Homeschooling and the PSLE Benchmark barrier means some have to retake exam

Some homeschoolers have sat the PSLE twice or more in order to meet the score set by the Ministry of Education

- Jane Ng

Six of Mrs Sue Ong's children have sat the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) and all of them have had to retake it.

The children, some of whom have learning difficulties, are now between 13 and 25 years old.

Most of them met the benchmark after they took the PSLE a second time.

Mrs Ong, 50, who homeschools her children, also has a five-year-old child with her 54-year-old teacher husband.

Her eldest child Asher Ong, now 25 and studying in Britain on a government scholarship, got an aggregate of about 190 in his first PSLE attempt in 2012.

His score would have put him in the Normal (Academic) stream in secondary school, had he taken the PSLE in a mainstream primary school.

But it was below the Ministry of Education's (MOE) PSLE benchmark for homeschoolers, which is pegged to the 33rd percentile of all students in mainstream schools taking four standard-level subjects in the PSLE that year.

MOE does not release the benchmark score publicly.

According to homeschooling families, the benchmark is approximately the score needed to enter the express stream in the past, or about an Achievement Level of 20 or 21 under the scoring system introduced in 2021.

Homeschoolers who do not meet this criterion must retake the PSLE until they pass the benchmark or reach the age of 15, whichever is earlier.

Asher cleared the benchmark when he got a score of 203 in his second attempt in 2013.

An MOE spokesperson says the benchmark for homeschoolers is to "ensure that they have a baseline foundation in their academic education that allows them to access further learning and training".

Since the Compulsory Education Act came into effect in 2003, there have been about 50 children who are homeschooled each year. In the past five years, about one-third of the homeschoolers who sat the PSLE each year did not meet the benchmark, says MOE.

In 2024, a total of 40,894 Primary 6 pupils took the PSLE.