PSLE Math Format Change from 2026: Info for Parents
The new 50/50 split looks like good news for Paper 1. Here’s the shift many parents are missing, and what it means for how your child prepares from here.
If your child is sitting the PSLE this year, the Maths papers in front of them are not quite the ones an older sibling sat a few years back. The durations have shifted, the mark split has changed, and two topics have quietly disappeared from the syllabus altogether. Most of that has already been covered online as a straightforward list of “what changed.” What gets missed more often is what these changes actually mean once your child is sitting in front of the paper. That is what this article is for.
What Changed in PSLE Math, at a Glance
The headline change is simple: Paper 1 and Paper 2 now carry equal weightage, 50 marks each, for 100 marks in total. Paper 1 stays calculator-free, and Paper 2 still allows one. Here is how that plays out.
| Aspect | Before | From 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 duration | 1 hour | 1 hour 10 minutes |
| Paper 1 marks | 45 | 50 |
| Paper 1 questions | 30 (15 MCQ + 15 short-answer) |
30 (18 MCQ + 12 short-answer) |
| Paper 2 duration | 1 hour 30 minutes | 1 hour 20 minutes |
| Paper 2 marks | 55 | 50 |
| Paper 2 questions | 17 | 15 (5 short-answer + 10 structured) |
| Total time, both papers | 2 hours 30 minutes | 2 hours 30 minutes |
| Total marks | 100 | 100 |
“Nothing has been added to the exam. What has changed is how the two and a half hours are split, and what each paper is now asking your child to do with it.”
Two more changes are worth knowing. First, units are now printed. For any question that needs units like cm, kg, dollars and so on. Your child no longer needs to remember to write it in and won’t lose a mark for leaving it out.
Second, two topics are gone for good: Speed (distance, time and speed) has been removed from the primary syllabus entirely and now sits in Secondary 1, the 8-point Compass has been removed from the Angles topic.
Neither will appear on the PSLE paper.
The Part Most Parents Are Reading Wrong
On the surface, Paper 1 looks like the paper that got easier. It picked up 5 more marks, some of it in short-answer questions, territory Paper 1 already covered anyway. The natural read is: more marks up for grabs, less pressure overall.
Here is the part that gets missed. A number of the two-mark questions that now sit in Paper 1 are, in style and reasoning, the same kind of question that used to sit in Paper 2 worth three marks. They have not become simpler. They have moved paper.
That matters for two reasons. Paper 1’s multiple-choice section does not award method marks the way Paper 2 does, so if your child reasons through a question correctly but selects the wrong option, there is no partial credit to fall back on. And because Paper 1 now carries as much weight as Paper 2, finishing it early buys your child nothing. Paper 1 has its own clock. When it ends, there is a break, and only then does Paper 2 begin. Minutes left over in the first paper cannot follow your child into the second one.
The practical shift: Paper 1 now deserves the same careful, one-step-at-a-time reading that used to be reserved for Paper 2’s problem sums. Any time your child has left at the end belongs to checking that paper, not to the one waiting after the break.
What’s Quietly Different in Paper 2
Paper 2 has fewer questions this year, down from 17 to 15, while still carrying 50 marks. On average, each remaining question is worth slightly more, which usually means slightly more reading and reasoning packed into each one.
There is also a trend worth watching rather than a confirmed change: whether future papers lean further into spatial visualisation-style questions, the ones built around a diagram your child has to interpret (nets, cross-sections, figures rotated or combined) rather than a block of text. It is too early to say how far this goes in any single year’s paper, but it has been a growing feature of recent PSLE papers, and it is one of the things we build into how we prepare P6 students at Oodles Math.
What This Means for Your Child, in Practice
- If your child is comfortable with numbers but tends to rush: Paper 1 is where to slow down first. The habit worth building now is reading each two-mark question the way they would a Paper 2 problem sum, working it through properly before circling an answer, rather than pattern-matching to a familiar-looking shape.
- If your child finds problem sums the hardest part: fewer, slightly heavier questions in Paper 2 reward a clear method more than they reward rushing to a final number. A child who can reliably work through Understand, Plan, Solve, Check on each question will generally do better than one racing to attempt all 15.
- If your child struggles to hold on to a multi-step word problem: this is exactly what ACEit, our word-problem reading method, was built for, taking a question apart sentence by sentence into something your child can actually work with, instead of losing the thread by the third line.
Quick Answers for Busy Parents
How long is PSLE Math Paper 1 in 2026?
1 hour 10 minutes, up from 1 hour. Paper 1 remains calculator-free.
How long is PSLE Math Paper 2 in 2026?
1 hour 20 minutes, down from 1 hour 30 minutes. A calculator is still allowed.
Is PSLE Math easier in 2026?
Not exactly. Paper 1 now carries more marks, but several of its new two-mark questions are as demanding as the three-mark questions they replaced from Paper 2.
What topics were removed from PSLE Math?
Speed, and Turns and the 8-point Compass, have both been removed from the primary syllabus and will not appear on the PSLE paper.
How We’re Helping Families Prepare for This
None of this changes what actually helps a child do well in Maths: understanding the concept, having a method for approaching a problem, and being able to hold on to that method under exam conditions. It does change where the marks are sitting this year, and how much each paper now matters.
Students who learn our 14 proprietary problem-solving strategies typically gain 15 to 20 more marks on Paper 2, roughly one AL grade. That is not a shortcut. It is what tends to happen once a child has a clear way into a problem sum.
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