Will unabridged (complete) PSLE past years' papers help?
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I’ll give my thoughts as a teenager on the situation.
It’s good to have complete PSLE past year examination papers for students, definitely, as it helps to give them an understanding of the format and probability of questions asked. However, the Singapore government is trying to move away from rote learning (memorisation), so there would be more variety of questions that would require logical thinking skills.
Honestly speaking, tuition centres are using the wrong strategy to help children excel in PSLE. Practice is perfect, but only with the right kind. I honestly prefer if tuition centres actually focus on skills that enable students to:
-Understand the context of the question and teach students what to think about first when faced with a question phrased in such a way it’s hard to decipher.
-Thinking skills that encompasses a variety of topics enabling students to achieve better understanding of variety of questions. The MOE format for PSLE Maths is on their website, so they could actually use teach these skills through various means, and apply them in various circumstances, giving them an idea of how it is to be used.
-Answering of scripts - how to phrase responses to ensure maximum marks achieved.
-How to efficiently check the paper.
Schools need to set their papers from the bottom up, batch by batch. They need to evaluate from the very beginning of their education in primary school, and then work their progress from there. It’s not fair to suddenly set a hard paper when the class isn’t prepared. It’s like running a marathon - slow and steady goes the race.
I think the best way to evaluate is to actually analyse the responses of students to each question, and find the problem in three areas:
-Knowledge of topic
-Intepretation of question
-Phrasing of responses
…and other areas if necessary. Then, they should focus on them, and then set the same difficulty for those particular questions. Other questions must have a raised difficulty in that case.
I think 20 exam papers, one per week for each subject, would be good enough for each student. For the remaining time, they must develop their thinking skills - analytical, observation, and try to get practice on how to improve them. For English, Chinese and Science, it’s definitely hand to (causally) read books, especially National Geographic. That’s going to help them all the way until Uni. -
comfy:
Hi comfy, thanks for sharing your view
Hi coast, I don't know whether publishing the past PSLE will help the kids. This might lead to more work for the kids and perhaps parents might push them to attend tuition/enrichment centres which concentrate/practise these past year papers. And this might lead to another vicious circle.
Abridged PSLE past years’ papers are already in the market (e.g.,Popular), so having the complete (EXACT) papers is not going to make much of a difference in terms of additional work. Besides, it’s only 1 paper a year for each subject, compared to the top schools’ exam papers (15 or more schools?).
Except for the kid’s own school past year exams papers, I really do not see much need to practise other top schools’ exam papers if we have access to the EXACT PSLE papers, especially if the % of the “higher ability” questions is only a handful as widely believed.
The schools would have difficulty justifying killer papers (which you can read in this forum, even at P3 level) with a high % of “higher ability” questions, especially if they are not taught adequately in schools.
40% failed
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=22313&start=120
Questions in exams not taught in school
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=22313&start=110
The students who did well in these killer papers are usually those who have tuition, enrichment, coached by parents, access to quality materials… etc and unlikely to be those without such help, even if the child is bright and diligent.
If it’s common that 40% fail or quite a few questions came out in exams but not taught in school, is it a wonder that so many kids are going for tuition, enrichment, spending many hours on top schools' exam papers, worksheets, ...?
I wonder if schools submit their exams results to MOE? If so, how would MOE feel when they see poor exam results, especially P6 CA1, SA1 results (as mentioned by many parents that their schools set VERY DIFFICULT papers)? -
Come to think about it, I think having the unabridged PSLE past years’ paper has certain benefits. It will be transparent for all parents/kids to know what to expect, it will cut down the guessing game. Might bring down the level of difficulty. If parents are not so KS, then the kids must just need to practise that only.
On the other hand, MOE might face more complaints if the papers seem to get tougher and tougher or vice versa. Don’t know whether they are keen on that. -
comfy:
Hi comfy,Come to think about it, I think having the unabridged PSLE past years' paper has certain benefits. It will be transparent for all parents/kids to know what to expect, it will cut down the guessing game. Might bring down the level of difficulty. If parents are not so KS, then the kids must just need to practise that only.
On the other hand, MOE might face more complaints if the papers seem to get tougher and tougher or vice versa. Don't know whether they are keen on that.
In response to Today's queries (published 8 May 2012), a Ministry of Education (MOE) spokesperson reiterated that the level of difficulty of Primary School Leaving Examination mathematics \"has not increased over the years\".
I think SEAB has a reply sometime back that it has a process to ensure a similar level of PSLE standard each year. I can't find this article, anyone has the link to that SEAB reply? -
coast:
Cannot find the article but a parent and former teacher has posted in ST Forum about
Hi comfy,comfy:
Come to think about it, I think having the unabridged PSLE past years' paper has certain benefits. It will be transparent for all parents/kids to know what to expect, it will cut down the guessing game. Might bring down the level of difficulty. If parents are not so KS, then the kids must just need to practise that only.
