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Singapore ranks third in educational mobility, but gaps remain: Report

SINGAPORE — The Republic has come in third in the world for educational mobility, behind Cyprus and the Russian Federation respectively, according to the Equity in Education report released on Tuesday (Oct 23).

The report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development found that only 10 per cent of 15-year-old students in Singapore from lower SES attained equivalent scores in Science that the top quarter of the country achieved.

The report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development found that only 10 per cent of 15-year-old students in Singapore from lower SES attained equivalent scores in Science that the top quarter of the country achieved.

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SINGAPORE — The Republic has come in third in the world for educational mobility, behind Cyprus and the Russian Federation respectively, according to the Equity in Education report released on Tuesday (Oct 23).

More than 55 per cent of adults aged 26 years old and above in Singapore attained higher education than their parents. This is higher than the average of around 40 per cent obtained by 33 countries studied in the report.

However, the report also identified gaps in areas such as how well students from lower socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds do compared to the top scorers in the nation.

The same report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that only 10 per cent of 15-year-old students in Singapore from lower SES attained equivalent scores in Science that the top quarter of the country achieved.

YOUNGER ADULT COHORTS MORE EDUCATIONALLY UPWARD MOBILE

The report found that for Singapore, “equity has improved markedly over time”.

The Republic, along with six other countries, enjoyed higher upward educational mobility than the previous age cohort.

“Among the oldest cohort, those with highly educated parents were 55 percentage points more likely to complete tertiary education than those with low-educated parents; yet among the youngest cohort, those with highly educated parents were only 36 percentage points more likely than those with low-educated parents to complete that level of education,” the report found.

About 21 per cent of adults aged between 56 and 65 completed tertiary education — defined as attaining Bachelor’s degrees, or polytechnic diplomas — and 74 per cent of adults aged between 26 and 35 completed tertiary education.

Separately, the report also found that the Republic’s “disadvantaged students” performed well against fixed international benchmarks, which the report categorised as core-skills resilience, and against students across the world, known as international resilience.

“Disadvantaged students” refers to students in the lowest 25 per cent socio-economic status of the country.

FEWER LOW SES STUDENTS OBTAIN SCORES EQUIVALENT TO TOP PERFORMERS

However, not many were performing to standards attained by the top quarter in Science, a measure the report categorised as national resilience.

It was found that among 15-year-old students from lower-SES backgrounds, only 10 per cent were able to attain a score of at least 631 in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) for science in 2015.

For the Republic, a score of 631 is the 75th percentile score for science.

In a media briefing on Tuesday, Singapore’s Education Ministry (MOE) said that the “relatively low” national resilience is “a function” of the fact that Singapore’s top performers do very well.

Compared to Finland, which has a 75th percentile score of 599, 14 per cent of its lower-SES students are able to score that, or higher. Comparatively, about 17 per cent of Singaporean “disadvantaged students” are able to hit 599 and above at the Pisa for science.

Commenting on the report, an MOE spokesperson said it was “heartening” to note that inter-generational education mobility has improved across the years.

“There is evidence that our efforts in levelling up our students are paying off,” he added.

But the spokesperson stressed that more work needs to be done to ensure good social diversity and mixing — a point raised in the report as well — in the school system.

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