, or are placed on quarantine order or stay-home notice, will not be allowed to sit for the PSLE.
In awarding a grade for these affected candidates, the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board will consider"multiple sources of evidence" to ensure a fair assessment. This includes the student’s performance in other papers and the school cohort's performance in national and school exams for the affected subject.
For Ms Toh Ee Ming, whose younger brother is taking the PSLE this year, her family has also taken drastic measures such as pulling their children out of school and reducing social interactions. File photo of a student using the Student Learning Space system which facilitates home-based learning. With their classes interrupted repeatedly, students lost “quite a bit” of curriculum time, teachers told CNA.
These refer to a set of topics in the subject syllabus for graduating cohorts that all schools teach last, and can be removed from the national exams in the event of unforeseen circumstances that affect schools’ abilities to finish teaching them. Sprightly Learning Campus, which already has 10 physical classes a week for Primary 6 students, said it plans to launch two more online classes to help students with their revision.
“Many parents are also hoping to send their children for more classes each week, increasing the frequency to around two to three times a week, but we cannot because of our limited slots and time,” said the 30-year-old. Sudden moves from classrooms to computer screens, as well as restrictions on children’s social interactions, tested the importance of human connections for students like Mrs Zhou's son.
“He was very stressed ... even though we’ve never said that he has to get full marks or a specific mark, and the teacher wasn’t pushing him either, so from there we could see that he was very stressed,” she said. “Quite a number of them are facing issues at home such as parents struggling financially because they lost their jobs due to the pandemic. So we had to do a lot of background checks and check in regularly with the students to make sure they were okay.”