School Examinations Too Difficult
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beanbear:
Transparency of exam papers are temporary strategies I feel. We are not getting to the root of the issue. I think there is fundamentally something wrong when we try to socially engineer young children's performance via streaming at very young ages. Streaming is happening at every level of primary school; the worst being PSLE - a damaging streaming tool whose victims are young 12 year olds.
Will unabridged (complete) PSLE past years' papers help? Please read the following link and vote if you have an opinion on the suggestion.coast:
[quote=\"beanbear\"]
I feel so pained by the amount of pain being subjected to primary school children & parents.
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35434
Why the need to stream or differentiate the bright from the not so bright? Why is there a need to put the brightest of the brightest within the same school compound? There is a social engineering process that's going on at the highest levels and I feel so sick by this whole thing because there are many many bright children whose psychological, emotional, physical, spiritual well-being has been sacrificed for the sake of the top 5% of society.
A revolution is needed.[/quote]Thanks for sharing your views :rahrah:
I have mentioned in an ealier post (link below) that I am a firm believer that majority of the kids are intellect equals, plus or minus an insignificant band and I do not agree with streaming at such a young age.
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php&f=1&t=35402&p=760240
Hence I do not disagree with the gist of your view.
Our government is very proud of our world-class education and our Education Minister already said that our system is fine and just need minor changes.
So I do not think streaming will change in the near future and even if it does, perhaps in minor ways (say from P2 to P3).
I think many (or all?) schools practise streaming after P2. Many parents are actually supportive of this too, even for those with kids not in the top 2 classes. Why? There are pros and cons to streaming. Some parents believe in the pros. Some schools also allocate better resources for the weaker classes e.g., better class ratio, assigning teachers with proven records, ... But there are also schools that focus on the top 2 classes and much less attention on the others.
Interestingly, MOE is going to remove P1 & P2 exams (which I think is great). Yes schools will still continue to stream after P2?
Transparency of PSLE exam papers is not a cure-all. But it will help if the % of “higher ability” questions is indeed only a handful of questions.
I certainly do not think it is worth to trade many hours (even some top PSLE scorers spend 6 to 7 hours daily AFTER school studying for PSLE) at the expense of our kids’ precious childhood. But many parents and kids got over worried about PSLE because some schools set killer papers in P5 or P6 (or even earlier). Without the transparency of PSLE exam papers, many parents and kids thought that this is the PSLE standard.
Another forum writer (sunflower) mentioned that there are schools who try to mirror PSLE standards. I am delighted to hear that. Perhaps when PSLE papers are made transparent, more schools will do that and haha, we will find out such schools from this forum and it's up to us to make a choice for our kids. I know some parents will still prefer schools with killer papers but at least we have a choice, right?
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35402&p=770252 -
coast:
If high-performing kids already need to spend 6-7 hours studying after school to get that A*, isn't it already revealing how difficult the exam papers are? I don't remember studying even that amount a day for my University exams!!! My P6 DS is studying 2-3 hours after doing homework just to get by with 60+ marks because I believe he should still get at least 8.5 hours of sleep a day and still get an hour of physical playtime 2-3 times a week. My poor P5 DD does the same and fails every subject even with tuition and mummy's personal coaching + therapy. Our education system is cruel to the underperforming. My DD is creative, bright and articulate but has a learning preferences that the school system will not be able to accommodate. A highly kinesthetic child is almost doomed to failure in the system that honours the child with auditory strengths.
I certainly do not think it is worth to trade many hours (even some top PSLE scorers spend 6 to 7 hours daily AFTER school studying for PSLE) at the expense of our kids’ precious childhood. But many parents and kids got over worried about PSLE because some schools set killer papers in P5 or P6 (or even earlier). Without the transparency of PSLE exam papers, many parents and kids thought that this is the PSLE standard.
Another forum writer (sunflower) mentioned that there are schools who try to mirror PSLE standards. I am delighted to hear that. Perhaps when PSLE papers are made transparent, more schools will do that and haha, we will find out such schools from this forum and it's up to us to make a choice for our kids. I know some parents will still prefer schools with killer papers but at least we have a choice, right?
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35402&p=770252
If we segregate children by ability, then why not have a different exam for the children who are of \"less academic\" ability. Why use the same exam that pitched for higher ability. Right now, we have foundation exams for kids who have been failing really badly like scoring single digit numbers. Our education is prone to extremes. Those kids who score 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's - my sense is these numbers are by no means small. Schools are very secretive about such information because if parents really found out the actual number of children having such marks, we'll be up in arms and we'll have real evidence that exams are pitched too difficult.
