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So, I don't subscribe any newspaper agent, so i don't know if this article is on it, but Channel News Asia reported that parents are complaining about this year's PSLE paper. Not A shocker because apparently in recent years, parents are complaining a lot. You can check out the article here:

http://bit.ly/2caPHx

So after reading the article, i feel that there are reasons to why this problem always come up, especially Math. Ever wonder why not other subjects?

English: Parents can't complain that English papers are hard, if they do, it really says a lot of their development of English Language at home.
Chinese: Similarly, however there's more. Chinese is still simple in primary level, parents have no problems to scold their children if they could not understand anything, after all they understand Chinese, if they can, why not their children. That's where the concept comes about, if I can, why can't you.
Science: What could go wrong in this subject? anyway, Primary science is a joke to higher level science. the questions are mostly trickery and there is usually a wide range of answers that are valid for the question, after all they are only familiar to science for 4 years. And what they are learning are way too basic. If it could get harder than an O level paper, it has to be the examiner's problem.

Technically, only Mathematics can become the problem in PSLE papers. Here are 5 Reasons I have consolidated to why Math PSLE papers are a big problem.

1) Your child is lazy, careless and unintelligent. Deal with it. If they can't solve the questions, all they need is higher authority to validate their reasons and find alternatives to achieve an A*, in this case complaining to their parents. If other children can finish the paper say that it's not that hard, how could you possibly say that the paper is tough? then these children are geniuses?

2) Parents are getting stupid, oblivion and temperamental. Seriously, they should understand the motive of today's education, to challenge the students with higher order thinking. If everyone can do the questions and excel the paper, what's the point of having exams? furthermore, the syllabus of today's educations is way different than the generation that parents had. Indeed it has morphed and become harder, what do you expect them to solve? 1+1? Congrats your son is a genius

3) Education system is getting slacker. What is it with introducing primary school children to use calculators in exams? what's next, getting them to learn how to drive at age 7? they should be trained to perform mental sums and be confident in their performance by self effort. They are going to become over reliant on calculators to do simple sums and the next thing you know, your son is apparently giving his gratification to the calculator for his success. what's 1+1? hold on, let my 12 year old son take his calculator out...

And stop with all the nonsense of "teach less learn more". If i want to, i would not have gone to school and start working, what's the point of going to school when apparently the teachers are not working? The purpose of children going to school is because teachers are the main source of knowledge, if they are teaching less, where else can children seek intellect? the internet? the parents? the library? the street? Come on, we are speaking about children. I guess the education system should be blamed if the children are not performing up to standard because the teachers are not teaching them enough.

4) Setters problem. i believe that setters have been given rules and stuff whereby questions are set based on them. I also believe that they have to test the paper out to gauge the time taken to complete the paper if within the limit. Have they considered on testing them out on local primary school children? asking adults or overseas students to do it does not compare with those done by our own. They are probably way smarter than them and perhaps thought by their own teachers more efficient method to solve the questions. for 1+1, there are tons of methods to know that the answer is 2.

5) Time constraint. This has always been a problem in almost everything. As assumed by smart asses marking these national papers, for each mark, 1 min 15 seconds is allowed to be spent. and to be able to earn that mark, the students have to employ numerous statements and calculations which by the time they got to that marking point, more than 1 min 15 seconds have been lost. Furthermore, all these expectations to give accurate calculations and omitting of calculations will result in deduction of marks get on to the children pretty quickly, this fear causes them to spent way too much time on giving redundant calculations that markers probably would have already calculated using their calculator or copied on the answer schemes. Markers always wanted to be perceived as stupid people, but if they are stupid, how is it they are qualified to mark our papers? It would have been better to get my 5 year old niece to mark my paper, after all she has probably equivalent brain cells as the markers.

T