APEX Programme
Apex is an acronym for Ace PSLE Exams. In this programme, bright Muslim youths from tertiary institutes and beyond voluntarily serve as mentors (in the academic, emotional and spiritual sense) of Primary 6 Irsyad students in light of their upcoming PSLE exams. Mentoring sessions take up Saturday mornings and involves traditional small group tutoring (with a ratio of about two students to one mentor), educational games and casual interactions between the mentors and the students.
This is one programme that was initiated not by the Madrasah, but by a group of National University of Singapore (NUS) undergraduates under the umbrella of the NUS Muslim Society. The trigger for this initiation is the establishment of the Compulsory Education Act. As mentioned earlier, under this act, madrasahs have to meet a certain PSLE benchmark in order to obtain “designated school” status, which is needed to allow them to continue admitting students exempted from CE at national schools. Thus, Apex was set up to help madrasahs achieve that benchmark. As this is a new programme, only Irsyad has thus far benefitted from this programme. However, the Apex committee is in the process of expanding the programme to the other madrasahs that are also affected by the CE.
Read more about this topic: Madrasah Al-Irsyad Al-Islamiah, Culture, Special Programmes
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