This article is adapted from "The case for doing away with the PSLE" by Andrew Yeo Zhi Jian, a Research Assistant (Special Projects) at IPS.

The Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) has been around since 1960.

It is like soap opera, where the chief protagonists are the students, parents and teachers. They spend nine months gearing up for what they see as a “make-or-break” event. At the heart of their story is a subplot involving the external markets of housing and tuition.

But is all these drama necessary? Here are 5 reasons why it is about time the PSLE can be scrapped for good:

1. Stressful for young children

From a child's perspective, the PSLE period is stressful and filled with uncertainty. For many, the PSLE is the sole determinant of entry into a secondary school, although some will treat it as a last chance to make good.

Moreover, the PSLE also has a priming function -- it sets the pace and marks the genesis of the hectic Singaporean life -- for a 11 or 12-year-old.

2. Stressful for parents

For parents, the need to know how well their child compares to others nationwide is rooted in a national ethos of competition.

As certain schools are better funded to offer more opportunities for students to enrich their school life, parents are very keen for their children to go to schools that can offer better chances at moving up the academic chain into junior colleges, and subsequently, universities.

3. Stressful for teachers

Teachers, especially those teaching the Primary 5 and 6 cohorts, have to decide whether to teach to pique an interest in learning, or to teach for the sake of assessment.

Unfortunately, it is usually to teach so that children do well in their PSLE.

The PSLE becomes a high-stakes examination. This can have the perverse effect of being perceived as an end in itself, rather than as a preparatory step towards the next phase of education.

4. Stressful for the nation

As a market, the education sector has a reinforcing relationship on external domains, such as the lucrative housing and tuition industries.

The two industries correlate most to PSLE achievement. Swank housing advertisements regularly highlight their proximity to elite primary schools and their attendant secondary counterparts.

Tuition centres charging exorbitant fees seduce with promises of PSLE success -- claims they back up with using the past performances of their stable of thoroughbred alumni.

Thus, issues of equity come to the fore. Paying parents become the major determinant of a child’s examined performance in a society striving towards true meritocratic ideals.

5. Stressful for everyone else watching this annual competition

Further, deeply ingrained in the Singapore psyche is not the desire for excellence on its own, but excellence vis-à-vis others in the same cohort; a reductive attitude that defines the zero-sum game.

A future without PSLE?

Will getting rid of the PSLE lead to a slippery slope position where the O-Level or other examinations higher up the academic ladder are also done away with?

The PSLE can be removed if it is thought of this way: Qualifications become more necessary only at higher levels for international comparability, which can be used for employment or entry into other tertiary institutions overseas.

Second, children ought not to be competing on a cognitive plane at age 11 and 12, where development is still ongoing; this should be less the case at the later ages.

Put together, we can consider three possible scenarios to determine secondary school placement, even when there is no longer the PSLE:

1) Link primary and secondary schools: All primary schools are linked to secondary schools, so a child automatically knows where they are going from Primary One.

Possible problems: This alternative potentially transfers the stress of PSLE to pre-school education because entry into the “right” primary school ensures entry to a desired secondary school.

2) Rely on geographical location: Entry to secondary schools is tied to proximity with where the student stays for transport optimisation.

Possible problems: This second alternative, highlighted and rightly dismissed by Senior Minister of State for Law and Education Indranee Rajah, does not adequately delink the property and education sectors.

3) Random lottery: After Primary Six, all students are randomly allocated to secondary schools across the island.

Possible problems: This assumes that all secondary schools are comparable, with both teaching and monetary resources distributed evenly.

In an ideal world without the PSLE...

If this last scenario were to come to pass, classes should ideally start at 8.30am, so that students, teachers and parents alike are better rested to face the rest of the day.

Parents are now incentivised to send their children to school prior to beginning work. Traffic delays should not be a problem in this ideal world of the future where there are plans for a flexi-hour workforce and a more pro-family mature economy.

This is also a future where the Ministry of Education guidelines still recommend 49 periods of 30 minutes each per week, or five hours a day, but classes will end at 2.30pm, to allow for a second recess break of half an hour at 12.30pm (the first recess break happens at 10.30am).

But since the PSLE is no longer a determinant in secondary school placement, students can also be also more engaged in co-curricular activities, picking up the different musical, sporting and social skills from various groups at an early age.

Indeed, any removal of choice is usually met with displeasure.

In reality, however, the more substantive question is whether or not our society feels our children should be educated in a system premised on fairer opportunities for all, or one undergirded by more free market principles with its attendant inequities.

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