Why I think the PSLE 2013 COP for 2014 sec 1 intake will drop

The PSLE results were released last Friday (22 November 2013); happy or sad the floodgate of emotions accumulated after many months of intense preparation cathartically opened for many a parent and child . What was probably unusual though was the clear absence of an official announcement of the national top and bottom scores. Still, a little detective work done by concerned ( erm can we say nosey too?) parents led to the birth of this thread at Kiasu Parents Forum which did an impressive post-mortem of the results release. Netizen happiemum herself also stepped forward and gave her two cents on specific matters, namely the prediction of cut-off points (COP) for entry into secondary schools in 2014:

" Dear parents, I'm sure everyone agrees that the top score for PSLE 2013 was unusually much lower compared to past years. Based on info from the other thread, the top 3% of the cohort of 43047 which qualifies for the Edusave Entrance Scholarships for Independent Schools (EEIS) is as low as 257/258.


I don't know how many vacancies are made available in the individual IP school so I'll just assume that they each have around 400 vacancies. Top tier IP schools like RGS, NYGS, RI, HCI, NJC,NUSH will have a total of 2400 vacancies. Let's assume again that half of these 1200 slots may have already been taken via the Direct School Admission exercise (DSA), hence only 1200 slots left for sec 1 posting exercise. Let's assume again that 1292 (top 3% of cohort) students will fill up these remaining slots. Thus, I predict the COP for these schools may be lowered to 257/258 depending on the COP for this year's EEIS. Very likely, some of the 1292 top 3% scorers might have already DSA-ed to schools other than the top 5 mentioned earlier thereby implying that a few hundred slots will be freed up for 3013 students ( the next top 7% scorers with T-scores 251 to 257/258), so I predict the COP for these schools may drop even further to 255/256.


The balance of these 3013 students (next 7% top scorer of the cohort) having T-scores between 251 to 257/258, assuming all taking up IP/IB programmes will fill up the vacancies of the next tier IP schools like Dunman High, River Valley High, CHIJ St Nicholas Girls', MGS, Cedar Girls', SCGS, TJC, CHS, ACS(I). Thus, I predict the cop for DHS, RVHS might lurk around 252-254 and the COP for the rest to be 251.


Of course, these are very bold predictions. The purpose of me writing this is for parents to further contribute to this discussion as this year's T-scores in general were found to be much lower, correspondingly the COP for sec 1 students posted to various schools should be lower compared to previous batches."


THANK YOU HAPPIEMUM FOR ALLOWING US TO REPRODUCE YOUR POST.


The Czar (Site Founder)

Dated 25 November 2013


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