PSLE

'Shattered' by Maths paper, but they did finePass rate for subject not much different from previous year, says a director from examinations board
Today online Friday • November 23, 2007

ONE parent said his son returned home "shattered" and countless others concurred.But after the uproar caused by the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) Mathematics paper this year — which many parents had described as exceptionally difficult — all seems to have ended well following the release of the results yesterday.

At St Hilda's Primary School, most parents Today spoke to approved of their children's grades. "He did all right, even better than he had hoped for," said Madam Ivy Ng of her son, who scored an A for Mathematics.

But concerns remained for others, such as Mr Satish K Khattar, one of the parents who had written to this newspaper regarding last month's examinations.

Although his son managed an A for the subject in the end, he did not feel the commotion last month was an overreaction.

"As parents, we have the right to worry about whether our children are prepared for their exams and not unfairly thrown off by something they are not prepared for," said Mr Satish, a copywriter.

"It's not about the final result ... In principle, it is still unfair, even with moderation, to the average student if they have been set questions that they haven't been prepared to handle.

"For administrative officer Lisa Mak, her daughter's Mathematics grade was "disappointing", but she acknowledged that it was not a subject that her child was strong in.

"The toughness of the paper is still a factor, but I understand that other students have managed to do all right," she said.

Ms Piyali Roy, a freelance teacher, said her son had achieved an A star — much to her surprise.

"He was devastated after the exams," she said. "But even though he did well, he was so affected by the maths exam that he couldn't concentrate on his two other papers and that affected his grades for those."………….


Yesterday was the release of this year PSLE results. As usual yesterday news are bombarded by So and So is the top scorers…follow by some sort of interview blah blah blah.

But I was thinking… So what? Is the result day such a big deal that our local news have extensive coverage? There are other more important things happening in Singapore and the world.

Looking the the new articles…. Primay School student these days are “shattered” just because they did not achieve what they think they deserve in their grads. These young kids are being taught to do well no matter what! They cannot accept failure!!

Yesterday some guy in my office told us that his son cannot sleep the day before he get his PSLE results. I was thinking what happened to Childhood in Singapore?
At the end of the day, doing well in school doesn’t mean you are smart. Also certainly does not guarantee that you will turn out to be a nice person.

Same thought

Live webcams not the way to speed up queues at clinics

Thursday • September 20, 2007
Letter from Lim Boon Hee

I urge the relevant authorities to tackle the perennial problem of unacceptable waiting times in our polyclinics, A&E departments and specialist clinics once and for all.

Showing real-time waiting times online is simply skirting the issue and not going after the causes of the problem. It is ludicrous to expect that a patient under the care of one particular polyclinic to go to another just because the waiting time is shown to be shorter on a computer.

Instead of spending money and resources on this, more doctors, pharmacists, nurses and clinics should be employed to solve this medical services crunch in an environment with a growing "greying" population that requires more medical facilities.

We should be examining why the waiting times are so long.

Is it because there are:

1 Not enough doctors, pharmacists, nurses and clinics to serve a burgeoning demand?

2 There are too many patients due to an ageing population?

3 Inefficiencies and procedures that are not streamlined enough in the polyclinics resulting in long waiting times?

4 People flock to polyclinics due to a lack of subsidies for long-term medicine for chronic illnesses and denied subsidised specialist care if private clinics refer them?




Look like somebody agreed to what I commented on Camera installed at Polyclinics.


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