In a move to dial down the competition over the Primary School Leaving Examination and encourage pupils to go beyond book smarts, the new PSLE grading will no longer be based on how pupils perform relative to their peers.

Instead, the new scoring system, which will come into effect in 2021, is aimed at encouraging pupils to focus on their own learning, instead of the competition.

Their marks will be converted into grade bands 1 to 8 and their PSLE score will be the sum of their grades in all the subjects, with 4 being the best score.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) in its press statement said: “Students will no longer be as finely differentiated, since there will only be 29 possible PSLE Scores, compared to more than 200 T-score aggregates under the current system.”

Achievement Level (AL) 1 is pitched close to the A star grade in the current system, for those scoring 90 and above. AL 2, 3 and 4 have a five point difference, while bands will widen AL 5 onwards.

MOE said the new system will still give parents and educators a gauge of a pupil’s progress at the end of primary school so that they can be matched to suitable academic programmes in secondary school.

It also said that if there are too few grade levels, there would be more pupils with the same PSLE Score, which would lead to more balloting for Secondary 1 posting.

The secondary-school streams will remain – pupils with a PSLE score of 4 to 20 will qualify for the Express stream.

Posting will continue to be based on academic merit first.

But under the new system, the choice order in which a pupil lists the secondary schools will now matter more, as a tie-breaker.

Currently, when two pupils are tied for a place in a school, computerised balloting is used to award the place, regardless of where they listed the school in their order of choices.

Under the new system, the pupil who lists the school higher in his choice list will have priority.

Acting Minister for Education (Schools) Ng Chee Meng told the media that the new system of eight ALs afforded enough differentiation to match pupils to the school that suits them, but it was not so broad that there would have to be too much balloting.

It is estimated that less than one in 10 places will be subject to balloting.

In response to parents who wished that MOE had been bolder in its changes, Mr Ng said that Singapore already had a strong and robust education system that had done well over the past 50 years.

“Some things are best evolved and not revolutionalised,” he said.

sandra@sph.com.sg

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Fewer people tied the knot in Singapore last year compared with 2014, but more couples got divorced.

A report by the Department of Statistics (SingStat) released yesterday showed that 28,322 couples wed last year, slightly down from a five-decade high of 28,407.

However there were 7,522 divorces and annulments, a 2.9 per cent rise from 2014 and the third highest annual figure on record.

While there were fewer Muslim divorces and fewer non-Muslim annulments, overall marital dissolutions rose because of more non-Muslim divorces – 5,450 last year, a 5.4 per cent increase from 2014.

The top reasons among non-Muslims for splitting up were unreasonable behaviour (53.7 per cent), and having lived apart or separated for three years or more (42.6 per cent).

However, lawyers say that official data may not reflect reality and that between a third and half of the divorces they handle involve a cheating spouse.

Few couples cite adultery as grounds for divorce as that requires evidence of an affair. It can also be costly to hire someone to gather such evidence, and the third party must be named in divorce papers.

Most of these couples cite unreasonable behaviour instead.

SingStat also said that between 2005 and last year, there was a “significant shift” towards older couples divorcing.

National University of Singapore sociologist Paulin Straughan said this is probably a natural result of people marrying later. She added that the rise in divorces is “no cause for alarm” as the general divorce rate – the number of divorces and annulments for every 1,000 married residents aged 20 and above – has been stable in the past decade.

About 3,460 children under the age of 18 had parents who divorced last year.

goyshiyi@sph.com.sg