In total, 49,856 Primary 6 pupils from mainstream schools, 321 children from madrasahs, or Islamic religious schools, 26 home-schoolers and three from San Yu took the PSLE, results released by the Ministry of Education on Thursday showed. --PHOTO: BH
THE first batch of students outside mainstream schools to sit for the Primary School Leaving Examination have done as well as their counterparts elsewhere, with over 90 per cent of them doing well enough to move to the secondary level.
The pupils - who are either schooled at home, in madrasahs or at San Yu Adventist, a private school - were made to sit for the national exams under the Compulsory Education Act, introduced in 2003.
In total, 49,856 Primary 6 pupils from mainstream schools, 321 children from madrasahs, or Islamic religious schools, 26 home-schoolers and three from San Yu took the PSLE, results released by the Ministry of Education on Thursday showed.
When compared to mainstream schools, madrasah pupils were on par: 98 per cent did well enough to progress to secondary schools, a notch higher than the 97 per cent for mainstream pupils.
Home-schooled children did less well, with 92 per cent - 24 out of 26 students - making the secondary school grade.
But in terms of scores, mainstream students did much better than those in madrasahs.
Just 41 per cent of madrasah students did well enough to qualify for the Express course in secondary school - which the better performers are streamed to - compared to 64 per cent in the mainstream and 73 per cent of home-schoolers.
For the Normal (Academic) stream, which sees students taking the O-levels in five years, compared to four for Express pupils, 22 per cent of mainstream students, 48 per cent of madrasah students, and 12 among the home-schoolers qualified.
Twelve per cent from regular schools, 9 per cent from madrasahs and 8 per cent of those who are schooled at home, meanwhile, will be eligible for the Normal (Technical) stream, meant for the academically-weakest students.
The Compulsory Education Act requires all children to get at least six years of education and pass the PSLE.
Benchmarks for those outside regular schools have been set: Madrasah pupils have to do better than the average PSLE aggregate score of the merged EM1 and EM2 stream of Malay-Muslim pupils in the six lowest-performing national schools. Madrasahs that fail to achieve such results will not be able to admit new Primary 1 pupils.
Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Sraits Times.
