Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary
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Hi thanks all for responding to my post.
Actually my boy is in P3 already. However, I still feel rather "new" to the school as I feel that the school does not explain their system clearly to parents. It is good if your kid is able to translate what he/she heard from teachers or friends clearly to you. However, what they hear from friends may not be true sometimes. My boy told me his friends said the classes are ranked by their first alphabet, as in charity first, wisdom last. When we tried to clarify with his then P2 teacher, we did not get a clear indication and we felt that she tried to avoid the topic of class ranking.
Then later my friend clarified with her kid’s form teacher who claimed that the classes are ranked only for Charity, Faith, Grace and Hope. Students who are not in these classes but have good Chinese results are placed in Humility. The rest of the students are placed randomly into the other classes. I think I am confused.
How do you guys feel about ranking the kids from P2 onwards? In a way, I agree that it is easier to teach students of similar ability. However, isn’t ranking done based on just one year of formal schooling a little too early to judge a kid’s ability? A lot of kids are still not mature enough at that age, and I personally feel that it can sometimes be damaging to the morale of the kid when they start to hear some other kids compare between classes. I hope there are no bad remarks passed among kids which may have destroyed the confidence in others in the lower end classes. I also hope that by ranking, the school has not deprived any students of opportunity to be exposed to more challenging methods of learning.
As for the compo, I still wish they could return the paper for parents to at least take a look. As a parent, I would like to know what my kid had written and what went wrong so that I can better help him improve the next round. If the teachers can stand up for the mark she/he has awarded, they should not be worried of being challenged. And if there are really two teachers marking one paper, all the more they should be able to justify the mark if there is really questions raised by parents.
Above said explains why I said in my previous post that I am feeling disappointed, it is about the transparency of the system adopted in this school.
Sorry for the long post. Need an outlet… -
freezeat2, with regards to why compo papers are not returned, schools use paper 1 marks for moderating the final marks for borderline cases. Until a final mark is confirmed, the marks for the paper ones can still change for such cases. Composition scripts are not returned to the parents as it would reflect inconsistencies for pupils who required last minute decisions to moderate their marks. Although the occurrence is rare but it does happen to some ambiguous cases when streaming those who missed by a couple of marks at the borderline. Actually, if you really want to look at the script, I am sure you can personally request from your ds’s teacher but you might need to make a special trip as I believe you are not allowed to bring it home.
For my P2 dd’s class, moderation is quite unlikely to happen as they are basically strong in the subject so no need for any form of moderation, thus her teacher allowed them to look at their scripts.
As for the banding of classes based on subject from Humility onwards, it’s new to me. I thought they were all banded based on overall results, like what your ds had stated: Based on first letter of class name.
Yes, I do feel it’s tough on the little ones ranking them at end of P1 but I felt it puts the parents and students of a good school in perspective. Academic Excellence is top priority. If you hv the calibre and tenacity, you become cream of the crop. Yearly banding keeps the kids on their toes, those who are late-bloomers, can always try to move up to a better class. When you band the kids, teachers can teach according to their pace and thus best help is administered. In our case, the younger, the better. At the lower primary, like you said, some are still immature but it should stabilise at P4 where the kids got used to Science. After that, it’ll be full steam to prepare for PSLE. Everything happens quickly so good to prepare the kids as early as possible if they can manage. -
Hi Everyone,
I have reading this thread since 2 years ago and have gathered many useful info. THANKS TO ALL.
My child is now in P1. On the discussion with respect to streaming every year since P1. I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I agree that it helps to put things into perspective for both the child and parents. But on the other hand it occur to me that it could be too stressful/frustrated to start this system so early (since P1 cos' child still not mature).
My child did average for this SA1 and I was really upset (maybe I need to be realistic) and angry with him for the tons of careless mistakes. And I think it affect my child because of the form teacher called me yesterday and inform me that my child was upset when he received his result slip (whereas all other kids in the class incl those did worse than him were indifferent). Teacher said in her view, my child results were quite alright. :?
