Parliamentary Replies
Mother Tongue Language (2)
Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament
Mr Seah Kian Peng, Member of Parliament for Marine Parade GRC
Question
To ask the Minister for Education in respect of the PSLE (a) whether there is a difference in the Chinese Language scores between neighbourhood schools and brand-name schools such as Anglo-Chinese schools, Methodist Girls School (Primary) and St Joseph’s Institution Junior; (b) whether the Ministry can release data for the top 10 schools, for the past decade, in terms of (i) overall scores; (ii) Chinese Language grades; (iii) English Language grades, and compare them with their national averages; and (c) whether the Ministry has conducted surveys to show that students are being penalised for an equal weightage in Chinese.
Response
As a matter of policy, MOE does not publish the exam subject results of individual schools. What we can provide to the Members are results based on national trends.
Among schools that have a high proportion of students (i.e. at least 80%) from predominantly EL-speaking homes, 97 percent of the students scored ‘A-star’ to ‘C’ for their Chinese Language at the 2009 PSLE. This is marginally lower than the national cohort of 98 percent.
Mr Seah asked whether students were being penalised for an equal weightage in Chinese. Among students who were in the top 30 per cent of the 2009 PSLE cohort based on their performance in English, Mathematics and Science, around 1 in 10 of these students were in the bottom 30 per cent in terms of their Chinese Language score.