Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim.
Assalamualaikum wr wb.

Firstly, let us say Alhamdulillah and thank God Al-Mighty for all the blessings that He has given to us.

I am Muhammad Shahiddin Bin Ithnin, a National University of Singapore (NUS), School of Computing (SOC) student, who is currently in his 2nd year. The purpose of this writing is to spread the message about Ace your Primary School Leaving Examinations (APEX) group. The APEX group is in the midst of getting ready to start the year 2009 with their programmes and we hope to recruit new members to our mentoring cum tutoring group.

What is APEX all about?

Ace your Primary School Leaving Examinations, or better known as APEX, is a group of mentors cum tutors who share a passion for inspiring kids, particularly the madrasah students. APEX came about after Singapore's Minister for the Environment and Water Resources and Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, gave this excerpt dated 26 October 2007. "Under the Compulsory Education Act, madrasahs will not be able to take in new Primary 1 Singapore Citizen students if they do not meet the PSLE benchmark."

Thus, APEX is a platform for anyone who has completed their tertiary education to help the primary 6 madrasah students to achieve good results in their PSLE. This is because we believe that the madrasah has the potential to be a great educational institute; the Premium Institute of Learning. Currently, APEX has been and will continue to work closely with students and staffs from Madrasah Al-Irsyad.

What Do We Do at APEX?

Our role as APEX mentors is to specifically provide academic enrichment to the primary 6 students of Madrasah Al-Irsyad. On top of that, we also aim to act as role models to the students such that they will be inspired to get to where we are when they are our age.

Although APEX is first and foremost a mentoring cum tutoring programme, there are also other activities which are being carried out by the APEX group throughout the year. Some activities which were conducted in the year 2008 includes :

- APEX Camp

- Spoon-Bending exercise using 'inner energy' with the kids

- Day-out at Pasir Ris Park

- Outdoor Activity + APEX Mentors Appreciation Day

So it is not just study, study and more studying throughout the year. There are more interesting and fun-filled activities to be lined up for the year 2009 insyaAllah!

The APEX Programme

The main APEX programme which is the mentoring cum tutoring sessions, are held every Saturday from 8.30 am to 11.30 am, tentatively for year 2009.

The primary 6 students of Madrasah Al-Irsyad will be broken down approximately into groups of 6. Our aim is to have 3 mentors per group but it depends on the numbers we have. With this kind of structure, we hope to have the "conjugate system". What this system means is that, at every session, there must be a minimum of 1 mentor per group but the ideal situation is of course all 3 mentors coming every week. This is to cater to those who cannot commit every single week so they can come up with a schedule with the other mentors from the same group whereby they can coordinate the attendance of mentors every week to ensure that there is at least a mentor present every session.

The subjects that we will be assisting the madrasah are English Language, Mathematics and Science. Do not fret if you are not good in all subjects as there will be workshops, insyaAllah, conducted by the school to help the mentors be equipped with the necessary skills.

For more information on APEX or if you want to know more about APEX and our programmes for 2009, do not hesitate to email me at mrshahiddin@yahoo.com.sg or APEX Executive Committee's Secretary, Noor Sarah Abdul Rahman at nsarah_07@yahoo.com.sg. Alternatively, you can log on to apexmentors.info or visit our facebook site where we have uploaded pictures of our activities in the year 2008.

On behalf of the APEX Group, I would like to thank you for your time in reading this writing and I would also like to apologise for taking up too much of your time. We hope to hear from you but ultimately, let us all work towards a better society and may we all become a better ummah insyaAllah.