Record 84.3% pass 5 or more subjects in last year’s O-Levels

SINGAPORE — Last year’s GCE O-Level students have outperformed their peers from previous batches to set a record, with 84.3 per cent of them getting five or more subject passes, making it the fifth consecutive year that graduating students have managed to top the performance of the previous cohorts.

The performance of the 2016 batch was better than the 83.8 per cent achieved by the class of 2015 and the 83.3 per cent scored by the 2014 batch. 

Before 2014, the percentage of students with five or more O-Level passes was well below 83 per cent, according to figures by the Ministry of Education (MOE), which could only provide data dating back to 2008.

Of the 30,292 students who sat for O-Levels last year, 96.5 per cent obtained at least three subject passes, while 99.9 per cent passed at least one subject, said the MOE and the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board in a joint statement on Wednesday (Jan 11).

The result is comparable to the 2015 batch’s performance, where 96.1 per cent of the students passed at least three subjects and 99.9 per cent passed at least one subject.

Meanwhile, Normal (Academic) students from the class of 2016 also performed better, with 88.8 per cent of them getting a pass in at least one subject, up from the 88.6 per cent achieved by the previous batch