I think this is PH system...it put alot of stress to both parents & child
I wonder how all of you survived through the system...probably all your dds are doing extremely well academically. -
freezeat2, class ranking is based on the year end overall results across all classes. My P3 boy is in Hu. Definitely not random ranking or good in Chinese but weak in other subjects. In fact, the P3 statistic shows that Hu3 is the avg class among the cohort as its class avg tallies closely to the cohort avg.
So far my P3 boy has a few compo exercises done from term 1 to term 2. Based on these sch exercises, I know which areas need to be improved and I explain to my boy there and then. I then pray that he remembers my teachings. On the morning of the paper 1, I remind him again to check his spelling, check his sentence, check his punctuation, vary the verb, adjective, pronouns, etc in each sentence and don’t attempt to write a 2 pages compo (write more increases the chances of more errors). With these in mind, he managed to score 17/20 this round. The paper 1 was returned to the class for viewing and returned to the teacher on the same day. My boy told me he had only 2-3 mistakes (either underlined or circled with red ink).
If your child’s class compo assignments has been fine all along, but the SA compo falls short of expectations, then I would think a discussion with the teacher and request to look at the paper might be possible.
This year, my boy brou back a checklist of the SA oral. He was also told by the teacher administering the oral that he scored 4.5 for his passage reading. So based on this info, we will able to come up with possible score for his pic discussion. I thought this is already a small improvement in the sys as in prior years, no such checklist was returned to the parents.
Many schools do not return the SA compo to parents. This is not only a flaw with PH. -
VbusyMum:
I think this is PH system...it put alot of stress to both parents & child
In my elder boy's case, I was not stressed as all his teachers except one are very responsible. We need only to engage CL tuition (his weak subject) and attend a crash course for the other subject he was not getting proper guidance in his PSLE year.
As for my P3 boy, I am stressed as the teachers are not doing a better job than I expected. The FT is always on MC, relief teacher not teaching much. As for the CL teacher, I was grossly wrong in my opinion after checking with another classmate's mother. So this Jun hols, I will be doing damage repair for term1 and term2.
Stress or no stress or how much stress really depends on what type of teachers your child gets. Like E3 whose girl is in CH2, the expectations are high. Whereas my boy in Hu3, expectations not high but teachers not doing a proper job, so in order to keep up for PSLE, I need to be more proactive. -
VbusyMum:
My child did average for this SA1 and I was really upset (maybe I need to be realistic) and angry with him for the tons of careless mistakes. And I think it affect my child because of the form teacher called me yesterday and inform me that my child was upset when he received his result slip (whereas all other kids in the class incl those did worse than him were indifferent).
My boys also made careless mistakes in their exams. I think it is good that your boy feels sad (rather than bo-chap like mine). This can be moulded into a motivation for him to check his work well in future. Talk to him and encourage him and also teach him how to check.
Many children do not know how to check effectively. To them as long as there is an ans to the qn, it is considered checked. Many do not re-read the qn again, check if the ans makes sense. It is exam skills that we should teach our children too. JMHO -
Jennifer:
Fully agree. I taught my dd to start checking on sections that most likely she'll make mistakes in first, eg. Section B or C for Math, OE Comprehension by underlining the answers in the passages, underline keywords for grammar section. For cloze passages, if she sensed that a word is inappropriate, check the previous answers again, instead of just anyhow choose. Lastly do final checks by re-doing the questions (esp Math) till the last second so as to minimise errors. For Math, she'll think longer for questions that required deeper understanding, she'll only write down an answer when she's confident of it.VbusyMum:
My child did average for this SA1 and I was really upset (maybe I need to be realistic) and angry with him for the tons of careless mistakes. And I think it affect my child because of the form teacher called me yesterday and inform me that my child was upset when he received his result slip (whereas all other kids in the class incl those did worse than him were indifferent).
Talk to him and encourage him and also teach him how to check.
