Why is maths seen to be hard?
I must say that, as a parent, if you have sat through the PSLE paper yourself
you will find that there are many items that you can manage
even without studying or revising, it’s just very foundational.
So if you look at the paper, there is a range of difficulty levels across the items.
Some items are very basic that will help a child to do reasonably well,
pass a subject just by understanding the fundamentals.
Then there are some really challenging questions
that are meant not to be solved by everyone
because it’s meant to be difficult questions, but those questions typically are not many.
You may see two or three items like that in a year,
and the items are designed such that there are steps and parts to it.
So the child may find that the item is not entirely inaccessible
because he can solve part A or part B, he just couldn’t solve part C.
Something along that line to make the paper accessible to students.
But the paper has to be designed with that range of item type
so that you allow students with different levels of mastery to be able to demonstrate that.
If we have a paper that is very easy
I think it helps to give every child the experience
that they have done very well.
But you may not find that kind of paper as helpful
when it comes to making some recommendations
about whether they should take G3 math or G2 math or G1 math in secondary school
because if I set a very basic paper, I know that all of them who pass it
will be able to handle G1 math.
But who among them would be able to handle G3 math in secondary school?
I actually do not know if I have a very basic paper.
I have to have a paper where there are some difficult items
so that I know these kids actually answer them quite well,
they should be able to handle that level of math in secondary school.
So that’s the purpose why PSLE papers have items of different difficulty levels.
We are always trying to look ahead to see what the students need today
so that 20 years later, when they enter the workforce, they are ready.
You get some of this feedback from employers, from top leaders
and we try to make sure that we don’t shortchange them.
If we teach them today like how we were taught 20 years ago,
I think we won’t be able to say we have been fair in preparing them for the future.
But I know this is hard for parents to digest
because you grew up with that curriculum and you are all right.
The curriculum we experienced 20, 30 years ago
went through the same process of trying to review
and make sure we are ready for the world of tomorrow.
You will never be ready for the world of tomorrow forever.
And so that’s why we talk about lifelong learning.
The kids, after leaving the school systems, will have to keep on learning
just to make sure that they are not lagging too far behind what the world requires of them.
When your child enters a secondary school in a year’s time, in two years’ time
the streaming label would have been removed.
They would no longer be seen as an express class student or NA or NT class student.
They are just a student offering subjects at different levels.
Some at G3 which is the current express level,
some at G2, some at G1 – G1 is the Normal Tech level of demand.
And so we hope with this shift we are giving our students
a more customised education
and less affected by the labels associated with the curriculum.
So hopefully your child will, as we have found in our pilot schools,
enjoy this process of learning with a more diverse group of students in the class
because in a mixed form class
you will have students taking a subject dominantly at different levels.
If you use today’s label to understand tomorrow’s system, it’s like a mixed form class
with your express, NA, NT students studying together for one third of the time
because those subjects are pegged at a very common level.
And the other two-thirds of the time, they will split into different classes
to attend subject lessons at their respective subject level.
So this would be the landscape
that your child will experience when they go into a secondary school.
Hopefully it’s one that allows them to reach their full potential
across the different subjects that they are taking.