O levels result releasing soon. Which path to go? JC or poly? Allow me to share my personal opinions through my blog after having some experience coaching in both institutions.

LOL123kiasu:

I heard that many students use the December holidays to learn jc topics (esp maths) in advance to avoid failing ct in jc1. What are the topics/chapters in h2 maths that one can self-study during the holidays?

In my opinion, they should rebuild their foundation for O level mathematics. I have come across students who know the concepts of A level topics but lost marks in tests / exam because of fundamental O level concepts. E.g. Mistakes from topics such as law of indices, logarithm / exponential, trigonometry, etc.

Also after a couple of months of holidays after O level exams, it is pretty common for students to \"reformat\" the hard disks in their brain because they assumed O level topics are no longer required / tested. Wait until end February or March before ennrollment into JC, the hard disk is pretty much like new (empty).

My personal teaching approach / principle is that before one wants to move ahead of others, make sure the foundation knowledge is strong. Learning ahead is good but it need not guarantee a better grade at the end.

Share my personal experience. I have a new tuition student because he did very poorly for JC 1 throughout the entire year, getting consistent \"U\" grade. According to the parent, the previous tutor's approach is always teaching in advance and while waiting for promo results the tutor began to teach JC 2 topics. In the end the student failed the overall year 1 math.

I met this new student 2 weeks ago and I began to do some diagnostic test to see how good is his fundamentals. In the end, I had to reteach everything because all was forgotten 1 to 2 months after promotional exams. So throughout the year he puts in the effort but could only manage a U grade, now his mastery level has dropped further because of lack of revision. It will be a painful year 2 for this student because on 1 hand he has to pick up everything in year 1 and year 2 the school will just accelerate the pace of teaching to complete the syllabus by end June or early May.

Similarly if a student starts JC H2 Math with poor foundation in A and E math, it will be a tough journey for him.

Regards
Mr Ang
http://alevelmathtuition.sg

"Common to fail and do badly for JC1", "alot of time for revision in JC2". Sorry I beg to differ based on my experience teaching in a JC. Telling this to our students may give them the wrong impression that they are "ok" when in fact they aren’t.


Most schools will speed up the teaching in JC2 as they aim to finish syllabus by mid July. That is under the assumption that the students have sufficient mastery in JC 1 topics and they are not going to do extensive revision until after August. So what the students will face is on one hand they are lacking in J1 topics on the other hand the school will pile them with new topics. Furthermore without consistent revision, students will just forget what they have learnt. Then they have to start all over again which is not time efficient.

There is a significant chance they are not going to cope well and IMHO, just drilling on questions at year end is just like asking students to memorise 101 questions they have done before and pray that a similar one will appear in A levels. The recent trend of A level, at least for Math, is that uncommon questions will be the norm, different ways to package and phrase a question that will require students to think is the key skill to get a good grade.

Other skillsets are important, but before we talk about scholarships etc, make sure the student can enroll into a university course first.

I would advise you to go to Poly Open houses and take a good look at courses offered. Don’t choose to take A levels just because you don’t know what Poly education is. To be frank the gap between A levels and O levels is huge. Also it might be 3 year programme but doesn’t mean they take full 3 years to teach.


E.g. for math, 1st year they do few topics, probably to test water and identify students who might want to leave after year 1. Year 2 they will go at a much faster pace and most of the time in year 3 they will be doing revision.

Anyway MI = 3 year, Poly also 3 year so it does not mean going to poly means you spend more years in education.

Review and solutions of P1 available


https://alevelmathtuition.sg/2016/11/11/2016-h2-math-paper-1-solutions-and-review/

A balanced paper. Some questions were reused from earlier years' questions, just slight modification.


There are probably 15 to 20 marks that requires thinking or phrased in a non-routine manner. Overall I feel that the paper is not out to kill but scoring A is not that easy.

Here's something your child can refer to in preparing for paper 2.
https://alevelmathtuition.sg/2016/11/10/2016-h2-math-paper-2/

The paper is designed with the core concepts and questions are in placed every year with minor changes. However the trend in recent year papers is that there are more thinking and uncommon questions too. A good example is 2014 paper 1 for thinking questions and 2015 Q3 for unguided questions.


Moreover it is also about speed, accuracy and ability to react when a student faced an uncommon question. The uncommon questions may not cost too many marks in exam, but sometimes all it takes is 1 question to shake the student’s confidence and the ability to stay calm.

There is a sample paper given to all schools as a reference. New syllabus doesn’t mean all the questions are entirely new. In fact for math, the new syllabus is more or less recycled from the old syllabus.


As far as local university admission is concerned, it is all about the ranking of students rather than the absolute grades. Lenient marking may not be good as you will see plenty of As around and soon many courses require straight As or almost straight As to enter.

Most JCs are having orientation this week and mass lecture will be next week until they are split into their respective classes.


RVHS and DHS are IP so they don’t need to have orientation for their year 5 students.

I agree to a certain extent. Discipline and motivation is really important. Personally I have seen my students who may not be academically as brilliant but they make it up through effort and can still perform well.


On the other hand, I have seen students from the top JCs who aren’t interested in studying and still not perform well.

Value addness has its own meaning, without it people will always use the number of As as a gauge of the school’s performance. However this is not fair because a school with poorer intake can never match those of the top schools. But this doesn’t mean that the school is not teaching well.

Instead of looking at the absolute grade, value addedness looks at how much a school can push the students beyond what is expected of them. To be frank the top schools may not do as well in this aspect.