PRIMARY MATHEMATICS SYLLABUS · SINGAPORE
Useful for checking what is coming next term, or for working out which earlier year a Primary 5 problem is really standing on.
Numbers to 100, the four operations introduced through stories, and the first work with shapes, length, time and money.
Numbers to 1000, multiplication tables, and the first fractions — plus mass, volume and the picture graph.
Numbers to 10 000, the rest of the tables, and the year bar models start carrying real word problems.
Decimals arrive, fractions get serious, and area and perimeter stop being about counting squares.
The PSLE syllabus begins in earnest — ratio, rate, percentage, area of a triangle, and volume.
The PSLE year — fractions, ratio, percentage and algebra combined in one problem, plus circles and average.
Syllabus
One national syllabus, six years, and a teaching sequence that is as much a part of it as the topic list.
PSLE examines the Primary 5 and Primary 6 syllabuses, and reports Mathematics on the Achievement Level scale from AL 1 (90 marks and above) to AL 8 (below 20). Everything before Primary 5 is what those two years are built on rather than separately examined.
Each card lists that year's chapters and opens the full topic list on its own page. The chapter numbering schools use is dropped here — it restarts in every year, so side by side it only invites false comparisons.
The years that build number sense. Concepts are introduced concretely (objects a child can move), then pictorially (the bar model and the picture graph), and only then abstractly as a written calculation — the concrete-pictorial-abstract sequence the Singapore approach is known for. By the end of Primary 3 a student should be reading a two-step word problem and drawing something before writing anything.
Numbers to 100, the four operations introduced through stories, and the first work with shapes, length, time and money.
Numbers to 10
Addition
Subtraction
Shapes
Ordinal Numbers
Numbers to 20
Addition and Subtraction
Picture Graphs
Numbers to 100
Addition and Subtraction within 100
Length
Multiplication
Division
Time
Money
45 sub-topics — see the full list
Numbers to 1000, multiplication tables, and the first fractions — plus mass, volume and the picture graph.
Numbers to 1000
Addition and Subtraction within 1000
Length
Multiplication and Division
Multiplication Tables of 2, 5 and 10
Mass
Time
Addition and Subtraction
Multiplication Tables of 3 and 4
Money
Fractions
Volume
Picture Graphs
Shapes
64 sub-topics — see the full list
Numbers to 10 000, the rest of the tables, and the year bar models start carrying real word problems.
Numbers to 10 000
Addition and Subtraction
Money
Multiplication Tables of 6, 7, 8 and 9
Multiplication and Division
More Word Problems
Bar Graphs
Angles
Perpendicular and Parallel Lines
Fractions
Length, Mass and Volume
Area and Perimeter
Time
53 sub-topics — see the full list
The years the PSLE actually examines. Decimals, then ratio, rate and percentage, then all of them combined in a single multi-step problem. The bar model stops being a way to picture one quantity and becomes the tool that holds a before-and-after situation together, which is where most Primary 6 marks are won or lost.
Decimals arrive, fractions get serious, and area and perimeter stop being about counting squares.
Numbers to 100 000
Factors and Multiples
Four Operations of Whole Numbers
Tables and Line Graphs
Fractions (I)
Fractions (II)
Angles
Rectangles and Squares
Decimals
Four Operations of Decimals
Pie Charts
Area and Perimeter
Nets
Symmetry
55 sub-topics — see the full list
The PSLE syllabus begins in earnest — ratio, rate, percentage, area of a triangle, and volume.
Numbers to 10 Million
Four Operations of Whole Numbers
Fraction and Division
Four Operations of Fractions
Area of Triangle
Volume
Decimals
Rate
Percentage
Angles
Properties of Triangles
Properties of Parallelogram, Rhombus and Trapezium
52 sub-topics — see the full list
The PSLE year — fractions, ratio, percentage and algebra combined in one problem, plus circles and average.
Fractions
Ratio
Percentage
Angles in Geometrical Figures
Circles
Volume of Cube and Cuboid
Average
Algebra
30 sub-topics — see the full list
The topic list is public. The places marks are actually lost are more specific than it suggests.
A child taught the written method straight away can compute correctly and still not know which operation a word problem is asking for. It reads as carelessness in Primary 3 and as a wall in Primary 5, but it is one missing stage of the sequence.
