It seems that the Term 2 test for P1 Chinese has been increased from 5 sections of 20 questions (last year) to 9 sections of 45 questions (Revision Paper) this year. Generally, it’s fine if more than half the class is scoring full marks last year. The school will probably try to raise the standard of their test papers to maintain a bell curve.
However, I do find some imbalance in in terms of the number of questions between Chinese and English. There are only 10 questions for English test versus 45 for Chinese. But Term 2 overall percentage is still 20% for both Chinese and English subject. So if you child is strong in English, you tend to get a better result. 10 questions may be too few to assess if your child is coping well with the subject. On the other hand, there should not be too many questions until the child cannot complete the paper within the given timeframe. It seems that P1 is tested on tenses this year (revision paper) but I don’t remember that being taught except for words in the spelling list.
There are some good practices I saw in some schools.
1. P1 Spelling list is a phrase rather than words. (Helps in their composition later,learn capitals and punctuations.)
2. P3 Spelling list is all the phrases needed for creative writing.
3. Each Term, they have a theme for English and Chinese composition (just like topics for maths)
(Student is able to focus on creative phrases for the theme to be tested and not be overwhelmed by open-ended assessment. By year end, they still cover everything but systematically.)
4. In the report book, the average result for the band is shown so that at least we are able to assess if our child is above or below the average standard and take necessary actions if we fall below. Someone scoring 85 marks (band 1) when the average is 98 shows that the child is still below the average standard and also that the paper is too easy.
5. Items that will be tested (esp on Oral, Compo) are communicated in handbook versus being informed at each term. More time for parents to prioritise what to teach each term.
Term 2 to Term 4 summative assessments, as well as formative assessments, are recorded in the report book but will not be used to dictate if the child will progress to P2. All P1 proceed to P2 by default. This gives my child more time and I can keep him on track as it will be too stressful for him to catch up both P1 and P2 work only in P2.