Build exam stamina with past-year papers

When 12-year-old Connor Lim went on a family trip to Bangkok in June, he brought more than just clothes. His father packed past-year exam papers in the luggage, too. Connor worked through parts of the papers every single day during the trip, because his dad firmly believes that regular practice is the key to doing well on big tests.

Connor's father, Cyril Lim, 58, started buying past-year papers for Connor when he was in Primary 4. He compares taking exams to building a muscle. 'The more you train, the more you can focus and the stronger you get,' he says. He prefers these papers over regular assessment books because Connor can tackle many different types of questions all in one sitting.

Using past-year exam papers has been a common study method in Singapore for a long time. Jolene Ang is a former teacher who started a tuition centre called BlueTree Education in 2015. She says teachers began giving students these papers because exam questions tended to be similar from year to year, and parents quickly noticed how helpful they were.

These papers are easy to find around Singapore. Bookstores like Popular sell compilations of past-year PSLE papers. Parents can also find papers from specific schools on websites like chiongpapers.com, through online marketplaces like Carousell, or at special kiosks. One kiosk near Marine Parade MRT station called Play Learn sells papers for Primary 3 to Primary 6, sorted by topic. A stack of Primary 6 English papers from 15 schools costs $20, while a bundle covering all four subjects costs $65.

Ang says demand for these papers grew even more after mid-year exams were removed in 2023. Without those tests, many parents worry that their children are not getting enough practice during the school year. She also notes that some schools only give students a full practice paper as late as July of their Primary 6 year. 'This is a very sore and sensitive area for parents, who may feel schools are not preparing the kids enough,' she says.

One of the biggest reasons students use past-year papers is to build exam focus and stamina. Ang points out that people often underestimate how hard it is for 12-year-olds to sit still and concentrate for a long time. The maths PSLE paper, for example, is two and a half hours long. She has seen students give up after just 30 minutes, or keep asking to take breaks. 'They need to develop exam stamina, it's akin to preparing for a marathon,' she says.

Moses Soh is the deputy chief executive and head of academic innovation at the Mind Stretcher education centre. He says another big benefit of past-year papers is that they show students how the same topic can be tested in many different ways. While some parents look only for papers from top schools, Soh says those are not always the hardest. Doing a wide variety of papers helps students sharpen their understanding and get ready for unexpected questions.

Past-year papers also help students learn and practice smart exam strategies. At Mind Stretcher, students are taught to read through the entire paper first before answering anything. They set aside an estimated time for each page based on how many marks it is worth. If they hit a hard question or run out of time on a section, they skip it and only return if they have extra time left.

Experts also have advice on when and how to use these papers most effectively. Ang suggests that students should have tried at least one full past-year paper by the end of Primary 5. She recommends starting smaller — completing 10 questions in 45 minutes in Primary 3 — and slowly building up to longer sessions over time. Doing these papers should also be mixed in with topic-by-topic revision and going back over any questions that were answered incorrectly.

Mark Png, founder of an online revision tool called PSLE Ninja, agrees that fixing mistakes is the most important part. He says that if a student is still scoring poorly, doing more full papers will not help much unless the real weaknesses are found and fixed first. He also found it useful to make practice feel like the real exam, having his children bring everything they needed — pens, pencils, rulers, and erasers — just like on the actual test day.

The quality of the answer key at the back of each paper also matters a great deal. Soh says the answer keys from some schools explain things more clearly than others, and parents should pay attention to this difference. He also points out that not every practice session needs to be timed. Doing papers without a timer lets students get comfortable with the format and question types without the stress of a deadline, and once they know their weak spots, they can move on to timed practice under pressure.

There are a few things to keep in mind when using past-year papers. Some older questions may cover topics that are no longer part of the syllabus, such as cell biology in the science paper, so parents should check that papers match the current curriculum. Also, if a student scores badly on a practice paper, it could shake their confidence. Cyril Lim has a simple response to this: 'Better make the mistake now than later — just learn from it.'