Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts

28 Sept 2012

PSLE blues and nerves ...


It’s all my fault. Today is already day 2 of PSLE and I am shocked at my nerves. 

As I ruminated on it, i feel that a major reason is this: I have failed to grasp the incredibly complex educational roadmap here :-


*That your child should aspire to Higher Mother Tongue because it gives her points which add to her T-score (the bottomline score when it comes to determining the next phase of your child’s educational experience)

* That she should have joined a co-curricular activity that boasts of national-level excellence which in some way proves she has the mettle for tougher regimes ahead; and perhaps a Direct Secondary School Admission.

* that she should have taken every one of those enrichment opportunities from scrabble to ballet to the hilt to prove that she is among the elite; once again standing her in good stead for an esteemed secondary schooling experience such as Integrated Program.



Alas, I just am not the grand tactician who can grasp this scheme of things but plan my moves and arrange my resources so. So I had taken the clueless path of making decisions one step at a time. She’s too tired, choose another co-curricular activity.  Go easy on the purse and the pressure, so let’s not have too much tuition. Top class or mid-of-the-range? The latter please.

But now I’m a bundle of nerves! It’s clear as light to me what my daughter is capable of, but I just have to hope that this one exam which everything hinges on goes predictably smoothly. At the back of my mind, a tiny voice kept saying I did not push her to reach her best; and the more I browse the secondary schools which all parents aspire their kids to end up in, the worse I feel.

I had vowed that the exams will be hers, not mine. I went to work, was at a meeting when she returned home from the first day of PSLE. Everything was cool – except my nerves!


I just wonder how many parents feel like I do? 

The system is so complicated with the options and possibilities: IP, Express, Normal (Acad), Normal (Tenchincal), regular secondary schools, programs in junior colleges, Aesthetics and Music electives…and on... it really takes a strategist to figure it out. We had planned to set aside time to consider options and pick the six choices we have. But I cannot seem to shut the door on the information which I feel so overwhelmed by. It keeps demanding to be studied more carefully. There go those nerves again: for someone not known to major on details, I guess I have to bear with it. It’s two more days (with a weekend thrown in) where the exams are concerned; but it’s been a long journey and I am tired!