PSLE blues and nerves ...

It’s all my fault. Today is already day 2 of PSLE and I am shocked at my nerves. 

As I ruminated on it, i feel that a major reason is this: I have failed to grasp the incredibly complex educational roadmap here :-

*That your child should aspire to Higher Mother Tongue because it gives her points which add to her T-score (the bottomline score when it comes to determining the next phase of your child’s educational experience)

* That she should have joined a co-curricular activity that boasts of national-level excellence which in some way proves she has the mettle for tougher regimes ahead; and perhaps a Direct Secondary School Admission.

* that she should have taken every one of those enrichment opportunities from scrabble to ballet to the hilt to prove that she is among the elite; once again standing her in good stead for an esteemed secondary schooling experience such as Integrated Program.

Alas, I just am not the grand tactician who can grasp this scheme of things but plan my moves and arrange my resources so. So I had taken the clueless path of making decisions one step at a time. She’s too tired, choose another co-curricular activity.  Go easy on the purse and the pressure, so let’s not have too much tuition. Top class or mid-of-the-range? The latter please.

But now I’m a bundle of nerves! It’s clear as light to me what my daughter is capable of, but I just have to hope that this one exam which everything hinges on goes predictably smoothly. At the back of my mind, a tiny voice kept saying I did not push her to reach her best; and the more I browse the secondary schools which all parents aspire their kids to end up in, the worse I feel.

I had vowed that the exams will be hers, not mine. I went to work, was at a meeting when she returned home from the first day of PSLE. Everything was cool – except my nerves!

I just wonder how many parents feel like I do? 

The system is so complicated with the options and possibilities: IP, Express, Normal (Acad), Normal (Tenchincal), regular secondary schools, programs in junior colleges, Aesthetics and Music electives…and on... it really takes a strategist to figure it out. We had planned to set aside time to consider options and pick the six choices we have. But I cannot seem to shut the door on the information which I feel so overwhelmed by. It keeps demanding to be studied more carefully. There go those nerves again: for someone not known to major on details, I guess I have to bear with it. It’s two more days (with a weekend thrown in) where the exams are concerned; but it’s been a long journey and I am tired!