PSLE, as us Singaporeans know, stands for Primary School Leaving Examination. It is the first milestone examination that children here have to take, at the age of twelve years. The score you get determines the secondary school you can enrol into. The higher the score, the better chance you have of getting the school you want, especially if it is a "top" school. The current system is that each child's PSLE score is measured relative to his/her other peers, not based on his/her absolute results. For eg, let's say I take the PSLE, and I got 90 marks for Maths. Wow, great, right? Except, suppose the Maths paper was particularly easy that year, or my fellow twelve-year-olds were working that much harder, and the mean score was 92. That would mean my score of 90 was below average, and it would contribute to a lower than expected overall PSLE score.
So, this means you are not actually fighting to achieve a certain score and then you'd be okay. It's about hoping that you outscore your peers. If the majority of them score higher than you, it doesn't matter if your absolute scores are high, you are still going to get a low PSLE score. This has led to complaints that PSLE is too competitive, and puts too much stress on our children. And you have reports of highly rated tutors making large amounts of money opening tuition schools that charge premium rates.
Hence the new system. In this new system, you will be judged based on your scores, not relative to how your peers do. There will be 8 Achievement Levels(AL) for each subject, with 1 being the best, and 8 being the worst. Each level has a score band. The ALs are added up for all 4 subjects, with the best score achievable is AL 4. This is similar to the O level system.
So now, as long as you manage to achieve the score needed, you get the matching AL. And since there are bands now, it is not as finely differentiated as the old system, where just 1 point may mean the difference between getting into the secondary school of your choice or missing out. So it's supposed to make it less competitive.
Well, I would imagine that many scholarly brains must have looked into this, and must have worked out with reasonable logic that this will help relieve pressure for the students. But as a lay person, looking at this simply, I do have a few concerns, and indeed, doubts that our children will feel any less stress with this new system.
1. No more "hiding" of weaker subjects
Previously, it used to be, if you were weaker in one subject, you could kind of mask it by being good in the other 3, because the final score that matters is the total aggregate score. You were still given individual grades for each subject, but those grades are not taken into account when deciding if you could get into the secondary school of your choice. For eg, student X who had 4 A stars in his subject could still get a lower aggregate score than student Y who only had 3 A stars and one A, but his A stars were higher scores than those of student X. Although student X had 4 A stars, it is student Y who will have the advantage in choosing a school of his choice, because of his higher aggregate scores.
Now, there is no more hiding. Each subject carries an AL point, and if you are particularly weak in one subject, even if you are very strong in the other 3, that weak subject will still pull your overall AL score down(or up, as it were). So can you imagine what's going to happen? Parents are going to ensure that their children are well trained in every subject, so a child who's particularly weak in, say, English, is going to find himself or herself being subject to intensive tuition and training in that particular area, because hey, you don't want that weakness to ruin his AL score, right?
2. Unfairness of balloting
In the end, it is still a zero end sum. There's still a fixed quota of students that the so-called elite schools can take in. Those who advocate the new system say that now you don't need to wonder how you did compared to your peers. As long as you achieve a certain score, and hence a certain AL point aggregate, you should be able to enter the secondary school matching your standard. But what if some schools are over-subscribed, as would be expected with the top schools? Well, then there would be a certain criteria by which some students are chosen ahead of others. Singaporean students get priority over foreign students, and then if there are still too many students, balloting will be done.
One of the main reasons why many are opposed to the current system, is that it is unfair, they say. Just one point difference and my child can miss out, they say. But with this new system, it may well boil down to the luck of the draw. How is this any fairer? In fact, I would argue that the current system is very fair. True, missing out by one point may be harsh, but ultimately, the score your child got is the one he achieved in the exam, and if he does miss out by one point, well, tough, but the other child who made it did score higher in the same exam. To then subject that child who scored one point higher to a ballot with others who scored lower, now, that is unfair.
3. Likely increase in difficulty of exams
Picture this. Now the target to reach is an AL score of 4 points for all the 4 subjects combined. And this can now be achieved by reaching a certain score for each of the subjects. What do you think parents will do? My guess is they will force their children to study hard to reach the level needed to achieve the 4 points. It is therefore likely that with each passing year, more and more people will be able to reach the 4 point target, and since it is no longer a bell curve, there is no limit to how many students can get 4 points. If 100% of the cohort scores high enough, they all can get 4 points, theoretically. Of course, that is near impossible, but it is not difficult to see that the percentage of those achieving these giddy heights is likely to increase each year, as parents and students learn how to beat the system through sheer brute force and hard work. That in itself will create more burden on the students, but those setting the exam can't have too many getting top scores right? There will be too much balloting otherwise. So what can they do? The only way is to make the exam harder, to trim off the excess and keep the percentage getting 4 points at a stable level. This will again put more stress and pressure on the students.
I guess, in the end, only time will tell if this system will make it less competitive for our children, but my feeling is that it won't, because it still comes down to the same thing: everyone is fighting each other for the same limited number of places in the schools, especially the top ones. I'm all for reducing stress on our children, but if the choice is only between the current system and the upcoming one, I must say that the current one is still fairer, because it is an honest fight with your peers to see who comes out on top. Not everyone can make it to the top school, but it need not be the standard by which everyone is measured. I think emphasis needs to be placed on developing the unique skills and talents of each individual, especially those who may not be so academically inclined. It is easier said than done of course, but a key component must be the educating of parents, that the academic paper chase is not, and cannot be, the be all and end all in their child's education, and that ultimately, the goal is to identify what the child is good at, and passionate about, and develop that aspect so that that becomes the craft by which the child will make a living out of. And be happier doing it. However, there must be the correct infrastructure in place to support this as well.
Chloe will still be taking the old PSLE system, but Gareth will be the "pioneer" batch of the new system, and of course the rest of my children will be under the new system.
