Maths · 100 marks · 45 questions · 2 hours 30 minutes · Paper 1 has no calculator
The shape of the paper first, then the topics it draws on.
PSLE Mathematics is one written exam of 100 marks, sat as two papers on the same day with a break in between. The whole paper is 45 questions over 2 hours 30 minutes, and it is built on the whole of the Primary Mathematics syllabus your child has met from P1 to P6. It is not a set of unrelated topics: nearly every question is a short story with numbers in it, and the marks go to the child who reads the story correctly and shows the working.
The subject code is 0008. The exam board revised the format for 2026, so anything written before that revision may be describing the old paper.
Three booklets across two papers. These figures are the exam board's own, read from its 2026 format document.
| Paper | Booklet | Item type | Questions | Marks | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A | Multiple-choice | 18 | 26 | 1 h 10 min |
| 1 | B | Short-answer | 12 | 24 | — |
| 2 | — | Short-answer | 5 | 10 | 1 h 20 min |
| 2 | — | Structured / long-answer | 10 | 40 | — |
| Total | 45 | 100 | 2 h 30 min | ||
Booklet A's 18 multiple-choice questions are 10 at 1 mark and 8 at 2 marks. Booklet B's short-answer questions are 2 marks each. Paper 2's long-answer questions are worth 3, 4 or 5 marks.
“The examination consists of two written papers comprising three booklets.” — Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board, PSLE Mathematics (0008), for examination from 2026. Read live on 5 October 2026 from SEAB's PSLE Formats Examined in 2026 page.
The same document settles the two things parents ask about most — the calculator and the timing:
Paper 1 — “The use of calculators is not allowed.”
Paper 2 — “The use of calculators is allowed.”
Both papers — “Both papers will be scheduled on the same day with a break between the two papers.”
The paper is marked against three assessment objectives the exam board names: recall of facts, concepts, rules and formulae (AO1); applying them in a variety of contexts (AO2); and reasoning mathematically, analysing information and selecting an appropriate strategy to solve a problem (AO3). AO3 is where the problem sums live, and it is the one that cannot be drilled by memory alone.
The Primary Mathematics syllabus groups every topic your child meets into three strands. PSLE Maths draws on all three.
Whole numbers, the four operations, fractions, decimals, percentage, ratio and rate, and money. This is the biggest strand and it runs through almost every problem sum, including the geometry ones. At P6 the syllabus adds algebra for the first time — using a letter to represent an unknown number.
Length, mass, time, area and perimeter of squares, rectangles and triangles, the volume of cubes and cuboids, and angles in composite figures. At P6 it adds the area and circumference of a circle, including semicircles and quarter circles, and the special quadrilaterals — parallelogram, rhombus and trapezium.
Reading and interpreting data from tables, bar graphs, line graphs and pie charts, and the average of a set of data. It carries fewer questions than the other two strands, but the graph questions are where a rushed reader loses marks for nothing.
Strand names and the P6 additions are taken from the Ministry of Education's Mathematics Syllabus, Primary One to Six (updated October 2025), the syllabus the exam is set against. Kyly Tuition is not affiliated with the Ministry of Education or with SEAB.
A topic list is only useful if your child can actually practise it. Here is exactly what is inside the free bank, counted from the bank itself on 5 October 2026.
400 PSLE-level (P6) maths problem sums — across all 20 topics, every one marked step by step
192 at P5
156 at P4
21 PSLE multiple-choice maths questions, each with a written explanation of every wrong option
Because the bank is levelled, choosing P4, P5, P6, Sec 1 or Sec 2 changes the work your child sees without dropping a topic — so no topic is left un-rehearsed just because the exam is close.
Every wrong answer in our bank carries a note on the thinking behind it. When we counted them on 5 October 2026, the same few mis-thinkings kept repeating.
Across the 348 problem sums we hold at P4 and P5, the bank records 966 named mis-thinking patterns. The four that appear most often are the same four that lose marks in a P6 paper:
None of these is a whole topic a child has failed to learn. They are reading and checking habits, and they are the cheapest marks on the paper to recover.
PSLE Mathematics is 100 marks across 45 questions in two papers. The whole exam is 2 hours 30 minutes, split into Paper 1 (1 hour 10 minutes) and Paper 2 (1 hour 20 minutes).
No calculator in Paper 1 — the exam board's format says the use of calculators is not allowed there. Calculators are allowed in Paper 2.
Both papers test the same Primary Mathematics syllabus. Paper 1 is multiple-choice and short-answer questions; Paper 2 carries the longer structured and problem-sum questions, worth 3, 4 or 5 marks each.
The Primary Mathematics syllabus organises everything into three strands — Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics. PSLE Maths draws on all three.
At P6 the syllabus introduces algebra (using a letter for an unknown number), ratio, and the area and circumference of a circle, including semicircles and quarter circles. They are examined together with the whole-numbers, fractions, decimals, percentage and measurement work from P4 and P5.
The marks are added together out of 100. Paper 2's structured and long-answer questions ask for the working steps, and a short-answer question with one part can award 1 mark for the correct method even when the final answer is wrong.
Yes. The drills are free for your first month, from the day you register, with no signup and no card. The 3-minute diagnostic is free as well.
No. This page explains the exam format and the topic list; nothing here reads your child's work. In the free bank every wrong answer carries a written explanation of the thinking that went wrong.
Worth stating plainly, because the format is easy and the paper is not.
This page explains the format and lists the topics. It does not read your child's own work, and it cannot tell you which questions will appear in the 2026 paper — nobody outside the exam board can, and anyone who claims to is guessing. The exam figures here are the exam board's current written format for 2026; the topic list is the Ministry of Education syllabus those papers are set against. If either changes, those documents are the place to check, and this page was last reviewed on 5 October 2026.
What the format does buy is calm: when your child already knows the paper has two parts and no calculator in Paper 1, that hour is spent on the maths instead of on surprises.
Or take the free 3-minute diagnostic to see which topics are actually weak before choosing what to practise.
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