The Straits Times, Jan 2, 1992
By Sandra Davie
AT THE start of the school year which begins today, pupils at three primary schools will try out a new, day scheme. They will attend classes from 8.30 am to 3.30 pm, after which they will go for enrichment courses up to 6 pm.
Under another new scheme, Primary 5 pupils will start classes in one of three new streams which will see English being studied at first language level and the mother tongue at either first, second or third language levels.
These are just some of the new education policies taking effect this year, with the primary schools seeing the most number of changes.
Parents said that although they were at first apprehensive about the new streaming policy at Primary 5, they were now satisfied with the way it was implemented.
At the end of last year, schools recommended appropriate streams for pupils based on their academic records and the Primary 4 streaming examinations. Parents were given the choice of accepting or rejecting the school's recommendation.
Of the Primary 5 cohort, 13.8 per cent were streamed into EM1 where they will study both English and mother tongue at first-language level.
The EM2 stream will have 75.8 per cent of the cohort. They will study English as a first language and mother tongue as a second language.
The remaining 10.4 per cent will go into EM3 where pupils will study English as a first language and mother tongue as a third language.
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