Fractions are introduced in Primary 2, extended twice in Primary 4, and then made the basis of Primary 5 division and Primary 6 ratio work. It is the single longest dependency chain in the primary syllabus, and the year a gap opens is rarely the year it shows.
The Primary 3 part-whole bar handles one relationship. Primary 6 problems routinely need a comparison model and a before-and-after model chained together. A student practising only the shape they learned first draws it anyway and gets stuck.
They are three views of the same relationship, and PSLE Paper 2 questions move between them inside a single problem. Students who learned each as its own chapter with its own method have no route across.
PSLE Paper 1 allows no calculator. Students who are not fluent in mental arithmetic, fraction simplification and unit conversion lose marks on questions they understand perfectly, purely on time.
Weekly live classes that follow the school year, with practice between lessons targeted at what each student is actually getting wrong.
Word problems are solved in units and bars, not by reaching for an equation early. That is what the syllabus asks for, and it is what the PSLE mark scheme rewards.
When a Primary 5 student stalls on ratio, the practice works back to the fraction understanding underneath it rather than drilling more ratio questions.
Every question is marked instantly with a worked solution, and a wrong answer gets feedback written for that specific error — not a generic explanation of the topic.
Topics resurface on a schedule before they would otherwise fade, so Primary 5 work is still secure when a Primary 6 problem calls on it.
The aim is a student who reads an unfamiliar problem and knows what to draw first.
Program facts
The details parents usually want before booking a trial.
Primary 5 and Primary 6 classes run as PSLE preparation across both examined syllabuses.
Students are grouped by learning pace, not just by level — if no existing session matches your child’s pace, we open a new one.
Live and teacher-led, with targeted practice between lessons that carries instant marking and worked solutions.
The same fee at every level, with no PSLE-year surcharge.
See the teaching pace and the level fit before deciding anything.
Using this page
A topic list is only useful if it tells you where to look next.
Primary topics chain tightly — Primary 6 ratio stands on Primary 5 fractions, which stand on Primary 4. Reading the years in order usually identifies the year that actually needs the work.
Primary 5 and Primary 6 are the examined syllabuses. Comparing them against Primary 4 shows exactly how much new ground the PSLE years introduce, and how much of the difficulty is combination rather than novelty.
Each card links to the full topic list for that year, so the chapters ahead are visible in advance rather than after a test result.
Frequently asked questions
Primary 6 covers fractions, ratio, percentage, algebra (letters used as unknowns for the first time), angles in geometrical figures, circles, volume of a cube and cuboid, and average. Very little of it is new ground on its own — the difficulty is that PSLE questions combine three of these in one problem, so a shaky Primary 5 percentage is not a Primary 5 problem any more.
Primary 5. PSLE examines the Primary 5 and Primary 6 syllabuses together, and Primary 5 is where ratio, rate and percentage are introduced — the topics that carry the most marks in Paper 2. A student who reaches Primary 6 with those three unsteady is repairing them under exam-year time pressure.
It is the sequence Singapore primary maths teaches each new idea in. A concept starts concrete — counters, cubes, coins a child physically moves. It then becomes pictorial, most often a bar model, where the same relationship is drawn rather than handled. Only then does it become abstract: the written number sentence. Skipping to the abstract stage is the most common reason a child can perform a procedure but cannot tell you which one a word problem needs.
Because it is how a primary student holds a relationship they cannot yet write as an equation. Part-whole, comparison and before-and-after situations all become drawable, so a Primary 5 student can solve a problem that would otherwise need algebra. Students whose bar-model practice stopped at the simple Primary 3 part-whole shape reach Primary 6, meet a problem needing two chained models, draw the wrong one, and stall.
On the Achievement Level scale, AL 1 (90 marks and above) down to AL 8 (below 20). The Mathematics AL is added to the ALs for the other subjects to give the total PSLE Score, which is the main input into secondary school posting. The bands are narrow at the top — AL 1 and AL 2 are five marks apart — so careless losses cost more than they feel like they should.
Four, at most. Students are grouped by learning pace, not just by year level, so each lesson moves at the speed of the students actually in it. When no session matches a child’s pace, we open a new one. In a class that size, every child answers questions, gets their working checked, and gets help the moment they need it.
Yes — Primary 1 to Primary 6, with the Primary 5 and Primary 6 classes running as PSLE preparation. Classes are grouped by learning pace as well as year level, so students work alongside others moving at their speed.
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