Tuesday, September 27, 2011  PSLE : The Great Sieving
Machine....  For parents with children that are 12 year old this
must be a period of anxiety as the PSLE starts this week.  When
I took the PLSE many years ago, students only had pass/fail
results. There was no score. The better students were broadly
identified as belonging to the top 8% - I was not one of them
and it didn't really matter. Many of the students in the top 8%
chose to go to average secondary schools so you get a mix of
good and bad students in the same secondary school - you
sometimes have both good and not so good students in the same
class. Today we differentiate primary school right down to the
fine resolution of 1 in 300 points. You pass by a tuition
center these days and you will notice they put up a list of top
students - score of 280 for the top student...anything below 250
and you won't get on anybody's list. Competition starts young
and differentiation starts young. Using their PSLE and reference
entrance score from past years stude