PSLE - Pressure Starts Life Ends?

It's one more week to PSLE - the much-dreaded Primary 6 exams in Singapore.  Zern is sitting for it.  Keane was spared because he took the iPSLE in Shanghai.

Zern on one of his DIY projects - to "de-stress" so-called

I don't know where to begin.  Let's face it - PSLE is a real drag.  The spoof acronym definition of PSLE as "Pressure Starts Life Ends" was mentioned at a compo-writing workshop and it stuck in both Zern's and my minds.  No matter how many Singapore Conversations held on it, whatever ways you cut it, it is a pressurizing time for the child, and may I add, the parent, and may I specify, the mother.  We may as well admit it - yes, there is pressure.  More than we think.


There are however "silver linings" in everything.  I find myself deliberating and thriving on every thread of "silver lining" there is.

For Zern, a child who was not raised on the Singapore curriculum till last year when we returned at the ripe "old" grade of Primary 5, things are a little bit trickier.  Even children who were schooled since Primary 1, and fed with private tuition lessons, found the whole saga challenging.

So, we seek "Silver Lining #1" - Zern had a great time in international schools.  It was a fabulous period to explore interests outside of academics - swimming, origami, drawing, puzzles, camps, friends & teachers from other countries & nationalities, field trips, performances, sports for the fun of it, books (lots of it!), holidays outside "school" holidays, nature, piano, DIY projects…the list goes on.  In dribs and drabs, of course, but all these add up.  Those few years away were worth it.  We are the lucky ones, contrary to what other people may think.

Silver Lining #2: Zern seemed to have developed a sense of seeing the humour in most things.  Just the other day, I was cleaning the ceiling fan at home.  It struck him as a potential PSLE Math question scenario which could go something like this,"Mrs Teo was cleaning her ceiling fan, which measures Xm by Xm (see figure illustration of fan).  If Mrs Teo were to take Y min to clean one blade, how long would she take to clean the whole fan?".  Well, if you've done enough PSLE Math questions, you'd know where this leads.  A part (b) question may continue, in order to sieve out the gifted Mathematicians amongst 12-year-olds.

Silver Lining #3: Three wondrous months of holidays ahead - no more MCQs, OEQs, GEP-type questions --   when exams end in early October.  (For those not initiated into PSLE lingo yet, MCQs- Multiple Choice Questions, OEQs - Open-ended questions, GEP - Gifted Education Programme).  We shall take the motto, "Work hard, Play hard" literally.  And I mean, "we".