Every November, the same WhatsApp messages arrive in my phone: "Teacher, what AL score does my child need for X school?" and "Is 12 a good score?" and, the one that always makes me pause, "We'll just focus on English and Maths — Chinese is Chinese lah." This article answers the first two properly, with MOE's own numbers, and then explains why that third sentence costs families more than they realise.
PSLE 2026 results are expected on 24–25 November (SEAB's tentative dates — the exact day is confirmed closer to the time). If your child is in P6, bookmark this for results week. If your child is in P5, this is the year you can actually do something about the numbers below.
1. What AL1 to AL8 Actually Mean
Since 2021, each PSLE subject is graded on an Achievement Level (AL) from 1 (best) to 8, based on the raw mark out of 100. The bands are fixed — your child is measured against the standard, not against classmates. Here is the official mapping:
| Achievement Level | Raw mark |
|---|---|
| AL1 | 90 and above |
| AL2 | 85 – 89 |
| AL3 | 80 – 84 |
| AL4 | 75 – 79 |
| AL5 | 65 – 74 |
| AL6 | 45 – 64 |
| AL7 | 20 – 44 |
| AL8 | below 20 |
Notice the shape of that table. At the top, each band is only 5 marks wide (AL2, AL3, AL4). In the middle, AL5 is 10 marks wide and AL6 is 20. This matters more than anything else in this article — we'll come back to it.
2. The PSLE Score: One Number from 4 to 32
Your child's PSLE Score is simply the four subject ALs added together — English, Mathematics, Science and Mother Tongue. Four AL1s give the best possible score of 4; the range runs to 32. Lower is better. There is no bell curve and no tie-breaking by individual marks: a 90 and a 99 in the same subject are both AL1.
That PSLE Score decides two things: which Posting Group your child enters (which sets the subject level they start at in Secondary 1), and which schools are within reach.
| PSLE Score | Posting Group | Indicative S1 subject level |
|---|---|---|
| 4 – 20 | Posting Group 3 | G3 |
| 21 – 22 | Posting Group 3 or 2 (choice) | G3 / G2 |
| 23 – 24 | Posting Group 2 | G2 |
| 25 | Posting Group 2 or 1 (choice) | G2 / G1 |
| 26 – 30 | Posting Group 1 (with AL7 or better in English and Maths) | G1 |
Under Full Subject-Based Banding, these are starting points, not fixed tracks — students can take individual subjects at a higher level as they go. But the starting point is set by this number.
3. Cut-Off Points: What They Are and Where to Check Them
Every secondary school has a cut-off point (COP): the PSLE Score of the last student posted there in the previous year's exercise. The most competitive schools in recent years have had COPs in the single digits; most mainstream schools sit well into the teens and twenties. MOE publishes every school's indicative range on its SchoolFinder tool — that is the only list you should trust.
- COPs are last year's numbers. They move by a point or two every year depending on the cohort and on which schools families chose, so treat them as a reference range, not a promise.
- Many schools have two COPs — one for the Affiliated route (for pupils from the affiliated primary school) and one for everyone else. Make sure you are reading the right one.
- Posting also depends on the order of your six choices. A school within range is not guaranteed if it fills up with students who listed it higher.
- Ignore blogs that rank primary schools. MOE does not publish primary school rankings, so every such list is someone's guess — and it has nothing to do with where your child will be posted.
⚠️ Check the source, not the screenshot
Cut-off point tables circulate in parent groups every December, often a year out of date or missing the Affiliated/Non-affiliated split. Open MOE's SchoolFinder (moe.gov.sg → Secondary 1 Posting → SchoolFinder) and read the current indicative range yourself. It takes two minutes and it is the number the posting system actually uses.
4. The Chinese Arithmetic Nobody Does
Here is the part I wish every parent understood in P5, not in P6 results week. Mother Tongue is one of the four subjects in the PSLE Score. An AL point in Chinese counts exactly the same as an AL point in English or Maths. Not 'also counts' — the same. A child at AL5 in Chinese and AL2 in the other three has a PSLE Score of 11; move Chinese to AL3 and the score is 9. Two points on the total, from one subject.
Now go back to the band widths. To climb from AL5 to AL4, a child needs to cross 75 marks; AL4 to AL3 means crossing 80. Those are 5-mark bands. In Chinese, composition alone is 40 of the paper's 200 marks — one fifth of the subject. On the 100-mark scale, that means a composition that improves from 22/40 to 30/40 moves the subject mark by roughly 4 points. For a child sitting at 73 or 77 or 82, four marks is a whole band.
Worked example: a P5 child averaging 24/40 in composition and 73 overall in Chinese is an AL5. The same child writing 30/40 compositions — a very ordinary improvement over a year of weekly practice — is at about 76: AL4. Nothing else changed. That is one point off the PSLE Score for the price of one essay a week.
I am not saying Chinese is easy. I am saying it is the subject where a specific, trainable skill — writing a structured composition with real detail — sits right on top of a band boundary for a very large number of children. Families who say "Chinese is Chinese" are leaving that point on the table, and it is often the point that decides which column of the SchoolFinder table they are in.
5. The Higher Chinese Door Just Got Wider
One more thing that changed, and that many parents missed. From the 2026 Secondary 1 cohort onwards, a child who scores AL1 or AL2 in Mother Tongue at PSLE (or Distinction / Merit in Higher Mother Tongue) can take Higher Chinese in secondary school regardless of their overall PSLE Score. Previously the overall score had to be 8 or better, or 9–14 with a strong MTL grade — so a child with AL1 in Chinese but a total of 18 had no route in. Now that child qualifies automatically.
💡 Why this matters even if you never cared about Higher Chinese
Higher Chinese in secondary school is the gateway to the Language Elective Programmes and, further down the road, to bonus points at some junction points of the system. It is now decided by one subject's AL — the subject where a weekly composition habit moves the needle most.
6. If Your Child Is in P5: You Have the One Thing P6 Parents Don't
Time. This year, the students I saw cramming hardest only started writing compositions in earnest in September — a few weeks before the paper. A P5 child who writes one composition a week from now has 40-odd marked essays by next September, each one with specific feedback on their own sentences. That is not a different child; it is the same child with a different starting line.
Free: your child writes on paper, you snap a photo, it is marked in about 90 seconds against the MOE rubric — with the method, not just the mark — and you get a short weekly report. One a week, from this week.
开始每周一篇 — Start the P5 12-week plan →Already in P6 and reading this in results week? Whatever the number says, read this next:
It's One Test in a Long, Beautiful Life →Sources
- MOE — PSLE scoring system and Achievement Levels: moe.gov.sg/psle-fsbb/psle/new-psle-scoring-system
- MOE — Secondary 1 Posting: Posting Groups, SchoolFinder and FAQs: moe.gov.sg/psle-fsbb/posting-to-secondary-school
- MOE press release, 14 Sep 2024 — Higher Mother Tongue eligibility from the 2026 Sec 1 cohort: moe.gov.sg/news/press-releases/20240914-strengthening-efforts-for-students-to-learn-and-use-their-mother-tongue-language-from-young
- SEAB — 2026 PSLE examination timetable and results window: seab.gov.sg/important-dates-for-candidates
- Band widths, worked example and the 40/200 composition weighting are arithmetic on the published figures; the worked example is illustrative, not a prediction of any child's result.