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What Parents Need to Know about Primary School Leaving Exam (PSLE)
If your child is born before 2009 (taking PSLE before 2021), he/she will still be scored using the current PSLE scoring system, i.e. T-Score.
How is the T-score calculated?
T = 50 + 10((𝑥 −𝑚))/𝑠
x = candidate’s mark for the subject
m = the average mark (mean) scored by all the candidates
s = the spread of the marks around the average mark (standard deviation)
Hence your child’s performance is relative to his peers. The score will be used when you choose a secondary school and also students will continue to be assigned to Express, Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) courses.
If your child is born from 2009 onwards, he/she will be scored using a new PSLE system.
What does this mean?
From 2021 onwards, the PSLE will be scored with wider bands and the scores will reflect the student’s individual performance and not his performance relative to his peers.
The T-score will be replaced by wider scoring bands. Each subject will be scored using 8 bands known as Achievement Levels (AL), with AL1 being the best score and AL8 being the lowest score. The ALs reflect the student’s level of achievement in the subject.
The student’s total PSLE Score will be the sum of the four subject scores. The PSLE Score will range from 4 (best) to 32.
The score will be used when you choose a secondary school and also students will continue to be assigned to Express, Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) courses, until 2023.
Secondary school streaming to be abolished in 2024, replaced with Subject-Based Banding (SBB). This applies to 2019 Primary 2 students onwards.
What does Subject-Based Banding (SBB) means? (click to know more).
This means that we will no longer see the streaming labels of Express, Normal (Academic) [N(A)] and Normal (Technical) [N(T)] as students will be able to take subjects at different subject levels (G1/G2/G3) instead of subjects from only one course.
Please note that the SBB programme does not apply to the Integrated Programme (IP). The curriculum structure and curriculum content is left to each IP school to design, and can be different from the national secondary curriculum.
