What’s the best way to help your Primary 6 child prepare for the Primary School Leaving Examination, or PSLE?

Chances are, your child is already being tutored in one or more subjects. However, this doesn’t mean that parents don’t have a role to play. Instead of assisting your child with their schoolwork, you can take on the role of a coach, helping your child to: 

• prioritise the most important revision tasks for PSLE preparation 
• set up revision plans that serve a clear purpose, and are realistic
• identify obstacles standing in the way of effective revision

If you’ve never played the role of a coach before, it may be useful to schedule a few sessions with a coach yourself, just to see how coaching works. In fact, that’s what one of our KiasuParents members recently did — she booked a coaching session with a trainee coach, as she had found it difficult to implement a consistent revision routine at home with her Primary 6 son. With a single session, she was able to stop procrastinating, and carry out a series of small steps to create a routine that her son was willing to follow.

Although coaching can be pricey, you can look for alternatives that will be easier on your wallet, such as volunteering to help trainee coaches clock their certification hours.

Prefer to try this on your own? Reflect on the questions below to get started!

What’s one issue relating to your child’s PSLE prep that you would like to fix?

Parents are not schoolteachers, and it’s not our responsibility to replace them. But we know it’s so easy to become overwhelmed if you feel that your child needs to boost their grade in two or more subjects. 

If this is your predicament, consider the following:

• Is there anyone else that can help my child?
• If finances are an issue, is there a cost-friendly solution?

Picture this common scenario: A child is scoring AL5 (65 to 74 marks) or AL6 (45 to 64 marks) in the mother tongue language, despite having weekly tutoring. On closer inspection, the child is able to manage multiple choice questions fairly well, but struggles with open-ended questions, as well as composition writing and oral tests. If yours is a family that does not speak the language at home, it will be an uphill task to create more exposure to the language on your own. 

What can you do? Start small and never try to cover all bases. Instead, choose just one thing to focus on, such as the conversation component of the oral exam. Get a clear framework from your child’s teacher for conversation practice, which could be:

• State observations about a situation (“I see two girls scribbling on a table in a park”)
• Give opinions or talk about feelings (“I think that’s wrong, because…”)
• Give suggestions for positive change (“In future, they should bring a sketchbook out instead…”)

If you are not familiar with the language, or prefer not to tutor your own child, you can then look to hire someone as a conversation partner for your child. This doesn’t have to be a star tutor, but simply someone who is comfortable speaking the language, such as a teen student looking for a weekend job. In this way, your role will instantly shift to guiding the teen tutor on how to better help your child.

How can you create a PSLE revision routine for your child that is targeted and effective, and doesn’t lead to more stress at home?

Let’s say that your child is already very responsible, in terms of completing homework assigned by schoolteachers and tutors. However, you feel there are still pockets of free time that can be spent on revision. The question to ask is: What’s a useful revision activity to carry out?

Some teachers recommend that parents help with retesting at home. This is extremely useful, because typically when a child makes a mistake on an assignment or a test, they copy down solutions as “corrections” and move on to attempt new questions. Often, they may not have fully understood the solution, and it is only through retesting that this will be revealed to you.

The way to carry out retesting is to reprint questions where children have made mistakes, so that they can reattempt these questions. Again, as there are many questions to choose from, you can settle on five questions to retest every week, for selected subjects. If a child works on five retested questions each week for Maths and Science, this could already take up to two hours, which is enough for a day.

One thing’s for sure — supporting your child in retesting is a lot less stressful than trying to be their home tutor. You can compare their answers against the model solutions, and highlight discrepancies for your child’s teacher or tutor to address.

How can you turn a PSLE revision plan into concrete action?

Plans can be fun to make, but often, the biggest hurdle is the lack of follow-through. To boost your chances of success, you should be very specific about your plan. For example, here are some questions that you can ask yourself:

• When would you like this revision routine to take place? (“every Saturday, from 9 to 11AM”)
• What exactly would you like your child to achieve during this session? (“do five Maths retest questions, and five Science retest questions”)
• In order for this to happen, what do you need to do? (“select and reprint questions by Friday every week”)
• Is there anything getting in the way of this plan happening? (“my child feels sleepy or wants to rest on Saturday mornings”) 
• How can this be resolved? (“sleep earlier on Friday nights or choose a different timing for revision”)

Once you have a clear plan in your head, present it to your child to seek their opinion, and only proceed if they are agreeable. If they are not satisfied with the plan, let them tell you what they are willing to do instead. 

To avoid disagreements over revision, do your best to remain calm and objective. For instance, if your child is retested and gets most of the questions wrong, don’t panic. Instead, alert the teacher or tutor and get them to pitch in and help with explanations. 

Most importantly, make the experience positive for your child, with small rewards such as heading out for ice cream after work is completed. Once a plan is firmly in place and you’ve ironed out all the kinks, you can then look at addressing a new issue with a new plan.

Want to share your own PSLE strategies or need advice from other parents? Join the conversation on the KiasuParents forum!