The PSLE maths conundrum

Last PSLE paper today! Woohoo!!

By now, some of you may have heard of the ruckus over the PSLE maths paper on Thursday. In short, the paper was a killer. How tough was it? Let's see - a boy who's a Math Olympiad platinum winner cited the paper as Math Olympiad standard. Others have said it was even harder than some of the top schools' prelim papers.

Lesley-Anne came home teary-eyed as she couldn't solve three 4-mark questions and she barely finished the paper, no time to check at all. From what I heard over the grapevine, tears were flowing in PSLE exam halls all over Singapore. Lilian and I were predicting that complaint letters by panicky parents would rapidly find their way into the Straits Times' forum page. Surprisingly, this has not happened yet, although Today newspaper has already written a piece on it here.

I'm not one of those parents, in case you're wondering. The reason is that I have no wish to become one of those kiasu, whiny parents who complain whenever things don't go their way. Besides, I don't think it will make an iota of a difference (what, you expect MOE to hand you an A* because you complained?)

I have no issue with difficult PSLE papers. I think generally, it evens itself out because the PSLE T-score is moderated, meaning that each child is assessed not on the actual score on his exam paper but how he performs in relation to the rest of the cohort. The better you perform compared to your p6 peers, the higher your T-score will be, regardless of your actual mark. So a difficult paper is actually advantageous for kids adept in that subject because they will be better able to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack.

Having said that, I think the challenge is to be able to pitch the level of the paper appropriately. In the case of this year's maths paper, I think it was unrealistically high. Of course this is just my gut feel since I haven't seen the paper, I'm going by comments I've read in forums and anecdotal accounts.

In most years, the PSLE maths paper contains a couple of very challenging questions which I assume is to suss out the truly bright mathematical talents. If so, then the majority of students are not expected to know how to solve these, which is fine. However, this year, the few challenging questions were so difficult that they stumped many of even the top tier maths whizzes, eg. those who participate in the Math Olympiad and those in GEP. If this is true, then instead of being able to identify the top 5%, maybe you end up identifying, say the top 0.5%. The top 5% then gets bunched up with perhaps the top 20% because all of them couldn't solve the same questions. (All numbers are arbitrary).

My question then is, how is this useful in any way? The handful of maths prodigies has most likely already been identified, through their past performance. What is the value of having a measurement tool that can differentiate only the top 0.5% followed by the next large category of 20%? Not much, in my opinion.

My main concern, however, is the impact on kids who are in the middle of the bell curve (which would be the majority). Again going by what I've heard, the rest of the paper was no piece of cake either, with many questions requiring a lot of time and thinking, even for Paper 1, which is traditionally more straight forward. This meant that many kids were not able to finish the papers. I know exams are also a test of time management but to what degree? I mean, is someone necessarily a better technician because he can assemble a gadget in 20 minutes versus one who can do it in 25 minutes? What are we testing here?

The purpose of any exam, especially a national one, should be to test understanding of the concepts and the ability to apply them, not to trip the kids up. I'm not suggesting you have a super simple paper that everyone can sail through but if you have a paper where a good proportion of the kids (who have gone through the national education system) is unable to perform satisfactorily in, I think it puts a question mark not on the students but on the system. Something is wrong - either the kids were not taught adequately or the exam not set correctly.

The casualties of course, are the kids. You can argue that since the T-score is moderated, kids shouldn't be too unduely distressed over an overly difficult paper. To that, I say we sometimes forget that these are 12-year-olds. Give them a break. Many of these kids have been slogging for the PSLE all year, diligently doing paper after paper, sacrificing tv and other pleasures for the hope of performing well at the PSLE. Being unable to answer the questions or even finish a paper sends them this message: "Your effort was not good enough." Demoralising is an understatement. Even if they do manage to attain a reasonable T-score, it's like a back-handed compliment - they just didn't do as badly as others.

Lesley-Anne was very disappointed with her performance in the paper after putting in so much work, although I acknowledge that having DSA does relieve the anxiety somewhat (thank God!) I hope that for the sake of the sanity of future parents and kids, the national exam policies and practices can be reviewed and adjusted appropriately. Not too much to ask, surely?