Here’s How The New PSLE Score Will Work After Streaming is Removed From 2024

If by now you don’t know the huge announcement that is the new PSLE scoring system, you should download the Goody Feed App.

For the Goody Feed App is to your street cred (aka perceived wisdom) what the Ten-Year series is to all PSLE, ‘O’ and ‘A Levels’ students. Darned important.

Or that you can flip to the back to find answers, to all your life’s questions.

Streaming Fishes, Happy Kids

Also cos’ we have a bevy of really good writers delivering news in a stand-up comedic way like no other outlet.

(P.S: I got paid $8 for the self-plug.)

Okay, kidding.

And back to the tale of the tape.

More Details on PSLE scoring bands

Education Minister, Ong Ye Kung, announced that “Subject-based banding, or SBB, will replace the existing system of streaming students into Express, Normal (Academic) or Normal (Technical) based on their PSLE results” according to this Channel News Asia (CNA) report.

In this system, students will still be posted to schools based on their PSLE results across three scoring bands.

But instead of the three streams (express, normal academics and normal technical), they will take different subjects at different levels, according to their ability.

What The…?

Safe to say, the announcement reverberated across Singapore, from schools to parents’ workplaces as well as the brightly-lit hallways of NTUC FairPrice and its dimmer, wetter version among the wet markets.

A collective ‘What The’ could be heard in our Bukit Ulu office, which is nothing short of a thought collective.

Since then, the Ministry of Education has furnished more details in response to queries from CNA.

According to this report, “MOE has provided more details on these scoring bands, and indicated the range of PSLE scores a student would need in order to be eligible to take subjects at the various levels at the start of secondary school.”

So what does that mean?

The Education Order

From 2021, a student taking her/his PSLE “will receive a new Achievement Level (AL) score of 1-8 in each of their four subjects, with AL1 being the highest a student can score, and AL8 the lowest.”

The sum of these ALs will then make up the student’s final score, which will also be known as the PSLE Score, and will have a range of possible scores from 4 to 32

This was actually announced as far back as 2016 if one can remember.

According to the report:

“Once SBB is implemented, a student with a PSLE score of 4 to 20 will be eligible for subjects at the highest G3 level, MOE said. This means that a student would need to score an average AL of at most 5 in each subject to take the entire G3 suite of subjects, which corresponds to the current Express level.”

By extension, “a student with a PSLE score of 21 or 22 would be eligible for either the G3 or G2 suite of subjects” with G2 corresponding to the current Normal (Academic) level.

In addition:

“If the student scores 23 or 24, they would be eligible for the G2 suite of subjects.

A student scoring 25 would be offered either the G2 suite of subjects or the G1, which corresponds to the current Normal (Technical) level.

For those who score 26 to 30, the student would be eligible for subjects at the G1 level, if he or she has an AL of 7 and above in English and Mathematics. A student needs a score of at most 30 to have passed the PSLE.”

Here’s a chart on what the above actually means.

That said, MOE has clarified that students who show aptitude for certain subjects, may be offered these subjects at a higher level a the start of Secondary 1 and that “subjects and levels that students are offered in subsequent years will not be constrained by the scoring band through which they were posted to secondary schools.”

Which according to MOE is different from the current system because:

“Unlike the current approach where the course that a student is posted to in Secondary 1 determines the bulk of his subject offerings throughout his secondary education, full SBB will allow students to progressively take subjects at more demanding levels over the course of their secondary school years, as they discover their strengths and interests, and take on a combination of subjects across different levels over time.”

To this end, MOE added that schools are provided with a set of guidelines with regards to offering students subjects at a more demanding level, where which a school will consider different factors including a student’s performance.

In other words, through this change, there is room for change, unlike the current set-in-stone system.

That said, with changing demographics, social classes, divides and expectations, this change may just prove to be an early litmus test for other social examinations at large.