Mother Tongue Exemption VS School Results. The Borderline Child.

Parents generally don't attempt to obtain MTL exemption unless their child is not doing well in MTL.  That goes without saying.  Then there are cases where the child may be passing but needs to spend over an hour a day for seven days learning a list of 10 spelling words only to get 7 correct.  It may then take an additional 2 hours to complete a set of 10 sentences where the child has to fill in the correct missing words.  There is literally no time to do anything else let alone have some play time.  Welcome to my world.

If after the professional assessment the child has very clear and severe learning disabilities (ADHD, dyslexia, ASD), the chance of exemption is high.  I'm 99.9% sure exemption will be granted in these cases.

BUT, BUT, BUT….what about those borderline cases?  The professional assessment may show up some issues with language and literacy but they aren't severe.  What if the child actually falls within the AVERAGE category for their age?  This could mean the child is weak at reading because they don't like books or perhaps the child was born towards the end of the year and he or she is actually progressing normally but the level of academic study at school is set higher to cater to the majority of kids who may have attended advanced tuition.  In these cases, the child will probably grasp the syllabus when they are mentally ready but unfortunately in the current Singapore school system, at every advancing academic level, the work gets exponentially harder.  P1 & P2 are like an extension of kindergarten.  After these two years the level of difficulty jumps significantly and continues to do so to P5.   For a borderline child (scoring 50s, 60s and 70s in P1 and P2), catching up in P3 and beyond will be difficult.  At P3, you can  expect your child's grades to drop about 10 points.

So it makes sense that some parents would prefer to opt for MTL exemption before the workload gets too onerous in P3 and science is added to increase the subject load to four examinable subjects.

Just as an aside, I have a friend whose child went through psychological assessment and was recommend exemption from MTL.  However, my friend has chosen to continue as they feel MTL is part of their heritage and culture which I fully respect.

At this point, I need to mention that  MOE does not "like" to give MTL exemption in P1 and P2.  I was told (by a very reliable source) that they feel that some kids take a while to develop and these early stage results may not be a good indicator of their future grasp of the language.

Nevertheless, as a parent who has struggled though 2 or more years of MTL and spent hours and hours coaching your child through the tears and pain of spelling and comprehension and spending thousands of dollars on tuition only to get minimal results you may not want to add another year of MTL to increasing academic workloads and watch other subjects suffer as a result.

So if your child is a borderline case and you want to go for MTL exemption, there are some things you can do to help your case.

1. Stop all MTL tuition.  Let your child learn at their natural pace.
2. Do not spend hours on MTL.  Concentrate on other subjects
3. Let your child's test scores reflect his/her true understanding of MTL

To put it bluntly, if your child consistently fails MTL, your chance of getting exempted will be higher.

First of all, low PSLE scores pull down the school's overall results thus affecting their ranking, particularly if there are a number of poor students in the school.  They could probably buffer one or two poor performing students but they would want to minimise this where possible. This is just my OPINION!  However, I do know that some top schools ask students to find "a better suited school" if the student does not perform to the school's academic standard.  This happened to my friend's P5 child last year.  This year, that girl and her sister are both in another school.

So having said that, the school would likely support your application.

With your school's full support, your professional medical report, special therapies and a consistently poor MTL result, you have maximised your chances of MTL exemption at MOE level for your borderline child.