After scanning the last couple of pages of this thread, I’ve reached a somewhat disheartening conclusion.

It seems that we will never be able to stop measuring our young 12yos on the basis of their PSLE T-score.
An aggregate of 245?! You shall be condemned to struggle in a ‘top’ IP school (and forever too) since you have entered via DSA.
275? Congratulations! You are a star and the hope of our nation, and certainly you will not be struggling like the 240s!

I am all for abolishing affiliations to secondary schools, even though my children will be able to benefit from this. But to me calling for removal of DSA is akin to calling for going back to the days when ONLY academic results matter in our education system. What happened to all our collective moaning of how narrowly focused our education system was (?)/is?

JannettLee:

I was distracted to discuss this GEP thingy again! I'm only interested to talk about GE Election 2015. here. Please don't distract me :razz:


This will be my last posting on Education System and do not bug me again on the GEP.
As I don't wish to go through the details of Finland's education system and the GEP system here.

Thank you! FINALLY!!!
I was getting tired of reading your rants.
In any event, you can't go through the details of the GEP system even if your life depends on it.
It must be apparent to any sane person reading this thread: YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT.

My dd, alas, is not that excited after peeking at her brother’s math files haha.

Not a very mathy person, so she’s being ambivalent about opting in.

solaris88:

After reading the booklets given in the envelope..about the programme and the emphasis on the commitment required.. I'm now getting concerned..or rather.. worried...

Perhaps I'm looking at it from my non-gep brain's point of view.. how can a little 10yr old manage all these?
In particular.. it mentioned time management, which my boy and even my wife is having issue with.

Plus the consent required from parent ajnd child on the form..
It's like telling u that going into this is with your eyes open.. don't regret hor..

Then again.. ah boy got in on his own merits, we didn't prep him.. so should be okay?

Also, with the huge burden coming, I'm considering stopping his only outside enrichment class at berries.. which I believe helped his Chinese in school.. not sure if there's even time for this.. or should I let it continue?

Edit: he's got piano lessons also.. Now only at Grade 4 but he intends to go on. Don't know if he'll get overwhelmed from all these...

I just want to mention that if you plan to do HCL, you may not want to stop your chinese enrichment class. HCL at p4 GEP is nothing like HCL at p4 mainstream. The format is already the p5/6 HCL format i.e. no MCQ. From what i've observed, those kids who are not already strong in CL in the first place have found it fairly challenging. I left my kid, who's practically illiterate in CL, to deal with it himself at p4, and at the end of the year... regretted mightily that i didnt get him any help.

Checking with P1 parents-- what are the boys supposed to bring on the first day of school? Also, should they go directly to the classroom or gather at the hall?

We missed the orientation as ds2 was ill that day; completely clueless and just woke up to the fact that school starts next week lol.
MTIA!

When I heard Mr Lee’s announcement at prize giving, my first thought was: there must still be some kind of banding, cos there will still be the intermingling GEM classes with the gep classes. Wonder how they’ll effect this.

Wow, so much excitement here

To the rising p4 geppers, have fun, enjoy the journey, don't get too worked up over grades, and in the hols, LEARN TO TYPE!

Gosh, trying to follow this thread had my overworked and fried mind going around in circles and circles and circles...

metz:

Sun_2010:

[quote=\"metz\"]Yup, it's very possible that they have different papers. Though my friend's son and mine took the test in the same centre last year, they have different compre passages. And from a source, only selected questions are taken into account for selection. So, there's really no need to compare questions and answers.

Ah! the plot thickens :evil:
My Ds said there were 4 compre passages I wondered in Eng part1. hmm...

Just ran a check with my son. He didn't remember having to do any comprehension last year. Only cloze passages and MCQs. That's all he can vaguely recall.[/quote]Very interesting!
I remember that my ds1's description of the compre passages were completely different from friends who sat for the papers in other centres.
Also, he left quite a few questions uncompleted in the math paper (way more than the usual 4 or 5) and yet got in while some of his friends left many blanks too but didnt get in, leading me rather inclined to believe in the existence of 烟雾弹s. Hmmmm now that i think about it, all the questions he couldnt do were of a specfic type/nature.

That gas to pipe question-- my friend’s kid said gas+pipe=gaspipe, so is it shark+fin=sharkfin hahahahahaha!