Many children do not know how to check effectively. To them as long as there is an ans to the qn, it is considered checked. Many do not re-read the qn again, check if the ans makes sense. It is exam skills that we should teach our children too. JMHO
When I looked at her exam scripts, I realised the answers she had gotten wrong were usually questions that she did not know how to do e.g., to quote a phrase in OE compre passage. She has to write EXACTLY the same as what's reflected in the passage. She has no problems for quoting word or sentence but this time round, it was a phrase which she's supposed to quote and being a thinker, she felt that the phrase shouldn't start with Uppercaps so she quoted it with Lowercaps as it's not a sentence, although that particular phrase in the passage is taken from the beginning of a sentence. This is how my dd will learn. I can't teach her everything cos I may missed out during revision too.
For Chinese, cos of a scrutinising Chinese teacher, my dd would be very conscious of her strokes, so this time round, she wrote a stroke slightly longer (over-compensated) so that the teacher would not see it as an L for tianxiehanzi, though the character was the right one, but too bad, teacher couldn't accept it. This is the result of over-compensation on her part and our over-anxiety of teacher's high expectations on character strokes. We learn from our mistakes after each exam and what to let go and what to take note.
But what I was pleased is she puts in alot of effort for areas like Chinese and English OE comprehension sections. I could see that she was careful in answering the not-so-straightforward questions.
For compo, I told her to do 5 things,
1) Choose a suitable beginning,
2) Decide on which scenario those pictures were depicting (which she had a few templates in mind),
3) Number the helping words to be written for each picture (planning),
4) Have in mind a rough guide on where to end for each paragraph while writing so can guarantee a certain length (thus development of content), at the same time, use creative phrases and linking words,
5) Check grammar and spelling.
Kids lose marks cos of careless mistakes sometimes, not due to lack of knowledge so exam skills are truly important. Preparedness and unwavering attitude during exams are also important. When my dd told me she'll try her best before she went for the papers, I believed in her and stopped worrying cos I know whatever results she gets, she had tried her best. Oh...I prayed
a lot too for unforseen circumstances and things beyond my control. Haha. 
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Thanks for all your tips. I must say that my son FT is very responsible but the CL teacher is not as zealous …but his results were an opposite of situation. He scored very well for CL (high 90s) but the EL & Maths were just standard/class average…which I am puzzled.
Doing remedy this holiday by getting him a tutor for EL & Maths…
We have tried really hard to get into PH by doing PV (and we need to appeal cos it was rejected initially). I do believe that this is a good school but how we collectively (parent, child and teacher) manage through it.
Probably he is my first child and hence I need to learn how to teach/coach him correctly (right model for maths, compre tips etc)…the system is totally different from my own primary sch days. It there any idiot proof guide books for Maths & EL which parents could use to teach P! kids? -
VbusyMum:
It there any idiot proof guide books for Maths & EL which parents could use to teach P! kids?
I think for languages, the child must read and read and read, no shortcuts. We might not see the results now, but it certainly helps when the child goes to upper pri level. Just like my P3 boy. His p1 and p2 EL results were not fantastic. But this year, he was able to do well despite having FT who always is on mc and he does not even hv EL tuition. I still need to coach him on new topics like connectors. His MCQ grammer/vocabulary/cloze passage were almost full marks.
As for CL, we need to do more sentence construction. I bou the CL vocabulary guides and go through them with him. Must start to read more too.
And MA, to do well in sect A should not be too much of a prob as long as the child is careful. In sect B, there are usu. 1-2 IQ type of qn. You can purchase the Maths Olympiad book for junior level and refer to this book to teach your child how to see through the qn, esp those sq n circles add up to x, what is the sq/circle and the pyramid type of qn.
As for OE compreh in EL and CL, I am still working on how to help my boy. -
VbusyMum:
I had \"pm-ed\" you.
Probably he is my first child and hence I need to learn how to teach/coach him correctly (right model for maths, compre tips etc)....the system is totally different from my own primary sch days. It there any idiot proof guide books for Maths & EL which parents could use to teach P! kids?
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