Singapore ― Several parents have taken to Education Minister Chan Chun Sing’s Facebook post to call for a “revamp” of the country’s education system, following the extra difficult maths questions in the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), resulting in tears being shed.
On Oct 1, Mr Chan posted on Facebook to share their initiative in delivering care packs to residents undergoing home quarantine orders or those on the home recovery programme.
“They (People’s Association colleagues) will be progressively fanning out across My Buona Vista to provide swift support and reassurance to our affected residents,” wrote Mr Chan.
He thanked the individuals and grassroots volunteers, adding, “we will stand together as a community, especially during this challenging time.”
In addition to members from the online community thanking Mr Chan for the initiative, a couple of parents touched on the issue of the PSLE questions.
One Hwee Koon Chua highlighted that not all kids have “high abilities,” hence the broken and dejected response mentioned by parents.
“My son will be taking his PSLE in 2023, and I foresee Math will be a killer paper that year too,” said the parent.
She noted that the trend is to alternate years in terms of difficulty, with Science in 2020 and Math in 2021. This leaves Math again in 2023.
“My son is not very strong in Math, and imagine he gets AL5 or AL6 in Math, and this will pull down his overall scoring. And please don’t tell me every school is a good school; it is not,” said the concerned parent.
As a parent, she wished for her son to get into an above-average secondary school. She added that for an average family, tuition fees every month were “ridiculous.”
“Do you think parents enjoy paying tuition fees? We don’t, but the truth is the standard is so high that if the kids don’t get tuition, average kids will end up getting AL5-6 for each subject.”
“If you want to sieve out the elites, please think of a better way to sieve these students out. You yourself is an elite, and I think you can do better than what your predecessor did,” she added.
Another individual called for a review of the process, noting that learning should be fun and exam questions reasonable for the kids.
“Please revamp the Ministry of Education,” the netizen said.
Facebook user Celeste Fong shared a link to a compilation of parents’ responses and requests on the Ministry of Education’s Facebook page following the maths papers.
Parents shared that their children went to school in the morning “full of confidence” and came back “in a heaps crying.”
Responding to media queries, the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board (SEAB) noted questions had varying difficulty levels.
“All examinations have a range of questions with varying difficulty that cater to the wide range of abilities of our students. We would like to encourage all students to stay the course and be reassured that having done their best, there will be multiple pathways of success,” said SEAB.
Read related: Parents upset over tough math questions on PSLE, tears shed