15% of questions in PSLE classified as challenging each year

Fifteen per cent of Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) questions are classified as "challenging" each year, and the national exam is kept at a consistent standard of difficulty across the years, said the Ministry of Education's (MOE) director-general of education yesterday.

"What this means is that there will be only a few challenging questions set each year, making up about 15 marks of the paper," Ms Liew Wei Li said in a post on her LinkedIn page and MOE's Schoolbag website.

While a few mathematics problems have been at the centre of public discussion and debate, such questions are "actually few and far between" within the exam, she added. "It is important to remember that the overall standard of any examination paper is determined by the mix of questions as a whole, and not by just the 'Helen and Ivan' question for that year."

She was referring to a question in the PSLE maths paper last year that was so challenging that it reportedly left pupils in tears.

PSLE maths exams have been a source of angst over the years, with similar complaints surfacing from time to time and parents taking issue with certain questions.

Ms Liew, who took on the director-general of education role in April, said the PSLE is designed to cater to pupils of different abilities.

"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."

In her post about the PSLE, she said 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.

Under this new system, which took effect last year, pupils attain ALs of 1 to 8 for each of four subjects, with their final PSLE score being the sum of the ALs.

Ms Liew said because the majority of pupils find the PSLE manageable, their scores are often distributed towards the higher end, with almost half of them achieving 75 marks of more - AL4 or better - across all PSLE subjects.

At the end of the day, every parent wants his child to have options, she said, and the PSLE results provide "crucial information" on educational choices. "They help us guide our children to make appropriate secondary school and subject-level choices," she added.

Ms Liew said that as an educator for over 25 years, she has heard of parents taking time off work to help their children, and pupils taking up extra coaching during the school holidays in the PSLE year.

Acknowledging parents' anxiety, she said: "When you hear of how some parents support their children, you may feel conscious or troubled that you have not done as much.

"I myself have two children, and despite being an educator who is familiar with the design of examinations and the support that schools and teachers provide to our students, I am still not immune."

She said that out of all the national exams, the PSLE seems to attract the most stress.

"Oddly enough, the GCE N-, O-and A-level examinations are more difficult, whether we judge by examination demand, percentage of higher-order questions or grades," she said.

Madam Michelle Teo, whose 13-year-old daughter took the PSLE last year, said she found the maths paper "very tough" as some questions were "tricky".

"As parents, we would hope for fewer difficult questions... But there's no point complaining about this 15 per cent of questions, as they serve to differentiate the top students from the others," said the 44-year-old, who does part-time administrative work.

Ms Kathleen Goy, 41, who works in marketing and has two girls in primary school, one of whom is sitting the PSLE this year, said: "It may just be 15 marks but it makes a lot of difference in the AL scoring - it's a jump in three ALs.

"I'm not saying there should not be challenging questions, but courage and resilience can be taught in many ways."