Primary School Leaving Examination

Okay.

Uh, I think especially for PSLE, like I did pretty well in comparison to the predicted outcome from my teachers because I was getting like last five positions in class.

[laughs]

And I would be a little bit disruptive.

So for my PhD dissertation, I interviewed 50 parents about this.

And ultimately what I find is that A lot of them grew up in a system that was hierarchical and unequal, right? So many of them have experiences of maybe being left out of certain educational opportunities potentially, right? Because they didn't hit the mark, maybe they didn't do so well in the PSLE and then that let them down a certain pathway that they felt was a bit harder.

And maybe their kids, they don't want their kids to go down that pathway, right? So there's one mom in particular, I often like to quote her, who, she was a diploma holder.

You know, she had aspirations to go to university, but she didn't eventually.

When I was doing my research, WhatsApp chat groups were a very common source of information about which schools are so-called better schools.

And these can be, you know, BTO neighborhood chat groups, but they can also be chat groups set up specifically to discuss P1 registration.

um and then of course on top of that you have even though MOE doesn't put out the PSLE results anymore they haven't done that since 2012 which was the start of this every school a good school kind of campaign um there's still sgschooling.com um which publishes these very nice-looking, user-friendly tables that show the balloting histories at the schools, right? And so in the absence of academic results, information about academic results, parents go to those statistics on balloting history as a proxy for the desirability of the school and it's very obvious which schools are highly oversubscribed and which schools are extremely undersubscribed and there's in most neighborhoods you will see that there is that hierarchy you will have the oversubscribed schools you will have the can get in still kind of can get in like junior is one of those yeah and then there's the like the cohort size is only like 100 students you know yeah

and I think yeah and I think in every neighborhood like parents talk and because of the way that our housing is even public housing parents we are always talking and everything there's it's almost like I realized that's one common thread, like when I meet clients or friends in Woodlands or Jurong, they know what the top ranking school is there, what the mid-tier ranking schools are there, and what's the, for the lack of a better term, the rejects or the last choice kind of school.

transition from primary to secondary school.

A lot of parents have come out to talk about maybe we need to tone down the importance of PSLE or scrap it altogether.

Others have been talking of the DSA and whether or not it gives a leg up to certain individuals that might have the ability to pursue private coaching for a specific sport or talent in some cases.

Why are we talking about this today on Talkback? Well, guess what? Just about 24 hours ago, Second Minister for Education, David Ngo, gave a speech at the 2026 Institute of Policy Studies Forum, where he shared how the education ministry will be studying public feedback on the primary to secondary school transition, where students are said to face the most acute pressure.

Hi, thank you for having me.

Absolute pleasure.

That stress that's been cited in that jump from primary 6 to secondary school, is this something that you all have often studied, that you all have seen the data on, that we have been able to see has been a part of Singapore culture, I guess, as long as PSLE has been around? Yes.

Yeah, I think the whole idea of stress has always been talked about, and it's really multifaceted.