The assessment system is created to have bright people, people inclined towards academic success to shine and make people with other giftings feel very stupid. Yet, primary school education is compulsory, PSLE is compulsory. We are not given real choices as parents. The real punishing difficulty of exams comes at P5 and by then, too late to transfer school right? What choice is there? What information do we have as parents about schools who test children fairly, and which schools test cruelly? -
The system is unfair to Visual Learners too. My DS learns best through the eyes. Once he gets to read something, he retains after a single pass. He captures very little of what he hears. When I give him verbal instructions, he often misses out key points. But when we list down points in writing, he delivers on every one.
Traditionally, people who scored well academically were those who would put in the hours to read. Visual learners tended to score because knowledge was contained in textbooks. Nowadays, without adequate textbooks, not only visual learners are disadvantaged… other learners (save the auditory) are also disadvantaged because parents can’t use the textbooks to devise ways to help their children access material in the way they learn best. -
beanbear:
:goodpost:missk:
My advice is to let a child know that exams are important but not everything in life. Life does not end with psle or O levels, or A levels. Also, parents themselves be realistic, and have faith in your child when they are working hard, and encourage them to work smarter and harder, if they are not. If they are not academically inclined, then at least know the basics well. Compare a child with themselves, rather than with other children. Meanwhile, I hope that a minister will have a child who will struggle academically... So that they understand what most parents go through
A minister whose child struggles academically will not be surfaced nationally because do you think the minister will allow his child to get through without tuition? His million dollar pay cheque will afford his child any tutor in the nation. WIll he whisper into his colleague HSK's ears that the education system is too difficult, pls do something about it?
It's unfair to say that our child is not academically inclined at primary school level. These days, our education at primary school is testing inferential skills that require university graduates to decipher!!! Even with parents like myself studying the science textbooks and learning mathematics syllabus, I still find the exam questions going beyond basics. I've had Polytechnic lecturers helping O level students say O levels science is easier to pass that PSLE science.
A young child's brain is still growing and developing. We short change our children by testing them too young and at too difficult levels. We cannot dicate our fast our children's brains should grow by setting difficult exam papers. We then call them stupid because the children don't know why they can't grasp the difficult concepts and they can't understand why all these adults are screaming at them, and keep pumping them tuition after tuition. -
Actually , Until now, I still cannot understand what is Heuristic, can any kind soul explain in a layman term ? TIA.
janet_lee88:
Our poor kids are being screamed at, either by us parents and/or tutors. Why? Bcos they can't produce the answers to inferential questions in OE section. Tutors panic bcos they have to show results to parents. Teachers in some schools sit together only to set either CA1 or CA2 papers, nothing
else. I fail to understand why kids are taught heuristic and models. Is model used in sec school?
Some P6 kids are not even 12 when they finish PSLE. My son was given a journal to be done this June. The title is 'Really? Really!' :slapshead: -
Heuristics are mental shortcuts to resolving a thinking problem. You normally develop these short cuts through high volume experience with a certain type of problem. For example, a chess grandmaster would have developed a set of heuristics that allows him to quickly process complex problems posed by various chessboard configurations because he has played and won thousands of games.
The high standards of the PSLE do not give children enough time to develop these heuristics on their own... powered by high volume practice (hard work) and raw IQ (talent). Hence, these heuristics are TAUGHT in order to boost our children's thinking capacity vis-a-vis certain types of problem sums.
The dangers of heuristics are clear. Heuristics can lead to errors of judgment because they are mental shortcuts. Research in psychology documents many types of erroneous judgment related to heuristics. In PSLE Math, a child with a rock solid Math foundation can boost his performance after being taught heuristics... However, a child with a poor foundation, has not developed a good sense of numbers to protect him from making erroneous judgment. He may thus mis-apply heuristics. -
Chenonceau:
I agree; some try to teach the heuristics as \"methods\", give them names and teach the kids to memorise when to use them. Tweak the question somewhat and the kids fail to see that they can use the same heuristics...Heuristics are mental shortcuts to resolving a thinking problem. You normally develop these short cuts through high volume experience with a certain type of problem. For example, a chess grandmaster would have developed a set of heuristics that allows him to quickly process complex problems posed by various chessboard configurations because he has played and won thousands of games.
The high standards of the PSLE do not give children enough time to develop these heuristics on their own... powered by high volume practice (hard work) and raw IQ (talent). Hence, these heuristics are TAUGHT in order to boost our children's thinking capacity vis-a-vis certain types of problem sums.
The dangers of heuristics are clear. Heuristics can lead to errors of judgment because they are mental shortcuts. Research in psychology documents many types of erroneous judgment related to heuristics. In PSLE Math, a child with a rock solid Math foundation can boost his performance after being taught heuristics... However, a child with a poor foundation, has not developed a good sense of numbers to protect him from making erroneous judgment. He may thus mis-apply heuristics.
