2014 PSLE Discussions and Strategy
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Janet_lee88,
I so agree with you.
Personal experience : my DD1 has always been good at maths, though not 100/100, nearest was 98 / 100. Then it went nose-diving in mid P5 all the way through P6, to a range of 45 - 55. Imagine the confidence she lost. I was a wreck, very scared and worried. I offered her tuition. She rejected. So it was extremely nerve wrecking because to force tuition on her would break her and tip her to the point of a breakdown. My faith was shaking. I am the mum; I know her limits.
But I have been an involved parent since PV time, so I have been talking with teachers and all, and we were told the math standard in her school is very high. Their average ability would equate to a high ability for math compared to other schools in the neighbourhood. I also know my child's standard - no way she would fail PSLE, just how well she will score.
In the end, we just bit our tongue and hung on. PSLE results and grade were in line with our expectation.
After this first experience, I have more faith in our PSLE system - it is not out to kill our children; so unless the child has major learning difficulty, and is bordering the range of 15 - 20 even for foundation papers and not improving, they will pass PSLE.
I hope my sharing will calm some nervous nerves.
DD2 is taking PSLE this year. 4S+H, coaching for H only. We rejected her request for tuition - she doesn't need it, not in the A* range, but I am happy with the effort she is putting in for her studies. If she doesn't make it to her dream school, there would be no regrets. -
BlueBells,
it’s a horrible decision to make right?
when son was scoring 80s for math in p4 and dived to 20 in p5, hubby couldn’t take it. it was quite late to start tuition in may then because he was only having foundation built then. the whole of p5 was a nightmare…I was so worried he would fail his math in p6 but he got a B. on the whole for psle, he got results which were not that fantastic because we thought we could coach him ourselves from p1 (only cl tuition)…it’s too late but I still feel that tinge of guilt.
how to make a balance between too much and insufficient? that is indeed a grey area. -
http://www.seab.gov.sg/examTimetable/20 ... etable.pdf
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BlueBells:
Does not seem reasonable to set a standard that is so high that high ability children actually end up failing. It never ceases to amaze me that these things are actually happening in schools! Surely this school and others like them were driving the standards up leading to ridiculously hard MAth papers in the years preceding 2013.Janet_lee88,
I so agree with you.
Personal experience : my DD1 has always been good at maths, though not 100/100, nearest was 98 / 100. Then it went nose-diving in mid P5 all the way through P6, to a range of 45 - 55. Imagine the confidence she lost. I was a wreck, very scared and worried. I offered her tuition. She rejected. So it was extremely nerve wrecking because to force tuition on her would break her and tip her to the point of a breakdown. My faith was shaking. I am the mum; I know her limits.
But I have been an involved parent since PV time, so I have been talking with teachers and all, and we were told the math standard in her school is very high. Their average ability would equate to a high ability for math compared to other schools in the neighbourhood. I also know my child's standard - no way she would fail PSLE, just how well she will score.
In the end, we just bit our tongue and hung on.
Why would educators who are supposed to enhance children's confidence level go all out to destroy it instead? -
janet_lee88:
how to make a balance between too much and insufficient? that is indeed a grey area.
Indeed that is a million dollar question.
dd sat for PSLE last year and we \"over prepared\" her for maths. She wanted to \"improve her problem solving skills\" so we sent her for additional maths camp during June hols. She has been in the 80s range in school. She fell sick after 1st day of camp but because the camp was so expensive, we managed to get the centre to give her a replacement class.
