Past year PSLE exam papers to be published in full starting 2015

Pupils get to hone skills with past years' PSLE papers
Published exam questions used to be grouped according to topics
By Pearl Lee, The Straits Times, 7 Feb 2015

FROM this year, Primary 6 pupils preparing for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) will be able to attempt actual past year exam papers.

This is a departure from the current practice, where past year PSLE questions are published but categorised according to topics for mathematics and science, and item types for English and the mother tongue languages.

Post by Heng Swee Keat.

Publishing exam papers in full "will allow parents to have a clearer picture of the overall expectation of the PSLE", said Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board (SEAB) chief executive Tan Lay Choo yesterday.

It will help parents "understand the spread of questions from the basic, average, to the slightly more challenging questions", she added.

The booklets containing PSLE papers from 2012 to last year will be out in major bookstores today, at between $2 and $4 each.

They will contain exam papers from the last three years.

The existing booklets will remain on the shelves, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. If publishers want to, they can still publish new booklets in the old format as well.

The answer sheets in the new booklets contain only answers for multiple-choice questions and questions with fixed answers.

Ms Tan said the exam board accords some degree of flexibility in the marking of scripts, and will accept answers that "demonstrate an understanding of what we are testing".

"It is very difficult for us to list... the possible answers for each (open-ended) question. With a finite list, we are afraid that people will think we accept only these answers and not the rest," she said.

In a Facebook post, Education Minister Heng Swee Keat said the change will help pupils prepare well for the exams - "not to over-prepare and spend excessive time on drill-and-test, but to free up time for play... and not to under- prepare as PSLE can serve as a good gauge of their mastery of the subject for the next phase of their learning journey".

Mr Stephen Yap, 41, a senior director in the finance industry, whose son will take the exams at the end of the year, said: "He can practise past year PSLE questions by topics, but at the end of the day, the actual exam is not grouped by topics. Being able to see the actual exam paper from end to end and its structure will surely help my son."

High demand for past PSLE papers
By Faris Mokhtar, Channel NewsAsia, 7 Feb 2015

Parents are snapping up copies of past Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) papers which went sale in major bookstores starting on Saturday (Feb 7). It comes a day after the announcement that PSLE papers from the last three years will be published in full exam format and released annually starting from this year.

At the Popular Bookstore at Junction 8 in Bishan, the PSLE papers, which were packaged into booklets, were selling like hot cakes. Parents were seen buying not one but a few copies. The store said that it had brought the stock in on Friday evening.

And as of Saturday afternoon, over 80 per cent of the copies were sold. Even then, parents continued to stream in to buy the exam papers, leaving some shelves empty.

The store said parents were at the outlet as soon as it opened for business. Ms Lim Mei Ying, store supervisor of the Popular Bookstore at Junction 8, said: "I asked them, ‘why are you buying so many copies’, because I saw some customers buying three to four copies. Some said that they are helping their neighbours to buy.

“Some said that they want to buy two copies, one is for school purposes and the other is for home practice. They said they are quite 'kiasu', so they need to be prepared."