Primary Schools

THE New Education System (NES] was implemented in primary schools beginning with the 1979 Primary Three (P3) cohort. As recommended by the Goh Report, all pupils would follow a common curriculum (which would place emphasis on the learning of languages and mathematics) during their first three years of formal schooling, that is, from PI to P3. Pupils would be streamed at the end of P3 on the basis of their examination performances in P2 and P3. Tb avoid additional pressure through the introduction of a new national examination, the end-of-year P3 examination (sometimes referred to as the streaming examination) would be school-based. However, in order to ensure some uniformity of standards, this examination would be constructed from item banks to be maintained by the Ministry of Education. Pupils would be streamed on the following basis:

With the provision for lateral transfers across streams, primary schooling would be completed within six to eight years. The Normal and Extended courses are essentially academic courses in which pupils are prepared for the PSLE.2t The Monolingual course is a non-academic course, the objective of which is to ensure basic literacy and numeracy for the less academically inclined- and to prepare them for prevocational training at ihe institutes of the VITB,

Secondary Schools

The NES was implemented for the secondary schools beginning with the 1980 Primary Six (P6) cohort.