After PSLE, she told us that she didn't use the techniques taught. She managed to get A* and heard from ds that level mgr told the P6s that around 1/3 of the school cohort scored A* for maths last year. For ds, I don't think I will send him for the camp this year. I think back to basics is critical like what dd FT kept telling the parents since P5 (eg. the concepts, being very careful, don't over-rely on calculator that the kids struggle for paper 1 and the ability to solve some of those typical tricky questions. I hope with this skill sets, he will be able to \"survive\" maths paper. -
SpartanMum:
To be fair, I missed out one factor. When DD1 was recommended for additional math enrichment class, we sign her up thinking that since she was good at math, the additional stretching would help. But today, we believe the enrichment was actually what killed her confidence; the questions were tough and beyond from the enrichment. Today DD2 no issues with the same set of questions that DD1 did. Which one reason why we now rejected all math enrichment recommended.Does not seem reasonable to set a standard that is so high that high ability children actually end up failing. It never ceases to amaze me that these things are actually happening in schools! Surely this school and others like them were driving the standards up leading to ridiculously hard MAth papers in the years preceding 2013.
Why would educators who are supposed to enhance children's confidence level go all out to destroy it instead? -
SpartanMum:
Oh that's a bit different then.
Does not seem reasonable to set a standard that is so high that high ability children actually end up failing. It never ceases to amaze me that these things are actually happening in schools! Surely this school and others like them were driving the standards up leading to ridiculously hard MAth papers in the years preceding 2013.BlueBells:
Janet_lee88,
I so agree with you.
Personal experience : my DD1 has always been good at maths, though not 100/100, nearest was 98 / 100. Then it went nose-diving in mid P5 all the way through P6, to a range of 45 - 55. Imagine the confidence she lost. I was a wreck, very scared and worried. I offered her tuition. She rejected. So it was extremely nerve wrecking because to force tuition on her would break her and tip her to the point of a breakdown. My faith was shaking. I am the mum; I know her limits.
But I have been an involved parent since PV time, so I have been talking with teachers and all, and we were told the math standard in her school is very high. Their average ability would equate to a high ability for math compared to other schools in the neighbourhood. I also know my child's standard - no way she would fail PSLE, just how well she will score.
In the end, we just bit our tongue and hung on.
Why would educators who are supposed to enhance children's confidence level go all out to destroy it instead?
Almost everyone in DS1's class goes for Math Olympiad training except for him and maybe a couple of others. I dunno if that is the reason or what but in yesterday's CA1 Math paper, DS1 was one of just two kids who found the paper difficult. :roll: I always wonder if the school pitches certain questions at a super high level which really floors DS but I guess we just got to live with that. His school says their standard for Math is high - I personally think they are just referring to the top class and the Math Olympiad kids...seems a bit unfair to the rest who are also taking the same paper: especially now that kids are using their results for DSA applications. -
I guess these enrichments work like double-edged swords. My only regret for DD1, was I didn’t 当机立断 and cut off the recommended math enrichment when she was struggling. Now, we are slowly, but surely, building back that confidence.
Learning from experience, DD2 is not cut to be scientist or has major interest in that area, so we rejected the unnecessary. -
psle is sat by students nation-wide...it depends on number of students sitting for psle and t-score is measured...pardon me if I left out anything.
some schools set tough prelims while others set average ones...tough papers crush the confidence of students even high ability ones...of course the average papers will make high ability ones over-confident.
striking the right balance...there is hardly a solution because every child is different. we want our kids to max out a little more than their norm but yet can't afford to have them stand on the edge of the building. :siao: -
janet_lee88:
Yup! It is not easy for the schools and I guess this is where we as parents have to make some hard decisions.psle is sat by students nation-wide...it depends on number of students sitting for psle and t-score is measured...pardon me if I left out anything.
some schools set tough prelims while others set average ones...tough papers crush the confidence of students even high ability ones...of course the average papers will make high ability ones over-confident.
striking the right balance...there is hardly a solution because every child is different. we want our kids to max out a little more than their norm but yet can't afford to have them stand on the edge of the building. :siao:
The system we put our children through is such that it groups students according to overall academic ability often without taking into account their individual strengths and weaknesses. With class sizes of 40 in mainstream schools, there is little opportunity for teachers to extend a helping hand to address individual needs. Parents who have the time and resources can help fill this gap (e.g. through tuition or personal coaching) but for the rest.....
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