What Achievement Levels are, how your child's total score is worked out, and how that score decides secondary school posting. Sourced directly from MOE.
By Marcus Toh · 2026-07-11
The PSLE moved away from the old T-score to Achievement Levels, or ALs. Every subject is now graded on a scale of eight ALs, where AL1 is the strongest result and AL8 is the weakest. Students who perform at a similar level are placed in the same AL, so the system is built to group similar results together rather than separate pupils by one or two marks.
Each AL covers a band of raw marks rather than a single mark. The top bands are narrower and the middle to lower bands are wider, and that is by design. These are the bands for Standard level subjects.
| Achievement Level | Raw mark range |
|---|---|
| AL1 | 90 and above |
| AL2 | 85 to 89 |
| AL3 | 80 to 84 |
| AL4 | 75 to 79 |
| AL5 | 65 to 74 |
| AL6 | 45 to 64 |
| AL7 | 20 to 44 |
| AL8 | Below 20 |
Your child's overall PSLE Score is simply the four subject ALs added together, across English, Mathematics, Science and Mother Tongue. So how low can it go? The range runs from 4 to 32, and here a lower number is better, which means 4 is the best possible total. A child who scores AL1 in all four subjects lands on 4.
Foundation level subjects are graded on their own scale, from AL A to AL C. To work out the overall PSLE Score, MOE maps those grades onto the standard scale as follows.
| Foundation grade | Raw mark range | Standard AL equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| AL A | 75 to 100 | AL6 |
| AL B | 30 to 74 | AL7 |
| AL C | Below 30 | AL8 |
Based on the total PSLE Score, students are posted to secondary school through three Posting Groups. These replaced the old Express and Normal streams, and they also set the starting subject levels a student takes in Secondary 1. Those levels are labelled G1, G2 and G3, where G stands for General and G3 is the most demanding.
| PSLE Score | Posting Group | Starting subject level |
|---|---|---|
| 4 to 20 | PG3 | G3 |
| 21 to 22 | PG2 or PG3 | G2 or G3 |
| 23 to 24 | PG2 | G2 |
| 25 | PG1 or PG2 | G1 or G2 |
| 26 to 30 (AL7 or better in English and Mathematics) | PG1 | G1 |
MOE's guide lists PG1 eligibility up to a score of 30 together with the English and Mathematics condition above. If your child's score or subject grades fall outside the ranges shown, check the options directly with MOE or your child's school.
You will often hear parents talk about a school's cut-off point, so it helps to know exactly what that number is. On MOE's SchoolFinder, the PSLE score range shown for a school is the score of the first and last student admitted to that school in the previous year. It is a record of what already happened, not a guaranteed entry score, and MOE notes it should be used only as a reference because it shifts every year with the cohort's results and school choices.
So what happens when two children have the same score and are fighting for the last place? MOE applies tie-breakers in a fixed order. Citizenship comes first, with Singapore Citizens ahead of Permanent Residents and then International Students. Next is school choice order, so a school listed as a first choice ranks ahead of the same school listed lower. Only if all of those are equal does it come down to computerised balloting, and MOE has noted that around 1 in 10 of the students who needed tie-breaking went to that final step.
When I was choosing my own secondary school, I looked almost entirely at the cut-off points, because that number felt like the whole game and everyone around me was fixated on it.
But looking back, the thing that actually shaped those four years was not the cut-off at all. It was the culture of the school, the people I sat beside every day and the way the place either pushed you or quietly let you coast.
So if I could tell parents one thing, it would be to weigh the culture just as heavily as the score, and the easiest way to get a real feel for that is to just ask around. Talk to seniors, cousins or relatives who have actually studied there, and let their honest experiences fill in everything a cut-off point never can.