DD faced this problem initially and because Mummy was poor in Math and was also not good at \"spotting\" which \"method\" to apply. Mummy then went with her strength - languages and simply showed DD the methods without confining her to only use this method for this type of question and that method for the other type of question. We read each problem sum and asked ourselves \" What does this sentence tell me?\", \" Can I write a mathematical statement from this sentence?\". We went through alot of questions [ this was my back-log clearing method -- when I had too much to mark and was back logged, I'd set DD Math papers which were much faster to mark]. This 2 pronged approach worked wonders for DD who is not intuitive where numbers are concerned.
The double reward this brought was that when the grades came in, DD started to believe she was \"good in Math\" and tried harder, and was largely unfazed by \"challenging questions\". -
psle2011mum:
Agree with you totally about helping a child to decipher the language as the first step to understanding. Like you, I'm very bad with Math, and now helping DS and DD purely from my strength in the English Language and believe it or not, using my logical skills honed from studying Philosophy!!! I agree that the heuristics or whatever method these Maths gurus want to call it, can cause more confusion to the child if the child cannot unpack the semantics & syntax. Some test papers have such confusing syntax that there are so many ways of interpreting it. Many Maths test paper setters are not effective in English and therefore when they set the problem sums, they may not even be conscious about how much confusion they cause to the poor children. How often I've heard this common refrain from parents - are they testing Maths concepts or English comprehension?
I agree; some try to teach the heuristics as \"methods\", give them names and teach the kids to memorise when to use them. Tweak the question somewhat and the kids fail to see that they can use the same heuristics...Chenonceau:
Heuristics are mental shortcuts to resolving a thinking problem. You normally develop these short cuts through high volume experience with a certain type of problem. For example, a chess grandmaster would have developed a set of heuristics that allows him to quickly process complex problems posed by various chessboard configurations because he has played and won thousands of games.
The high standards of the PSLE do not give children enough time to develop these heuristics on their own... powered by high volume practice (hard work) and raw IQ (talent). Hence, these heuristics are TAUGHT in order to boost our children's thinking capacity vis-a-vis certain types of problem sums.
The dangers of heuristics are clear. Heuristics can lead to errors of judgment because they are mental shortcuts. Research in psychology documents many types of erroneous judgment related to heuristics. In PSLE Math, a child with a rock solid Math foundation can boost his performance after being taught heuristics... However, a child with a poor foundation, has not developed a good sense of numbers to protect him from making erroneous judgment. He may thus mis-apply heuristics.
DD faced this problem initially and because Mummy was poor in Math and was also not good at \"spotting\" which \"method\" to apply. Mummy then went with her strength - languages and simply showed DD the methods without confining her to only use this method for this type of question and that method for the other type of question. We read each problem sum and asked ourselves \" What does this sentence tell me?\", \" Can I write a mathematical statement from this sentence?\". We went through alot of questions [ this was my back-log clearing method -- when I had too much to mark and was back logged, I'd set DD Math papers which were much faster to mark]. This 2 pronged approach worked wonders for DD who is not intuitive where numbers are concerned.
The double reward this brought was that when the grades came in, DD started to believe she was \"good in Math\" and tried harder, and was largely unfazed by \"challenging questions\". -
Math is using 'English' in a mathematical way. That 'more than/less than' thing is something I just cannot figure out. My son in P6 has given up explaining :oops: the other crazy thing is counting number of legs of 3 chickens and 5 dogs. One more thing, that question about 'how much did they have at first'....totally stumped me
Kids must have a strong command of English in order to handle the other 3 subjects. Try getting a child weak in it to understand 'keyword' for science. -
Chenonceau:
Heuristics are mental shortcuts to resolving a thinking problem. You normally develop these short cuts through high volume experience with a certain type of problem. For example, a chess grandmaster would have developed a set of heuristics that allows him to quickly process complex problems posed by various chessboard configurations because he has played and won thousands of games.
The high standards of the PSLE do not give children enough time to develop these heuristics on their own... powered by high volume practice (hard work) and raw IQ (talent). Hence, these heuristics are TAUGHT in order to boost our children's thinking capacity vis-a-vis certain types of problem sums.
The dangers of heuristics are clear. Heuristics can lead to errors of judgment because they are mental shortcuts. Research in psychology documents many types of erroneous judgment related to heuristics. In PSLE Math, a child with a rock solid Math foundation can boost his performance after being taught heuristics... However, a child with a poor foundation, has not developed a good sense of numbers to protect him from making erroneous judgment. He may thus mis-apply heuristics.
I agree. My DD is also not good in choosing the correct method although she will do if I give her clues. Still trying to figure out and not fixed yet. The way she handles some challenging sums, I really tell you - feel like vomiting blood.
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