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98.4% of PSLE students make it to secondary school this year

SINGAPORE – The class of 2017 kept pace with last year’s record-setting performance, with 98.4 per cent of students who took the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) this year qualifying to move on to secondary school.

Students collecting their PSLE results at Changkat Primary School on Friday (Nov 24). Photo: Raj Nadarajan/TODAY

Students collecting their PSLE results at Changkat Primary School on Friday (Nov 24). Photo: Raj Nadarajan/TODAY

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SINGAPORE – The class of 2017 kept pace with last year’s record-setting performance, with 98.4 per cent of students who took the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) this year qualifying to move on to secondary school.

Of the 38,942 students going to Secondary One next year, 66.2 per cent are eligible for the Express course, a shade lower than last year’s 66.4 per cent.

About one in five students, or 21.4 per cent, qualify for the Normal (Academic) course, while 10.7 per cent are eligible for the Normal (Technical) course, said the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board in a joint press release on Friday (Nov 24).

For the 630 students who did not qualify for any of the courses, those who attempted the PSLE for the first time may try again in the coming year or apply to Assumption Pathway School (APS) or NorthLight School (NLS). The rest who had taken their PSLE multiple times will be preferentially offered a place at APS or NLS.

The results were released at 11am on Friday, to palpable excitement among students at primary schools across Singapore.

Over at Changkat Primary School in Simei, some 160 Primary Six students clapped and cheered when the principal, Mrs May Tang, took to the stage to share some of the school’s PSLE statistics. She also invited several top-performing students to the stage.

When it was time for the teachers to hand out the PSLE results and report books, some students dashed forward to be the first in line.

Emotions ran high as the students got their first look at their exam transcripts. Some gathered in circles, laughing, hugging or consoling one another.

Others refused to look at their results, and got their parents or friends to do it for them. Several parents, who had been seated at the back of the hall, were seen approaching the teachers to thank them personally.

Changkat Primary‘s head prefect Dikshita Ramesh, 12, attained 3 As and a B. While her T-score was lower than what she had expected, the captain of the school’s basketball team managed to qualify for Temasek Junior College’s Integrated Programme through the Direct School Admission scheme.

Dikshita’s father, Mr Ramesh Umashankar, told TODAY that he was proud of her achievements. “Results are important, but for me, they are not everything. I want her to be an all-rounded person,” the 43-year-old added.

It has been six years since the MOE stopped announcing PSLE’s top scorers and their T-scores, in a bid to ease pressure on the students and their parents.

Last year, the ministry also announced that the T-score system, which has been in place since the PSLE was introduced more than five decades ago, will be replaced by eight Achievement Levels from 2021. The new scoring system is intended to ease the pressure that students face in competing against their peers’ performance.

But that has not stopped some parents from reporting and comparing T-scores from several top primary schools on popular online forum Kiasu Parents.

At about 3.30pm on Friday, they had shared the T-scores from more than 10 primary schools, as well as the dates and times of secondary school open houses over the weekend. Parents also shared the programmes that secondary schools offer at their dedicated forum pages.

Eligible students who wish to submit their secondary school options online have till 3pm on Nov 30 to do so through the Secondary One Internet System. They can also submit their forms through their primary schools.

The posting results will be released on Dec 21. Students are required to report to the secondary schools that they are posted to at 8.30am the following day.

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