PSLE 2012 - Results Discussion

[kwcllf]

janet_lee88:

MKK:

Last Thursday, we were at the school DD was posted to. Half way through the principal's speech, my DD rested her head on my shoulder and insisted on going home. It broke my heart. Don't know what is going to happen on the first day of school.

After PSLE, results life has come to a standstill. Holidays are burnt.

It is hard and painful to accept...even till now, washing the new uniforms didn't make me feel good. There is no sense of belonging and that pain still lingers. But as parents we have to encourage our kids to work harder in sec 1...forget all the unhappiness and work towards a better future in their new sec school. Primary school...PSLE is all over. My son wasn't enthusiastic attending the orientation last Thur.

I understand your feeling perfectly as my DS did below expectation and also did not get into his first choice becos of the higher COP this Dragon year. We are appealing and is now waiting for the school to call.

However, no matter what, try your utmost to put a positive spin into your kid's posted school. Tell your kid that in secondary school, there will be new friends, new and interesting programs, etc.....

Maybe after starting secondary school, you kid would forget about the disappointment :xedfingers: as there will be much interesting challenge ahead.

All the best and try not to feel so downtrodden as it has a way of filtering down to the kid without us even knowing it sometimes.

[Nebbermind]

slmkhoo:

watmekiasu:

[quote=\"Nebbermind\"]If parents had already pumped in extra resources such as tuition and the kids still did not do well, shouldn't the kids take responsibility to what happened?


I think the parents should take the responsibility for this. They should have checked to ensure that the tuition was effective. I am a hands-off mum but I make a point of giving my dd the past year papers during SA1 and SA2. From there, I can tell if the tuition is effective and her weaknesses. I take action from there.
Tuition may be 'effective', but it doesn't mean the child will necessarily do well, just better than without tuition.

[/quote]For me, the 当时人, the main stakeholder must have the right attitude in order for anything to happen. If the kid doesn't realise he is doing it for HIMSELF, and not for his parents, or his teachers, or his school, he will remain in that state forever. If one doesn't have kids who find studying a chore, he is really blessed. Most kids I know would rather do something else than studying.

As for tuition, how much can a tutor do in the 1~2 hrs a week. If your kids did badly in p3 sa2, would you want him to revisit p3 stuff, or dive straight into p4. If we are coaching our kids by ourselves, we have no problem tweaking our lessons. But for paid tutor, sometimes we expect a miracle worker. Tuition is only effective if the kid is aware of where he is lacking and seek help in those areas. If he or the parents expect the tutor to give a generic lesson which is no diff from what is done in school, then it'll go nowhere.

[rains]

Nebbermind:

slmkhoo:

[quote=\"rains\"]Perhaps you should have set a higher target? My kid said her teachers told them to target 270. Only one boy managed to hit it. I told my kid to set a higher target than what she originally wanted bcos we almost always fall short of our target.

I'm not sure I agree with setting high targets if they are unrealistic. It may work for a small proportion of kids who are spurred on by such targets, but I think many kids could find it demoralising. I speak from my own experience as my father always set high targets even though he knew they were out of my reach. He had the same reasoning as you, but what it did to me was that I always felt that I was not good enough no matter how hard I worked and how well I did (and objectively speaking, I always did pretty well), and that feeling is still with me even though I am already nearly 50yo! That's why I won't to do that to my kids now.

Well, if the teacher is talking about 270, it's not your ordinary class lah!
They are probably the high performing kids at the end of the spectrum who know no limit so setting such high expectation helps to push them to another level.

For my kids, working on incremental improvement thought P5/6 leading to psle is more important. And since the raffles or hc or ny were/are/never my fav schools, life is a lot easier [/quote]I noticed that for psle, it's not uncommon for children to get 20 or 30 points lower than what they had targeted for ie. you target 240, you get 220 or 210; you target 270 and you get 250 or 240.

My kid's class isn't exactly high-performing except for a handful. Perhaps the teachers were speaking to those minority, but I thought it wouldn't harm for the average kids to target high. But because they aimed high, the kids' performance exceeded the teachers' expectations. There are also children in the range of 230+ and 240+, but who is to say they are not fit to aim for 270. For all you know, it was precisely they aimed for 270 that they managed to get 230+.

My kid was in the 60s and 70s for Science and Maths respectively, but it doesn't mean we should give up trying for an A*. She got As for them and we are just so glad that she did.