On the other hand, MOE might face more complaints if the papers seem to get tougher and tougher or vice versa. Don't know whether they are keen on that.
In response to Today's queries (published 8 May 2012), a Ministry of Education (MOE) spokesperson reiterated that the level of difficulty of Primary School Leaving Examination mathematics \"has not increased over the years\".
I think SEAB has a reply sometime back that it has a process to ensure a similar level of PSLE standard each year. I can't find this article, anyone has the link to that SEAB reply?
'AS A parent and former teacher, I have noticed a widening gap between how children learn and how they are tested in schools.
School syllabuses appear to be increasingly introducing tough questions'
'The MOE's stand has been that the levels of difficulty have not increased over the years.'
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35402&start=410
Please vote after reading the following:-
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35434 -
coast:
SEAB reply:-
Hi comfy,comfy:
Come to think about it, I think having the unabridged PSLE past years' paper has certain benefits. It will be transparent for all parents/kids to know what to expect, it will cut down the guessing game. Might bring down the level of difficulty. If parents are not so KS, then the kids must just need to practise that only.
On the other hand, MOE might face more complaints if the papers seem to get tougher and tougher or vice versa. Don't know whether they are keen on that.
In response to Today's queries (published 8 May 2012), a Ministry of Education (MOE) spokesperson reiterated that the level of difficulty of Primary School Leaving Examination mathematics \"has not increased over the years\".
I think SEAB has a reply sometime back that it has a process to ensure a similar level of PSLE standard each year. I can't find this article, anyone has the link to that SEAB reply?
http://www.seab.gov.sg/publicCommunications/mediaReplies/PSLE_TODAY_Forum_Reply_20071015.pdf
Though it is dated 2007, I believe its stand remains the same today ... that PSLE standard has remain more or less the same across the years.
But it seems that school exam papers are getting harder and harder with 'Math Olympiad questions in some primary school Math exam questions', refer link
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=276&start=50 -
A good post from psle2011mum:-
psle2011mum:
MOE being the copyright owner of the PSLE questions designates authorised publishers to publish their questions. Since MOE doesn't charge for their Intellectual Property rights viz a viz these publishers, the publishers just print and sell and hence the books are cheap.
But it is strange to sell the answer sheet seperately.HAPPYH:
[quote=\"janet_lee88\"]For SAP, the answer booklet is sold separately, which is why the question paper is sold cheaper than the EPH one. I calculated the cost earlier and realized it is about the same price for both publishers.
The answers are a market response to the fact that MOE allows publication of the questions but do not provide any answers; so these answer booklets are not from MOE but they exist because the publishers eg SAP/EPH hire their own people [ not sure who they are but I guess the same ones they hire to push out their assessment books ] to produce the answer booklet. That's why they are sold separately and that's why the answers are different and that's why you get mistakes in some of these answers.
DD's teacher did mark the Science PSLE book she did, but it took a long time getting back to us... I understand this well... there was a point of time I dreaded to set DD any Science papers because I knew I would spend hours marking it and doing corrections with DD on it. But mark it DD's Science teacher did and it was such a blessing to us because this had been DD's effort which I had corrected and gone through with her and the teacher validated our strategy and understanding when she marked them largely correct.
If you have a senior who has a marked set of these answers [ ie school marked or school issued the answers to these PSLE questions], it may be worthwhile borrowing these to see how the answers were structured. Reverse engineering helped me understand what the teachers were looking for.
I analysed alot of the great answer keys the RGS teachers did, plus DD1 had a Science teacher who was prepared to answer my email questions as to why a certain answer merited marks while another did not and I had an MOE curriculum specialist contact who was kind enough to point this blur mum in the right direction; so with a lot of God-sent help, we finally got a handle around Open ended questions for Science. I further validated this late in the day with the LISC books but before that, it had taken a lot of time going through many many questions and what I was sure were good answers to them, before I reached this stage.
As a very small step towards better resources for everyone, teachers can issue their answer key \"RGS style\" for each of their schools. They already have this because amongst a group of teachers who teach the level, the setter for that particular paper would have his/her answers and this would have gone round some QC meetings to arrive at an answer key for consistent marking. If each school did this for each of their exam papers, the market forces are already in place to make sure this gets out to the kids who need them-- aka Jeremy Exam Papers, mrswongtuition, orlesson, misskoh...
As another very small step, MOE can publish the MOE answer key \" RGS style\" for their questions.
Too much to ask? I don't think so -- TLLM.[/quote]http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/posting.php?mode=quote&f=69&p=771122 -
There are some discussion in the following link that GEP selection/screening past years' papers are sold at $800:-
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=30726&start=50
Maybe one day we can get unabridged PSLE past years' papers from external vendors too!