Stumped? Reviewing Tricky 2025 PSLE Math Questions

This year’s PSLE has officially wrapped up – and as is the case in recent years, we have seen numerous Tiktok and Instagram posts about some of the tricky questions from the exams. While these questions are like water under the bridge for our PSLE students, reviewing them can be useful for future PSLE students.

With input from our PSLE students and insights from our tuition centre‘s math tutors, we have gathered the common challenges and key takeaways from the 2025 Math PSLE questions. The goal? To help future PSLE students prepare smarter, not just harder. Parents can also benefit from understanding the level of difficulty and question trends, so they can better support their child’s revision journey.

Overall observations

According to feedback from our PSLE tuition students and tutors, this year’s paper was reasonably fair compared to previous years. While there were some challenging questions, none were unusually difficult or out of syllabus.

The main stumbling blocks appeared in geometry and fractions. Even students with a solid understanding of geometry and fractions may find these challenging, as these questions required flexibility of thinking to solve the problems, rather than relying on just conceptual knowledge.

So, for future P6 students, here’s our takeaway: It is not enough to understand concepts and know the formulae. You also need to equip yourself with problem-solving heuristics – that is, techniques to solve different problems.

If you feel that your math classes in school don’t cover this enough or is too fast-paced for you, you could also join us at Future Academy’s PSLE math tuition classes! By going through past-year PSLE questions and problem-solving techniques, we focus on helping students recognise question types, practise logical reasoning, and refine their exam strategies. This ensures that when faced with novel or tricky problems, they can think calmly and systemically to come up with a solution.

With that in mind, let’s hop into some of these PSLE Math 2025 questions and try to solve them!

Equilateral triangles

At first glance, it looks like we don’t have much information. Some students will fixate on the unknown length of the small triangle and get frustrated that they can’t find it. In cases like this, we need to be flexible. Is there another way to find AB? Maybe without even finding that unknown length?

The important thing to notice is that the big triangles are identical and equilateral. This will allow us to shift some things around and notice some patterns. Here is how we solve this question:

Ginger and onions

This question about ginger and onions is a test of your ability to convert and substitute values. It uses similar principles to proportion and rate. This question is a little tedious, though, so students need to be very careful to present their workings clearly so that they don’t confuse themselves and do wrong calculations.

Depending on the way you choose to substitute the values, there could be a few different approaches to this question. Here’s how we solved it:

Conclusion

The PSLE math paper often stirs up a lot of discussions due to its difficulty. For students who will be taking the PSLE in the upcoming years, it’s helpful to know what type of questions to expect and the skills required to tackle these challenging questions.

Thankfully, Future Academy’s PSLE tutors in Singapore are also here to help you learn these problem-solving skills – through fun and engaging lessons! Besides the core concepts, our classes will familiarise students with past year exam questions and equip students with the frameworks to approach novel questions with confidence. With the guidance of expert tutors, students can turn anxiety into confidence — and walk into their exams ready to face any question that comes their way.