Raffles Girls' School (Secondary) [*IP]

[Dharma]

Fairy:

Hi,
Apart from social/emotional adjustments, did your daughter encounter any difficulty adjusting to the total change in teaching/learning style of a mainstream primary education vs the IP? GEP students went through 3 years of independent learning programme & were mentored on research skills in primary school. Was the transition difficult for your daughter? How has she been doing in RGS? Since her PSLE results is so excellent, did she continue to score above the 90th percentile & GPA4 in sec1? In RI, getting a GPA of 4 does not mean one's score is at or above the 90th percentile of the cohort as GPA4 means above 80marks. Many who got GPA of 4 could get very close to 100 or even beyond 100 (with bonus marks). This is very common in Maths among the boys.

Hi Fairy,

I see that your son is in Sec 1(RI). It is certainly not surprising that quite a number of boys scoring GP of 4.0 with almost perfect marks. Boys are generally very strong at maths. What abt their GPA? GPA is calculated based on the average GPs of the subjects that they sit for based on old system. I was taken aback when one of my friends, whose son is in RI (Sec 2) this year and told me that his son has been consistently scoring GPA 3.9 to 4.0

My girl is in Sec 2(RGS) this year and agree with Edanson that it’s very difficult to get GPA 4.0 in RGS. Anything in the range of 3.8 and above is already very very excellent at least for Sec 1 and 2 and only a handful achieve that sort of results.

Kindly share.

[justbehappy]

[quote]
As for the results, not too sure about RI but I do not think anyone scored in the 90th percentile in her class (not even the GEP students) but not too sure about those in other classes. In fact the highest in class only obtain a GPA of about 3.8 so the RI students must be super.

I have no kids in RI now so I am not too sure about it .Is your boy from RI and achieving GPA 4 ? Maybe you can share about their standard and points with us . Thanks.

Probably I can only share with you next year when my boy goes there .

From what we understand from my girl's school, it is not so easy to achieve 90th percentile in secondary school. [/quote]I think here 90th percentile means top 10%, and not scoring 90% in the exam. GPA 4 in RI/RGS means scoring above 80. This is in fact quite common for subjects like Maths, Science, Geog, History but not so for languages.

It is the overall GPA of 4 that is extremely difficult - as it means one must get 4.0 for EVERY subject.

[JHFMum]

There’s more to education than getting perfect GPA. RGS & RI emphasise on holistic education and a lot of time and emphasis on developing all aspects of the child. If the child is all-rounded and fully participate in the various devt and leadership programme, naturally the scores will not be so perfect. However, the gain would be tremendous. Check out the famous & successful people who graduated from RI/RGS, you would see that they hardly achieved perfection academically when they were in the schs but were fully immersed in all sorts of prgrammes and allowed themselves to receive an all-rounded education.

[Fluffy]

I agreed. Hubby always told me that academic excellence is not as important as having a balance school life including nurturing friendship with your fellow school mates and doing your best in other areas such as CCA. Till this day, hubby keeps in touch with his school mates and many developed friendship and help each other whether in business or personal matters.


Hence, hubby never stops our son when he asks to join his school mates or friends for outing or a game of soccer. Networking is as important as your abilities in your job because you can never work alone to acheive success.

Success is not about how well you have achieve in your studies. "It is about how you pick up yourself after each failure!" Since hearing this quote from a professor who interviewed a potential scholarship applicant, I stop lecturing my children whenever they do not perform well but encourage them to learn from their mistakes and failure because success is always not far from their reach.

[edanson]

JHFMum:

There's more to education than getting perfect GPA. RGS & RI emphasise on holistic education and a lot of time and emphasis on developing all aspects of the child. If the child is all-rounded and fully participate in the various devt and leadership programme, naturally the scores will not be so perfect. However, the gain would be tremendous. Check out the famous & successful people who graduated from RI/RGS, you would see that they hardly achieved perfection academically when they were in the schs but were fully immersed in all sorts of prgrammes and allowed themselves to receive an all-rounded education.

Strongly agree. As I mentioned in my earlier post, life is more than just study. My girl also told me that she does not wish to get too high a score now because there is more to just study. She wants to play and mix around and be involved in many other school projects cum activities. I told her - whatever as long as she don't fail.

Life is too much stress in Singapore and too many ended in . . .
Probably after having so much stress in Primary school , one shoud take a step back to view things .

[Dharma]

Hi Edanson,


I’ve sent u a PM. Thanks

[fudgemum]

Hi Dharma,


In RGS, is your elder daugher taking Hindi or Tamil ?. If the MT is Tamil, is HMT compulsory. I am enquiring this for my daughter who is in P5 this year. TIA.

[Dharma]

fudgemum:

Hi Dharma,


In RGS, is your elder daugher taking Hindi or Tamil ?. If the MT is Tamil, is HMT compulsory. I am enquiring this for my daughter who is in P5 this year. TIA.

Hi fudgemum,

She is doing Malay. If I'm not mistaken, Tamil and Malay are being taught at HMT level in RGS. Is your girl doing Higher Tamil now?

[fudgemum]

Dharma:

Hi fudgemum,

She is doing Malay. If I'm not mistaken, Tamil and Malay are being taught at HMT level in RGS. Is your girl doing Higher Tamil now?

Yes. She is going HMT. But not interested in continuing. Is it true that in MGS also Tamil is taught at HMT level ?. What about NUSH ?. TIA.

[Dharma]

fudgemum:

Dharma:

Hi fudgemum,

She is doing Malay. If I'm not mistaken, Tamil and Malay are being taught at HMT level in RGS. Is your girl doing Higher Tamil now?

Yes. She is going HMT. But not interested in continuing. Is it true that in MGS also Tamil is taught at HMT level ?. What about NUSH ?. TIA.

Hi fudgemum,

MGS offers both Tamil and Higher Tamil while NUSH only offers Tamil.

My advise is that u should encourage your girl to carry on with Higher Tamil in Sec, if possible. She will sit for the Os at end of Sec 4 and if she gets a credit or better, she doesn’t have to do Tamil at As. That is 1 subject less…. More time for other subjects at A levels. She won’t enjoy that benefit if she does not take Higher Tamil.