PSLE AL calculator: how many marks to the next AL, subject by subject

Updated Sept 2026

Facts and prices last verified: 2026-09-26. Corrections: support@test-paper.info.

How do you calculate a PSLE AL score?

Convert each Standard-level subject's mark to an Achievement Level using MOE's bands (90–100 is AL1, 85–89 AL2, 80–84 AL3, 75–79 AL4, 65–74 AL5, 45–64 AL6, 20–44 AL7, below 20 AL8), then add the four ALs. The total runs from 4 to 32, and lower is better. The bands come from MOE's PSLE scoring page.

The arithmetic is the easy part, and MOE's own page and our AL bands guide cover it. This page adds the question that matters once you have the ALs: how far is each subject from the next AL up, and how close to the one below?

How many marks away is the next AL?

It depends entirely on where the mark sits inside its band, because the bands are different widths:

Two things follow from that table:

• From 75 to 89, no mark is more than 5 marks from the next AL up. A careless slip or two, one unanswered part, or a misread unit is the whole difference between two ALs.
• Below 65, the gap can be 20 marks or more. No amount of checking work for slips closes that; it takes a topic that's currently being lost to start being won.

What is a band edge, and why does it matter more than the average?

A band edge is the lowest mark in a band: 90, 85, 80, 75, 65, 45 and 20. Two numbers describe where a subject sits:

• Marks to the next AL: the band edge above, minus the mark. At 84 it's 1; at 66 it's 9.
• Cushion: how many marks the subject can lose and still keep its AL, which is the mark minus its own band edge. At 76 the cushion is 1; at 58 it's 13.

A subject with a small gap to the next AL is where extra marks change the PSLE Score. A subject with a thin cushion is where a bad day costs an AL. Averages hide both: 84 and 66 average 75, which says nothing about either subject.

A worked example

Here's one made-up set of marks, the kind a parent might see from a round of school tests:

The PSLE Score on these marks is 3 + 5 + 4 + 6 = 18. Reading across the table:

• English is one mark from AL2. That's accuracy work (checking, re-reading the question), not new content.
• Mother Tongue is 7 marks from AL5, with a 13-mark cushion. There's room to push it up without much risk of it falling.
• Maths and Science each have a cushion of 1 mark. One slip drops either one to the AL below, so steadying them matters as much as pushing anything up.
• Maths needs 9 marks for AL4. That's usually one or two whole topics, so it pays to find which topics are leaking before adding more mixed practice.

Try it with your child's marks

The calculator uses the same MOE bands as the table above. It covers Standard-level subjects only: Foundation-level subjects are graded AL A to C, which MOE counts as AL6 to AL8 in the total, so leave them out.

How accurate is a score from school test marks?

It's an estimate on current form, not a prediction. The bands are exact, but the marks going in aren't PSLE marks: school tests differ in difficulty and coverage, and a child's marks move by several points from one paper to the next. Since the upper bands are five marks wide, a single test can easily land a subject one AL above or below where it really sits. Use two or three recent papers and look at the range of ALs, not one result.

The gap and cushion numbers are the useful part. They show which subject a few marks would move and which one a bad day could drop, and that's what should decide where the next hour of practice goes.

Keep reading

• Free test papers, honestly
• After a bad Maths result
• AL bands explained
• 2026 PSLE Maths changes
• Spaced repetition, explained
• The exam calendar, decoded
• Find the weak topics
• All guides
• P4–P6 Maths topics, mapped to the MOE syllabus
• How Test Paper works, and the research behind it