PSLE 2021
It’s official now. The Achievement Levels system will replace the T-score system from 2021 onwards.
It seems heated debates have been erupting across Singapore about whether the change will actually reduce stress on students (and their parents). That is understandable enough, for national policy changes in our country have never failed to trigger mass intellectual exchanges from canteens to kopitiams. The thing many do not realise, though, is that ‘reducing stress’ is actually not the official reason for the change…
Here are the official reasons (source: moe.gov.sg/microsites/psle):
- Singaporeans shared their preference for a more holistic education system.
- The changes are part of a larger shift to nurture well-rounded individuals better.
- We hope this will encourage more students to discover their strengths and interests and strengthen their values, knowledge, and skills needed to succeed in the future.
So, the question should really be whether the AL system (Achievement Levels system) will be a better platform for producing well-rounded individuals. Before answering that question, we must first understand what being well-rounded means.
What is a Well-rounded student?
A well-rounded individual describes a person who has varied interests. For a student whose full-time occupation is studying, being well-rounded means having interests outside of pure academic work. These ‘outside’ interests could be anything from sports to the arts or coding to social work.
On a more ‘lofty’ level, a well-rounded individual could also refer to someone who has strong core values, someone in possession of a wide array of skills and knowledge who can tackle any challenge.
In the old days, it used to be enough for one to be quick with calculations or good at recalling facts. With the advent of the digital age, where knowledge is instantly accessible at the click of a button, developing higher-order skills – being creative, thinking on one’s feet, adapting quickly to changes, etc. – has become critical for success.
The point is this: the end objective of cultivating well-rounded individuals is clearly a step in the right direction, but is the ALs system the remedy we need? To address this question, we’ll need to look at the motivations of the two key players at this stage—students and their parents.
PSLE Scores and Secondary Schools
At the PSLE level, the singular practical importance of scoring well is to raise one’s chances of securing admission into a secondary school of one’s choice. The higher one’s PSLE score, the better one’s chances are. This is the heart of the issue.
And because the PSLE is a measure of academic (only) performance, it is inevitable that a large part of a student’s time and energy would be spent in pursuit of that perfect or near-perfect score in the English, Mathematics, Science and Mother Tongue papers.
When we tell students we want them to be more well-rounded, we are really telling them they should spend a portion of their time normally spent on studies on some other equally constructive or beneficial activity. This could conceivably happen as long as students and their parents feel that doing so does not jeopardise their seat in their secondary school of choice.
Under the ALs system, S1 Posting will continue to be based on academic merit. Thus, it would seem that the ALs system, in itself, is not meant to persuade students and parents that time invested in extra-academic activities is also time well spent. Students will need to work just as hard on academics to get into the school of their choice, wider scoring bands notwithstanding.
If our end objective is to produce well-rounded students, the change in PSLE score reporting would perhaps be more beneficial if it were augmented by changes in the curriculum or mechanisms that actually reward ‘well-roundedness’ in tangible terms. We know where we want to go, but getting there is no easy task.
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