes and weight­ed assess­ments as and when they may arise.

Anoth­er key fea­ture of the BDQ is its peg­ging of dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el to the PSLE. This is in con­flu­ence with MOE’s AL Band­ing Sys­tem, where there is no bell-curve or mod­er­a­tion of marks and grades from the actu­al sub­mit­ted exam­i­na­tion papers. This will allow par­ents to get raw and accu­rate feed­back on their child’s actu­al under­stand­ing and mas­tery of con­tent. Stu­dents and par­ents have been and will con­tin­ue to be reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed on their child’s per­for­mance every four weeks, giv­ing them an insight to their child’s apti­tude in a more fre­quent man­ner.

The soft launch of our Smart Assess­ment Approach was rolled out in the sec­ond half of 2022 for test­ing and feed­back from par­ents. We were glad to receive over­whelm­ing sup­port for this new assess­ment ini­tia­tive. Kelvin Ang, a pop­u­lar Dad­dy Blog­ger who runs Cheekiemonkie , and father to one of our beloved stu­dents Ale, had some­thing to say about our new assess­ment approach:

You can find out more from them here: https://www.cheekiemonkie.net/2022/08/think-teach-academy-singapore-review.html

If you have fur­ther ques­tions or would like to speak with me per­son­al­ly, please feel free to con­tact me at boon@thinkteachacademy.com or (+65) 8699 2396. We look for­ward to sup­port­ing your child as we tra­verse and adapt to the new edu­ca­tion philoso­phies for the nation.

Sin­cere­ly,

Dr. Teo Boon Heng, Aca­d­e­m­ic Direc­tor

Think Teach Acad­e­my Pte. Ltd.

[1] PSLE New Scor­ing Sys­tem: https://www.moe.gov.sg/microsites/psle-fsbb/psle/changing-psle-scoring-system.html

[2] Removal of Mid-year Exam­i­na­tions: https://www.moe.gov.sg/news/forum-letter-replies/20220317-removal-of-mid-year-exams-will-help-nurture-joy-for-learning

[3] Full Sub­ject-based Band­ing: https://www.moe.gov.sg/microsites/psle-fsbb/full-subject-based-banding/main.html

[4] Post­ing Groups to Sec­ondary School: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/secondary-school-subject-based-banding-posting-groups-form-classes-3311176

[5] “Through-train” Pro­gramme for Pri­ma­ry to Sec­ondary School https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/moe-still-considering-through-train-programmes-primary-1-secondary-4-several-issues-remain-chan-chun-sing-3314656