Conquering Singapore's Education System

Revision 03 (last paragraph): updated on December 22, 2023. Revision 02: updated on December 22, 2022. PSLE COP for year 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017 were shown below.  My child is a boy. We target the three secondary schools below, but his PSLE will be in year 2024 instead.  New PSLE scoring system was introduced in year 2021. Based on 2021 PSLE COP, the sure-in scores required for the 4 schools below are: (1) Raffles Institution: AL 6 (P) (2) Hwa Chong: AL 7 (D) - for info/benchmark only. (3) Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) Independent: AL 7 (P) (4) River Valley High School: AL 8 (P) In conclusion: (1) AL 4 & 5 can choose Raffles Institution . AL 6 can be risky. (2) AL 6 can choose ACS . AL 7 can be risky. (3) AL 7 can choose River Valley High . AL 8 can be risky. (4) AL 8 shall check other high schools too. Let's see if such strategy works for the PSLE COP for year 2022. The COP result will be announced by December 23, 2022, after the school posting results. It is intere...

Some good questions about PSLE.  I agree with the author below.

He had English essay and Chinese essay tuition in Primary 4. He has to write one English essay and one Chinese essay every weekend, almost. :) He had cultivated interest and gained confidence in writing essay in English and Chinese and that also reflected in the scores in the essay section in particular. Hence, we decided to let him to continue the tuition next year too. His Chinese Essay tuition is Huang Cheng . It's about S$50 per 2 hours session (in average). Chinese Enrichment | Learn Chinese with Hua Cheng Education Centre His English Essay tuition is WR!TERS@WORK . It's about S$75 per 2 hours session (in average). Center for Excellence in Creative English Writing in Singapore -Writers@Work (writersatwork.com.sg) Just for sharing.

I am happy that he was offered to take Higher Chinese class at Primary 5.   Primary 4 Achievements: Primary 4: Edusave Certificate of Academic Achievement 2022 Primary 4: Silver Award at Singapore & Asian Schools Math Olympiad (SASMO) 2022 Primary 4: Bronze Award at Singapore Math Kangaroo Contest 2022 Semester 1 He didn't do many test paper this year but he went for English and Chinese essay tuition . He has to write one English essay and one Chinese essay every weekend.

The screenshots below are from StudyRoom, Maths Heuristics and Jimmy Maths. Thank you for posting the questions online for us as a good reference.

 I personally think this 15% distribution is fair.  - The majority of questions are accessible to most students, with a small number of questions allowing stronger students   to demonstrate their mastery of the subject . - Each pupil's marks in the new scoring system reflects the child's mastery of the subject as  there is no bell curve or quotas imposed  on the number of pupils for each Achievement Level (AL) band. There is one nice Chinese article talking about PSLE Mathematics. Actually  two thirds  of the students are able to cope with the challenging questions.  They quoted one  simple  modeling question below, arguing that the primary students now are taught to solve such question by modeling instead of traditional algebra way. Does Maths have to be so difficult? (schoolbag.edu.sg) Of course, I asked my 10 years old boy to solve this question in both ways. He was taught solving the question in algebra way by me in the past. I alway...

On July 9, 2022, I completed teaching him Primary School Science. I used My Pals series below and I strongly NOT recommend these. It is because they are actually the Science textbook used in his school ! 98% of the contents are the same as his Science textbook. My goodness, what a waste of money! I do love the chapters like, cell , human body systems and electrical systems . Pretty good science chapters covered in the primary school. These two My Pals XTRA Tests series are the best of all for primary school science subject. Definitely, a MUST BUY! You do not need to buy any other science assessment books than these two. In fact, these are the only two science assessment books I bought too. Do not rush to complete the questions. Do it slow and make sure you understand the entire concepts presented in the answer keys, especially the open-ended questions. You must know how to answer the questions with the right keywords too. His next 2 years tasks would be completing the 2 assessment b...