Redistributing the stakes placed on PSLE

By Sandra Davie, The Straits Times, 30 Sep 2012

The Government is still ignoring the "10,000-pound elephant in the room", a parent wrote to me on Friday in response to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong saying no to calls for scrapping the Primary School Leaving Examination.

A Singapolitics reader had asked if Singapore could reduce the reliance on exams and even do away with the PSLE.

This emerged among the 10 most pressing questions readers wanted the Prime Minister to answer, after a week-long poll on the website.

In answering that question, Mr Lee said the examination is still needed to assess pupils' educational standards and provide a fair basis for secondary school admission.

To be fair to him, he did not completely ignore the elephant in the room.

He acknowledged that parents were feeling much pressure on account of the PSLE and said the Education Ministry will look into how "over-pressure" can be reduced.

Education Minister Heng Swee Keat said something similar last year in an interview with The Straits Times, when he urged parents not to see the PSLE as the "be-all and end-all", or the last train that their children can take.

He said that unlike in the past, when opportunities were limited because of a lack of resources, more pathways have now been created and there are "many trains that one can take".

Are parents likely to heed these calls? It is unlikely.

As the parent who wrote to me said: "The stress will not let up as long as the PSLE is there."

The PSLE seems to be getting in the way of many changes that the Education Ministry has been making at the primary school level in recent years.

Two years ago, it announced that by 2013, it will do away with examinations for all Primary 1 pupils. Instead of sitting formal exams, they will go through "bite-sized forms of assessment". Primary 2 pupils will be examined only at the end of the year.

The ministry said it was better to have holistic assessment for young children. This way, they can enjoy learning and develop not just their literacy and numeracy, but also other qualities such as the ability to work in teams and the confidence to express themselves.

Instead of delighting parents, that announcement sent some into panic mode. Some began buying up soon-to-be-extinct exam papers of top primary schools, while others enrolled their children at tuition centres that conduct mock exams and mini-tests.

Another parent, a mother of three, who wrote to me recently said: "The stress will not ease up as long as the PSLE decides how my child will progress through the school system, and possibly through life."

First, most parents are not for doing away with the PSLE.

But they are definitely for making changes to the exam so that it is not such a pressure-cooker for their children.

The problem is that the PSLE is such a high-stakes examination.

So how can it be made less high stakes?

Over the years, parents have put forward many suggestions and some are worth considering.

For one, make the PSLE count for less in secondary school admissions.

Right now, for most pupils, the PSLE aggregate score is all that counts in determining which secondary school they will go to.

A child may perform well above average through the year, but if he is unable to handle the stress of the exams and falters, he may end up in a school or even a stream he may not be suited for.

Could the PSLE score not count for 60 per cent of the final grade in a subject? The remaining 40 per cent could come from continual assessment tests from Primary 5 onwards.

This will reduce the stress and pressure of the PSLE and encourage consistent work.

Another tweak that could ease the pressure is to do away with the T-score.

Right now, a child's performance in each subject is reduced to the T-score. The grades for each subject are converted into a score, based on how well a child has performed relative to his peers.

The aggregate T-score, which is used for the purpose of posting pupils to a course in secondary school, is the sum of the T-scores of all the subjects.

Over the years, some parents had suggested giving a child's involvement in co-curricular activities some weightage. This sounds like an attractive idea since it will encourage all-round development of a child.

But looking at past behaviour, this would inevitably lead to parents and teachers training pupils in a specific area from the word go at Primary 1 so that they can do well in competitions and get a higher PSLE score.

Ideally, at the primary school level, pupils should be exploring a variety of sports and co-curricular activities to discover what their likes and dislikes are and where their talent lies. This, rather than concentrating on one area, would lead to a more holistic development of a child.

Many parents have, over the years, asked for the weighting given to Mother Tongue language to be reduced. For many parents, it is the biggest cause of stress through primary school.

The Education Ministry has turned down this suggestion on the grounds that second language is important. Making it optional for the PSLE aggregate will lead to pupils not taking it seriously.

An idea that MOE is more likely to consider is widening the direct admission scheme - where a pupil's other abilities and achievements are taken into account for admission to secondary school.

"I think that we want to have more of these paths," said PM Lee, indicating that the Government would be in favour of allowing more children to progress to secondary school through such schemes.

But as a parent pointed out recently in a letter to The Straits Times Forum Page, the bar for these "other talents" should not be set so high.

The parent who wrote in lamented that schools tell pupils they need not apply unless they have won awards at the national or international level, or have talents beyond the abilities of children in their age group.

But hopefully, this will change with the recent announcement by the ministry to scrap the awards given to schools for excelling in the sports, arts or other CCAs.

I applaud the education policymakers for instituting changes to move away from the over-emphasis on grades and move towards the holistic development of a child.

But to bring about this shift, the ministry must change what counts in the PSLE and what it counts for.