Benchmark barrier: Six of her homeschooled kids had to retake the PSLE

SINGAPORE – Six of Mrs Sue Ong’s children have sat the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) and all of them have had to retake it.

The children, some of whom have learning difficulties, are now between 13 and 25 years old.

Most of them met the benchmark after they took the PSLE a second time.

Mrs Ong, 50, who homeschools her children, also has a five-year-old child with her 54-year-old teacher husband.

Her eldest child Asher Ong, now 25 and studying in Britain on a government scholarship, got an aggregate of about 190 in his first PSLE attempt in 2012.

His score would have put him in the Normal (Academic) stream in secondary school, had he taken the PSLE in a mainstream primary school.

But it was below the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) PSLE benchmark for homeschoolers, which is pegged to the 33rd percentile of all students in mainstream schools taking four standard-level subjects in the PSLE that year.

MOE does not release the benchmark score publicly.

According to homeschooling families, the benchmark is approximately the score needed to enter the express stream in the past, or about an Achievement Level of 20 or 21 under the scoring system introduced in 2021.

Homeschoolers who do not meet this criterion must retake the PSLE until they pass the benchmark or reach the age of 15, whichever is earlier.

Asher cleared the benchmark when he got a score of 203 in his second attempt in 2013.

An MOE spokesperson says the benchmark for homeschoolers is to “ensure that they have a baseline foundation in their academic education that allows them to access further learning and training”.

Since the Compulsory Education Act came into effect in 2003, there have been about 50 children who are homeschooled each year. In the past five years, about one-third of the homeschoolers who sat the PSLE each year did not meet the benchmark, says MOE.

In 2024, a total of 40,894 Primary 6 pupils took the PSLE.

Beyond the benchmark

Mrs Ong was expecting her sixth child during Asher’s PSLE year and had prepared him that she might not be able to give him as much attention as she would have liked. She encouraged him to give it his best shot.

“He worked very hard sitting at his desk doing papers. I had to tell him to go out and play. He really did his best,” she says.

When Asher’s results were released, he cried when he saw that he would have to retake the exam.

“It was an exercise in guiding him through the emotion of not being able to succeed in his first major exam,” says Mrs Ong.

She had many conversations with him to ensure this setback did not affect his outlook on academics and how he saw himself – something she did for all her children when they had to retake the PSLE.

“We want to keep their self-esteem intact. This is just a very small exam in the whole scheme of things,” she says.

After meeting the benchmark on his second attempt, Asher went on to take his O levels as a private candidate in two sittings. This was after the family’s six-month camper-van road trip across the United States in 2015.

He co-authored a travelogue – Six Kids And A Pop-up Camper, published in 2016 – on the family trip with his mum and took the pictures for it. When it was published, he gave talks at the National Library Board as well as to 300 senior educators.

He went on to study spatial design at Nanyang Polytechnic, and scored a GPA of 3.98 with almost straight As. He received an offer to study architecture at the National University of Singapore, but eventually decided to study the subject overseas on a scholarship.

He published his second book in 2024, BMT Sketchbook, which consists of drawings he did on his national service experience. It won the Best Illustrated Non-Fiction Title at the Singapore Book Awards 2025 on July 24.

Three of Asher’s siblings who have finished their pre-tertiary education are pursuing their own interests, ranging from teaching to a music diploma.

Mrs Ong says her children had to disrupt their homeschooling curriculum to prepare for the PSLE twice.

“Why can’t we just take it and not have to meet a benchmark? My children didn’t make the benchmark, but they are future-ready,” she says.

Felt like a failure

When national windsurfer Angyal Chew, 17, realised she had to retake her PSLE, she was initially not that affected.

It was only after she told her friends and saw their reactions that she felt bad. “I felt like a failure, especially when my friends told their parents that I was retaking PSLE and they reacted negatively,” she says.

She is thankful her parents did not make her feel like a failure.

“I was able to shake off the negativity and not base my self-worth on things as trivial as grades,” says Angyal. She is preparing to take her O levels as a private candidate in 2025 while training to take part in the Youth Sailing World Championships in December.

Looking back, Angyal, who took a gap year in 2024 to focus on training, says: “In the long run, having to retake the PSLE didn’t affect my mentality or education in any major way.”

Another teenager who took the PSLE twice, Emma Yan, 17, says she was embarrassed to explain to others that she had to retake the exam.

“I felt like I wasn’t smart enough,” says the Secondary 4 student, who is now studying in a mainstream secondary school.

Being a year older than her peers when she entered secondary school also affected her.

“I felt out of place, uncertain and worried that others might look down on me,” she says.

She has come to enjoy her studies and choir co-curricular activity in the last four years in secondary school, but wishes for more support for homeschooling communities.

“People sometimes look down on homeschoolers, having a perception that we may be less well-educated, slow-paced and unsociable or that we don’t have friends since we study at home,” she says.

Another teen, 15-year-old Ian Chew, sat the PSLE three times.

His father Heleston Chew, 49, a former art educator who homeschools Ian and his brother Ethan, 12, says Ian is a keen and curious learner with a broad grasp of general knowledge.

“When we learn, we don’t segregate mathematics from science or art. Everything is interesting for him,” says Mr Chew, whose wife Kng Mian Tze, 48, is an art educator.

“But when it comes to exams, he struggles. For science, he had to remember keywords; for maths, he had to answer in a certain format. Learning then became a bad experience,” he says.

Having to repeat the PSLE led Ian to lose confidence, says Mr Chew.

“When he was younger, he was confident, be it in singing, art or dance. But the social signal he got from the test dampened his learning interest,” he says.

With each PSLE experience, Mr Chew says Ian got further disheartened and wanted only to play football. “That’s the only domain he feels is fair as everyone is on the same playing field,” he adds.

He got his neighbour to coach Ian on exam techniques, and the boy met the benchmark in 2024. Ian is in the process of enrolling in a degree course in sport, fitness and coaching offered by the Open University (UK) after he did several courses on the higher education institution’s online platform in 2024.

“He wouldn’t even have ‘failed’ the first round if the benchmark were the same as for the rest of the nation,” says Mr Chew.

“I feel a sense of injustice and helplessness with this double standard just because we chose to homeschool them,” he says.

Challenge to meet benchmark for those with learning needs

Madam M. Lim, 49, a leadership coach, homeschooled her daughter Emma Yan and her brother when they were younger. She says her son, now 19 and doing his national service, had learning difficulties and took the PSLE three times.

His learning was interrupted when he had an accident and took more than a year to recover.

His PSLE scores would have qualified him for the Normal (Technical) course if he were not homeschooled.

She found having to meet the benchmark “disruptive and coercive”, especially when “they have to waste one or two years retaking that same exam”.

As her son did not plan to study in a mainstream secondary school, he was frustrated and questioned the need to retake the exam. “If he didn’t retake twice, we would have moved on to secondary school curriculum sooner,” she says.

Still, there are parents who accept that the benchmark is part of the path they chose.

Madam Jasmine Goh, 50, who is the mother of Angyal, is a former primary school teacher. She homeschools her four children aged six to 21, and says she understands why the benchmark is there.

She reminds her children that education extends beyond the PSLE and sees the exam as a chance to teach her children to become self-directed in learning.

“Not meeting the benchmark doesn’t mean she’s a failure. One exam doesn’t define you,” she says.