Primary School Leaving Examination - Scoring and Post-examination Procedure

Scoring and Post-examination Procedure

Although the students have an absolute score, each student's absolute score are compared with other students in order to yield an aggregate score, and the students are ranked according to that basis. This allows the examination to accommodate for overly easy or overly difficult questions. Contrary to popular belief, the PSLE aggregate score has no ceiling of 300. In 2007, for example, the highest aggregate score for the PSLE was 294 and the lowest aggregate score was 87. The lowest score for 2011's PSLE was 43 but the highest score was 283.

All examination scripts are shipped to the Ministry of Education for processing, which then sends them to other teachers in Singapore on a random basis for marking. Part of this procedure is to prevent possible bias in marking, either intentional or unintentional, that may result when teachers mark examination scripts of students from their own schools. The multiple choice questions are graded by a machine in the Ministry of Education, which reads the optical answer sheets.

Pupils who fail the PSLE would be retained in primary school to retake the PSLE in the foundation stream the following year.

Pupils who pass are required to choose up to six secondary schools to which they would be posted by aggregate score. A computer will then allocate slots to each school's intake for the next year. In line with the ideals of meritocracy, all pupils who attempted the PSLE would be "queued" in order of merit, with the places in schools being filled up from the highest scorer to the lowest scorer. Thus the pupil with a higher aggregate score would get into his school of second choice (if he was not accepted into his school of first choice) over a pupil with a lower aggregate score who chose the same school as the first choice. The score of the last pupil who was allocated is known as the "cut-off score" for the school for that year.

If none of the six schools chosen accept the pupil, the Ministry of Education will work towards finding a school that based on proximity and location, rather than academic excellence of the school, without consulting the student. This makes proper selection of the six choices important. Priority organisation of the choices is also important; if the pupil's score both meets the requirements of the school of his or her third choice and second choice for example, the second choice will be allocated without the pupil being able to change his or her decisions.

Before 2003, pupils picked their choices before they took the examination and received their score. From 2003, pupils picked their choices after they received their score, after complaints by parents they could not make informed choices about their children's secondary schools before the examination scores were received, as the pupils might perform much better or much worse than expected.