This is the least consequential exams. No employer will ask to see your PSLE results. So why are parents (and some children) so gan cheong about it?
Perhaps coz it determines which school and stream you go to, and hence the company you fall in with. I didn't think much about this until R told me she decided on NA for her middle kid whose grades could go to either Express and NA, and regretted it years on.
Now that I think about it, even though my secondary school was (still is) a so-called good school, the kids were very varied, just that my class was rather homogeneous. I recall visiting my form teacher and she hardly stepped out of the classroom when a boy jumped onto a table top! We were so shocked but she assured us it was normal *.*
So we were concerned for Yang. His grades were inconsistent and could range from AL 1 to AL 6. AL 6 is effectively a fail grade. At the end of each year, he usually averaged out to AL 4-5 mostly, at the borderline. A careless mistake would easily pull him down one grade. He scored a total of AL 16 in P5. One grade down per subject is a tad too close to G2 for comfort.
Sito worked very very hard with Yang. Finally, Yang understood maths though that didn't stop him from making careless mistakes. English tuition did not seem to have helped much; he still has issues with spelling (which, honestly, tuition cannot help) but hopefully the practice helped somewhat... Yang likes science but the darn OEQs!
Yang really worked very hard, and mostly with no complaints. Even Kai acknowledged that Yang worked harder than him! With exams coming up for everyone, we decided encouragement dinners were necessary!
Kai had two kaedama while Yang didn't have a hardboiled egg for once
Yu had a hardboiled egg and all the soup
Day one of study break - 必勝！
That was just before he went into his room for one of the last practice papers. And oh yes, we moved the keyboard out of Yu's room to the living room and finally to the space outside Yang's room. Had to shift the fridge a little..
Second encouragement dinner was during the PSLE weekend break. We chose Saturday coz Sunday before exams should be normal... Yang chose ramen again but we decided on a different shop. They preferred the first in the end.
Kai had two kaedama again; also ordered karaage
Topped up with kaya butter toast for the two older boys!
I think another reason for such high parental involvement at PSLE is that, this is the only level that parents could possibly help with. Sito and I together can cover all four primary school subjects but we had to learn new things in order to teach the kids. But we doubt we could help secondary school subjects very much - it's the kid, not us, who's doing O levels! And we're not redoing the Os!
So far, Kai could study on his own though he asked for help in maths a couple of times - mostly careless. So we haven't had to study secondary subjects yet. Now we're trying to guide Yang towards self learning like Kai. But I suspect I may still have to come in for Chinese...
I think what PSLE does for us - both parents and children - is that it lets us understand the kids' learning style and strengths and weaknesses, so that we could better support them in their self learning as they progress through the academic levels.
Anyway, it's over - for now. Yang came back feeling kind of meh about English and Maths, but he was all smiley for Chinese. For science, it was super wide smiles - last day! And also, he thought it was easy. So now we just enjoy ourselves :)
Happily opening his Yu-Gi-Oh! cards which are his birthday present withheld for three months!
Nintendo is all his until the school holidays
In the meantime, two piles of P5-6 stuff goes to Yu :p
PS: Yu's desk was super messy for a week coz of some craft making swords and shields etc. Just got him to clear it this morning.
PS2: We put together a very big bag of dead wood for the recycling bin too!
On Wednesday, Yang had no school as the HCL kids were taking their exams. So we went to Jurong East to eat and run errands. First was the library. There was a queue of over 10 people before opening time - I felt happy seeing that. Didn't know library staff would line up to welcome the first readers! Felt like in Japan, hoho!
Searching for books
Lunch at Jack's Place
We then went to Ikea to walk the showrooms - Yang loves to try all the furniture! Then we headed to Popular to get a present for Yu's friend's birthday, Scarlett for oyster sauce, Donki for curry roux and finally back to Ikea to pack hotdog buns and chicken wings.
Yang was very tired by then as he had the sniffles. I also had sniffles. So both of us fell ill together right after exams. Thank goodness it was after exams! We both recovered quickly enough. He's now very free every day while Kai and Yu are still studying for their exams...
This is the first weekend after PSLE. Finally, we don't have to hurry Yang through breakfast so that he could finish a paper before 9.30 am Doraemon, and we could have lengthy breakfast chats about random things that come up. That's nice :)
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