Ten year series is a colloquial term used by Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

ans, in particular students, to refer to official compilation books of examination papers in past years for the GCE

General Certificate of Education

The General Certificate of Education or GCE is an academic qualification that examination boards in the United Kingdom and a few of the Commonwealth countries, notably Sri Lanka, confer to students. The GCE traditionally comprised two levels: the Ordinary Level and the Advanced Level...

 N-levels

General Certificate of Education

The General Certificate of Education or GCE is an academic qualification that examination boards in the United Kingdom and a few of the Commonwealth countries, notably Sri Lanka, confer to students. The GCE traditionally comprised two levels: the Ordinary Level and the Advanced Level...

, O-levels

General Certificate of Education

The General Certificate of Education or GCE is an academic qualification that examination boards in the United Kingdom and a few of the Commonwealth countries, notably Sri Lanka, confer to students. The GCE traditionally comprised two levels: the Ordinary Level and the Advanced Level...

 and A-levels, approved by the Ministry of Education

Education in Singapore

Education in Singapore is managed by the Ministry of Education , which controls the development and administration of state schools receiving government funding, but also has an advisory and supervisory role in respect of private schools...

 and University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate

UCLES

University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate is a non-teaching department of the University of Cambridge and is a not-for-profit organisation...

 respectively.

In Singapore schools, these books are known to be used extensively by teachers and students both inside and outside the classroom

Classroom

A classroom is a room in which teaching or learning activities can take place. Classrooms are found in educational institutions of all kinds, including public and private schools, corporations, and religious and humanitarian organizations...

s, in preparation for similar questions that may be asked in future examinations. Most students review these past examination papers in order to seek to reveal applications of concept

Concept

The word concept is used in ordinary language as well as in almost all academic disciplines. Particularly in philosophy, psychology and cognitive sciences the term is much used and much discussed. WordNet defines concept: "conception, construct ". However, the meaning of the term concept is much...

s as well as encounter the forms of various new concepts which would be covered in examinations but not explicitly in the syllabus.

Critics of the education system claim this phenomenon

Phenomenon

A phenomenon , plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as 'appearances' or 'experiences'...

 to be signs of rote learning

Rote learning

Rote learning is a learning technique which focuses on memorization. The major practice involved in rote learning is learning by repetition by which students commit information to memory in a highly structured way. The idea is that one will be able to quickly recall the meaning of the material the...

, that goes against the emphasis for creative thinking by the government in the recent years.

Until 2007 the term is not always truly literal since some of these books have compilations containing papers from more than two decades worth of examinations, which means that students will thus often be doing practice papers that are set even before they were born. The Singapore Examination and Assessment Board has since implemented a new rule limited the publication of papers to the past ten years, which resulting in a spike of demand for older ten-year series. Ten-year series should not be confused with assessment books, which serve as an additional practice, or as a form of enrichment

Enrichment

Enrichment may mean:*Education. *The process of adding nutrients to cereals or grain: see food fortification.*The process of adding sugar to grape must during winemaking in order to achieve a higher alcohol content of the wine, more commonly referred to as chaptalization.*Behavioral...

. The latter are privately authored and sold in bookstores.