Are these prep courses necessary?

These intensive, short-term sessions claim to hone exam skills and address learning gaps, but experts say they may increase a child's anxiety in an already stressful school year

- Venessa Lee Senior Correspondent

Many schoolchildren, especially those in Primary 6, and their parents may be aware of PSLE bootcamps as a feature of Singapore's tuition landscape.

But what exactly are PSLE bootcamps, and how useful are they?

Typically, these bootcamps are intensive revision courses for children taking the Primary School Leaving Examination in Primary 6.

Tuition providers say these short-term preparatory programmes, which go by various names, reinforce academic concepts, sharpen exam techniques and allow more targeted attention to be paid to pupils' areas of weakness.

Some even claim to provide motivational coaching and resilience training, and to develop soft skills like time management.

Many of these workshops take place during the school holidays, on top of a child's regular tuition. Usually costing from a couple of hundred dollars to more than $1,000, PSLE bootcamps can take place over one or two days, or several weeks. Some tuition centres provide online options.

While tuition centres tout their value in helping pupils plug gaps in learning and exam skills, observers caution that the popularity of PSLE bootcamps stems in part from parental FOMO (fear of missing out). Such programmes may increase a child's anxiety in an already stressful school year, they say.

According to Dr Anthony Fok, chief executive of CPD Singapore Education Services, an education consultancy, demand for PSLE bootcamps has grown over the past decade.

"Based on industry observations, participation rates are estimated to have increased by around 30 to 50 per cent, compared with the early 2010s," he says.

"This growth picked up especially after the introduction of the AL scoring system," he says, adding that Achievement Level (AL) banding increased "awareness and anxiety" surrounding how score differences could affect secondary school placement.