Record-breaking results
Photo taken from The Straits Times: Students from Bukit Batok Secondary School receiving their O level results on 11 January
Yet despite these challenges, Singapore students adapted quickly and effectively to these changes as evidenced by the record percentage of students who passed the 2020 O-Level examinations. 85.4% of the cohort attained 5 or more passes, exceeding past years of 85.2%, 83.4% and 84.3% in 2019, 2017 and 2016 respectively.
“With this”, as The Straits Times put it, “the class of 2020 secured the best showing at the national exam in at least three decades despite lockdowns and school closures”.
Just a week earlier, IB students who collected their results on 4th January have performed exceptionally well and outshone their global counterparts.
Such is the testament of resilience and adaptability of not only the students themselves, but also teachers, schools and even the MOE in being able to effectively continue education.
With these results, O-Level graduates are able to move on to a Junior College (JC), Polytechnic, Institute of Technical Education (ITE) or other educational institutes. While JC was widely regarded in past years as the natural route of progression for students who fared well in their O-Level examinations, the shift in perspective over recent years has resulted in an increasing number of students with stellar O-Level results choosing other routes instead.
According to The Straits Times, MOE stated that of the 20,300 candidates posted to a post-secondary educational institution in 2020 via the Joint Admissions Exercise (JAE), 52% were posted to polytechnics, setting yet another record in recent years.
Many of these secondary school leavers have results that qualify them for entry to a JC, but chose to take the Polytechnic route instead. Temasek Polytechnic (TP)’s principal Peter Lam attributed this shift to MOE’s education and career guidance programme which “successfully provided students with comprehensive information regarding their education and career options”.
This increase may also be due to local universities being more open to receive diploma holders, especially when the government increased university vacancies back in 2012 with most of them, including at the Singapore University of Social Sciences and Singapore Institute of Technology, going to polytechnic diploma holders as reported in The Straits Times. As such, an increasing number of students and parents interviewed have said the polytechnic route has become more appealing.
2020 was definitely an interesting year especially for the education sector and we can learn a thing or two from the hard work and determination displayed by students in Singapore.
Well done class of 2020!