What you should know about the different secondary options as a parent by Dr Boon

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all Pri­ma­ry 6 stu­dents for com­plet­ing the PSLE 2023! In 2016, the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion (MOE) announced plans to revise the approach to the PSLE assess­ment, shift­ing away from the tra­di­tion­al T‑score Scor­ing Sys­tem to the ¹Achieve­ment Lev­el (AL) Band­ing Sys­tem. This was in tan­dem with a series of reforms over more recent years: ²removal of some exam­i­na­tions, ³Sub­ject-Based Band­ing (SBB) in Sec­ondary Schools and even the spon­ta­neous ⁴reduc­tion in con­tent and scope of exam­i­na­tions dur­ing Covid-19 (for stu­dents’ men­tal well­be­ing).

With these recent fine-tun­ing poli­cies and changes, MOE HQ has sent a clear sig­nal that as a nation, we are mov­ing away from the over empha­sis of aca­d­e­m­ic results and focus­ing more on sup­port­ing stu­dents to dis­cov­er their strengths and inter­ests. This is in con­flu­ence with the ⁵elim­i­na­tion of nam­ing top stu­dents and rank­ing schools as a prac­tice since 2013.

AL Banding System: One Year On

How is the AL Band­ing Sys­tem dif­fer­ent from the T‑score, and what are the impli­ca­tions?

The tra­di­tion­al T‑score sys­tem, that many Sin­ga­pore­an par­ents had under­gone, was a reflec­tion of how well a stu­dent per­formed aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly rel­a­tive to their peers. There was bell-curve mod­er­a­tion in place, and a high­ly com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment was cre­at­ed with the nam­ing of top stu­dents, rank­ing of top schools and schools that did not per­form so well.

The AL Band­ing Sys­tem strives to reduce this focus on aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance at such fine lev­els, and instead places stu­dents in bands (based on mark ranges). This has three direct impli­ca­tions in the Sec­ondary School (S1) Post­ing process and indi­rect­ly influ­ences how stu­dents and par­ents should go about select­ing their sec­ondary schools:

• More stu­dents will have the same PSLE Score
• More schools will have sim­i­lar cut-off points (COP)
• Stu­dents will have a wider range of schools to choose from

Secondary School Posting (S1) Exercise 2023

Post­ing Cri­te­ri­on, Tie-Break­ers, High­er Chi­nese Lan­guage (HCL)

The S1 post­ing sys­tem fol­lows the fol­low­ing order:

• Aca­d­e­m­ic Mer­it (PSLE AL Score)
• Order of School Choice
• Vacan­cies Avail­able at Select­ed Schools

The student’s PSLE Score remains the first cri­te­ria: a stu­dent with a high­er PSLE score will be con­sid­ered first for their cho­sen school. As men­tioned ear­li­er, more stu­dents will have the same PSLE Score. This means that the Order of School Choice will play a larg­er role (com­pared to the T‑score sys­tem) for stu­dents try­ing to get into the school that they pre­fer. When con­tend­ing for the last few vacan­cies in a school, the tie-break­er sys­tem will kick-in:

• Cit­i­zen­ship (Sin­ga­pore­an Cit­i­zen, Per­ma­nent Res­i­dent, Inter­na­tion­al Stu­dent)
• Order of School Choice
• Ran­domised Bal­lot­ing

Stu­dents who do not get a place in any of their select­ed schools will be placed in a school with remain­ing vacan­cies based on their PSLE Score and res­i­den­tial address. Stu­dents tak­ing HCL with a PSLE Score <15 will be eli­gi­ble for post­ing advan­tage to ⁶SAP schools.

Secondary School Courses

Course Eli­gi­bil­i­ty

For stu­dents not eli­gi­ble for any of the cours­es above, they can retake the PSLE or progress on to more hands-on and expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing at Assump­tion Path­way School (APS) or North­Light School (NLS).

Sub­ject-based Band­ing (SBB)

With the imple­men­ta­tion of SBB, stu­dents in N(A) or N(T) streams can choose to take on cer­tain sub­jects at the more demand­ing lev­el. By 2024, Full SBB will be imple­ment­ed, which will offer more sub­ject options.

Secondary School Options

In addi­tion to the Sec­ondary School Cours­es above, it is also equal­ly impor­tant to con­sid­er the dis­tinc­tive strengths that each school has to offer. These include:

• Applied Learn­ing (ALP) and Learn­ing for Life (LLP) Pro­grammes
• Inte­grat­ed-Pro­gramme
• Direct-School Admis­sion-Sec­ondary (DSA-Sec)
• Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion Needs (SEN)
• Co-cur­ric­u­lar Activ­i­ties (CCAs) & Strate­gic-Part­nered CCAs (SP-CCAs)
• MOE Lan­guage, Arts & Music Pro­grammes
• Loca­tion & dis­tance

Here is a video of a webi­nar con­duct­ed by Dr Boon last year on the 6 key con­sid­er­a­tions in select­ing a sec­ondary school after com­plet­ing the PSLE exam­i­na­tion that con­tin­ues to be rel­e­vant this year.

A Note About the Author

Dr. Teo Boon Heng is a Direc­tor at Think Teach Acad­e­my. He leads the Aca­d­e­m­ic Tribe in the man­age­ment, plan­ning and exe­cu­tion of our Think Smart, Teach Smart approach across our pro­grammes.

Pri­or to join­ing Think Teach Acad­e­my, Dr. Boon devel­oped much pas­sion and gained con­sid­er­able expe­ri­ence in acad­e­mia, with his last role as Head of Schol­ar Devel­op­ment at NUS Grad­u­ate School. He was award­ed the pres­ti­gious NUS Grad­u­ate School for Inte­gra­tive Sci­ences & Engi­neer­ing (NGS) PhD Schol­ar­ship for research of pas­si­vat­ed con­tact solar cells sup­port­ed by the Nation­al Research Foun­da­tion, Prime Min­is­ter’s Office Sin­ga­pore.

Pri­or to his post­grad­u­ate stud­ies, Dr. Boon served as a naval offi­cer with the Repub­lic of Sin­ga­pore Navy after grad­u­at­ing from Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don with a Mas­ter of Engi­neer­ing in Mate­ri­als Sci­ence & Nuclear Engi­neer­ing. He is also an alum­ni of Anglo-Chi­nese School (Inde­pen­dent) and a mem­ber of the Roy­al School of Mines, Unit­ed King­dom.

1 — https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/10-things-know-about-changes-psle-scoring-system

2 — https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/no-more-mid-year-exams-all-primary-and-secondary-school-students-next-year

3 — https://www.moe.gov.sg/microsites/psle-fsbb/full-subject-based-banding/main.html

4 — https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/moe-reduce-scope-exams-2021-hire-more-school-counsellors-ensure-students-well-being

5 — https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/not-naming-top-psle-scorers-to-emphasise-holistic-development-heng

6 — https://www.moe.gov.sg/news/parliamentary-replies/20210510-sap-schools

This arti­cle was proud­ly writ­ten for you by the Think Teach Team. Every year, we impact over a thou­sand stu­dents and empow­er them with our smart tech­niques to achieve exam excel­lence in their school exams as well as the PSLE. We want your child to be our next suc­cess sto­ry!