If there is anything we can take away in the year of pandemic and disruption of norms, it is resilience and the need to be open to new ways of doing things.

Take Singapore’s IB graduate of 2020 for example, even amid school closures and disruption of usual lessons, their IB results released on 4th January remained outstanding.

Overall, Singapore students obtained a 96.66% pass rate – way above the global pass rate of 70.03% and the Asia-pacific rate of 87.76%. The Switzerland-based IB Organisation which conducts the exams said Singapore accounted for 35 of the 69 perfect scorers globally this year, according to The Straits Times.

The average scores of Singapore students were also higher than that of global and regional exam-takers with an average of 37.99 points against 28.52 and 33.89 respectively.

Speaking to a student from the School Of The Arts (SOTA), where all 157 students who sat for the exam passed, Mr Izz Muhammad Ahmad shared his experience taking this national exam during the pandemic with The Straits Times. He shared that while the circuit breaker gave him more time to complete his assessment, there was less time for lessons and he found it challenging to keep up with some subjects online. However, Mr Izz has since learnt to overcome these challenges by arranging for consultations and seeking help from his peers.

Mr Izz added, “Every situation has multiple perspectives to it. There may be good and bad aspects of it, and we should look for the good ones and figure out a way to lessen the bad ones,”