The Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) is a national examination in Singapore administered by the Ministry of Education and taken by all students near the end of their sixth year in primary school, before they move on to secondary school. This examination tests students' proficiency in the English language, their respective mother tongue languages (typically Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and some other South Asian languages such as Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu), mathematics and science. Students have around two hours to complete each subject paper, except for certain components of language subjects. Students answer multiple choice questions by shading their responses on a standardised optical answer sheet (OAS) that uses optical mark recognition to detect answers.
The format of the PSLE and the presence of it in the Singapore education system gives the PSLE a part in national culture. PSLE material has also been exported to other countries. Some schools abroad have their students taken the international version of the exam, the iPSLE, in August to help them benchmark themselves vis-a-vis the performance of other foreign schools.
Read more about Primary School Leaving Examination: Examination Subjects and Procedure, Language Examination and Qualification, Scoring and Post-examination Procedure, Other Methods of Admission To Secondary Schools
Famous quotes containing the words primary school, primary, school, leaving and/or examination:
“At the heart of the educational process lies the child. No advances in policy, no acquisition of new equipment have their desired effect unless they are in harmony with the child, unless they are fundamentally acceptable to him.”
—Central Advisory Council for Education. Children and Their Primary Schools (Plowden Report)
“The primary imperative for women who intend to assume a meaningful and decisive role in today’s social change is to begin to perceive themselves as having an identity and personal integrity that has as strong a claim for being preserved intact as that of any other individual or group.”
—Margaret Adams (b. 1916)
“Loosed betwixt eye and lid, the swimming beams
Of memory, blind school of cuttlefish,
Rise to the air, plunge to the cold streams....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“As words go crying after themselves, leaving the dream
Upended in a puddle somewhere
As though “dead” were just another adjective.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)