I understand where you are coming from. I once saw parents targeting 4 A*s when the child was failing every subject. That was definitely unrealistic. I think it would be demoralising for even the tutor because the child didn't even have a good foundation.

I had experiences of having and falling short of unrealistic expectations as well. I agree that such expectations would demoralise children and even make the children give up since they can't see themselves meeting them.

My previous post was posted in context of MKK's situation. The child obviously was above average, but aiming to get 245 or 250 is precarious given the unpredictability of t-score calculation.

[Nebbermind]

What is 270?


If 260 is that top 3%, I would guess that 270 is like the top 1%.
If the school psle cohort is 250~300, that would generally equal to the (regular) top 3 kids if it is distributed equally throughout the SG cohort. But since we know it is not, then most schools will have no more than 1~2 kids with that kind of score.

Did I get the numbers wrong in my estimation...and being realistic? :scratchhead:

[jedamum]

With schools setting different difficulty papers and 4A yielding 220+ at times, how do one set targets?

[Skyed]

jedamum:

With schools setting different difficulty papers and 4A yielding 220+ at times, how do one set targets?

Full marks for everything

[Nebbermind]

Skyed:

jedamum:

With schools setting different difficulty papers and 4A yielding 220+ at times, how do one set targets?

Full marks for everything

I know that even when one has no aptitude for Chinese n consistently low B or C, can still get A in psle. If one can hit high As for all four subjects, I'm sure that would be at least 250...maybe even mid 250! So that grades aren't really reflective of where u stand within the cohort.

[wonderm]

It is very interesting to see how differently we parents work with our kids.


For us, we never set any T-score target not because we think it will give them too much stress, but because even we parents do not know how to translate 270, 260 or 250 to actions. Since T-score is a ranking score, to us, it is meaningless for us to set a goal for them to be top 3% or top 10% of the national cohort. They wouldn’t know how to be top x% of 40,000+ students. We also do not set any goals in terms of marks like above 90%, 80% or 70% because it really depends on how hard the papers are… Since there is no way we can know or control how hard the teachers set the papers, I think it is unfair or not very useful for us to set such goals.

Instead, we monitor the children’s learning attitude and also the type of mistakes they make. From the mistakes we can tell if they don’t fully grasp the concepts or they are making too many careless mistakes, these need to be addressed as and when it happens, not till after the exam. If we sense they lack concentration or motivation during their revision, we will also give them feedback and make them understand they are studying for themselves. With these things addressed, we always re-assure them that the final result will take care of itself and whatever the T-score, it is good enough that they have worked hard and done their best.

[rains]

It’s different strokes for different folks.


Not exactly a numerical person, I had no inkling that only the top 1% gets 270. I read ‘PSLE Survival Guide’ and the kid targeted at 270 to get 247. I thought it would be a ‘safe’ t-score to target at even if it’s unrealistic.

It’s no use telling my kid that she had to study for herself. For herself, I reckon she would think passing would be good enough. It’s no use telling her that she just needed to do her best, because her best would be defined as finishing an exam with every question answered - correctly or not, that’s another matter. She wanted a good score to get into her dream school, but how much effort to put in and how to get that score, she had no idea. To give my sleeping beauty an idea of what ‘studying hard’ means, we had to give her a target score and explain the implications of getting that score. Her school churns out t-scores since P5, so it’s easier for her to see horror where she stood. Of course, that doesn’t mean the end of the works, but that’s another story.

[Jakaranda]

slmkhoo:

watmekiasu:

[quote=\"Nebbermind\"]If parents had already pumped in extra resources such as tuition and the kids still did not do well, shouldn't the kids take responsibility to what happened?


I think the parents should take the responsibility for this. They should have checked to ensure that the tuition was effective. I am a hands-off mum but I make a point of giving my dd the past year papers during SA1 and SA2. From there, I can tell if the tuition is effective and her weaknesses. I take action from there.
Tuition may be 'effective', but it doesn't mean the child will necessarily do well, just better than without tuition.

[/quote]More importantly a pupil should take in and absorb every bit of information learnt in school. The school should help you firm up your foundation and tuition is supposed to teach you something that is higher than the standard level, more like an enrichment. I always listen with 120% attention during lessons, ask whenever I have doubts and complete my homework with my best effort. Also, I take my time to relax at home after school (and completing my homework) as my self-studying is done either in school or the library. (And I did pretty well in PSLE!)
It's just not about the duration but the quality of studying.