O Levels – Change in School Calendar in S’pore

Hello local readers,

After 6 years, the Spore education committee has finally decided to adapt the Single Intake for Junior Colleges and Centralized Institutes. And for those taking this A Levels route for higher education, take down this date: 2ND Feb 2009 – this will be the single intake, as compared to the dual-intake system where admissions were in Jan and March. Now, students will go in as same footings. No more 1st 3 months in JCs!

This essentially means for next year O Level results, which are currently released in late January, will be released in early January 2009. Students taking the GCE O Level examination in Yr 2008 Do Take Note! Posting results will also be released in End of January 2009 as compared to the Mid-Feb release in previous years.

These however warrant 3 important points regards to O Level Students:

1) O Level Examinations will be brought forward (just like this year as compared to last), and schools will have less time to finish up the chapters with you. Be ready to attend more extra classes in “holidays period” and night time remedial classes on weekdays when it is closer to major examinations. This probably means less holiday time and personal revision times respectively. Do revise ahead!

2) Preliminary Examinations’ results will no longer be a criteria for students to enter JCs. As such, students might feel Prelims as not important anymore. In fact, right now for this year – we have already seen students taking the Prelims Exams lightly. Thou it is not crucial nowadays to have good Prelims results, what i worry is the closeness of the Prelims to O Level Examinations. If students don’t study hard for their Prelims now, are they going to revise properly only after the prelims? That is FOR YOUR INFORMATION – 4 weeks to O Levels!

3) This might sound controversial (and maybe contradicting to Point 2), but we have heard from many teachers and students that schools are setting very tough Prelim papers to test gradefail? the students. Their primary reason and “good intention” is to make sure students will not get complacent (if you have high marks in Prelims due to easy paper) and study real hard for O Levels. This however, i felt might have repercussions – What if students fail badly for Prelims and they become demoralised and demotivated instead? This is certainly worth pondering. Teachers that are reading this humble Chemistry Blog-site – you may want to take this point back to discuss with your Head-of-Depts, etc. Because we have been hearing many students feeling really bad after attempting a Tough paper.

• Students – So how did you fare for your Prelims?
• Tutors (using this site for extra notes) – Get ready to spend more time with your students. Get them motivated.
• Teachers/Educators - I just wish to bring this out based on experiences/observations. Pls do not get offended.
• Overseas readers - Any thoughts on our Spore Education systems as compared to yours?

PS: Drop me a comment on your thoughts. I would love to hear from you.

All The Best !

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• No Such Thing As Absolute Failure
• 2010 GCE ‘O’ Level Results – Official Release on Mon, 10th Jan 2011
• Official: Release of 2009 GCE ‘O’ Level Results on 11th January 2010
• Back to 2008 GCE O Levels
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