11 July 1998

SPEECH BY DR ALINE WONG, SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE FOR HEALTH AND EDUCATION, AT THE LAUNCH OF HINDI TEACHING MATERIALS AND HINDI CENTRE DAY 1998 ON SATURDAY, 11 JULY 1998 AT 7.15 PM, AT THE WORLD TRADE CENTRE AUDITORIUM

My thanks to the Hindi Society for inviting me to attend the twin functions you are having this evening : the Launch of Hindi Teaching Materials and Hindi Centre Day 1998 celebrations. The events are important ones for the Hindi Centres and indeed you have much to celebrate.

2 It is good to see so many people involved in this self-help community service project of the Hindi Society to provide instruction in Hindi to the students who take it as second language. It is indeed noteworthy that the teachers at the Hindi Centres have now embarked upon preparing localised Hindi teaching materials for use in the Hindi classes. The effort is to be commended. Self-help has many advantages. It encourages mutual support and co-operation and involvement among members of the community.

3 Pupils who offer the Hindi language continue to do well. Of the 197 students who offered Hindi in the national examinations last year, 189 passed and many of them did very well. 50 students scored A* or A in the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) and 70 obtained distinctions in the General Certificate of Education (GCE) ‘N’, ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level Examinations.

4 Casting our eyes to the wider Indian community, I am happy to note that our Indian pupils have continued to make progress in their academic achievements in the past 5 years. Last year, 92.8% of Indian pupils who sat for the PSLE qualified for Secondary school, up from 86.3% in 1992. 69.6% of these pupils passed Mathematics, compared to 56.3% in 1992.

5 In the GCE O-Level, there is a steady increase of pupils obtaining at least 5 O-Level passes from 56.9% in 1992 to 59.1% in 1997. This upward trend is also evident for English Language and Mathematics. In particular, English Language, which is always one of the strongest subjects among our Indian pupils, has improved from a pass rate of 75.2% in 1992 to nearly 80% in 1997, compared to the national average of 69.4%. In fact, our Indian students have always performed better in English than the national average.

6 Indian pupils also did better at A-levels. Last year, 84% of them obtained at least 2A and 2AO-level passes including GP, up from 79.6% in 1992. This is the same as the national pass rate.

7 This improvement in performance, coupled with expansion in provision of post-secondary education opportunities, has led to higher Indian participation in post-secondary education, that is, pre-university, polytechnic and ITE. Last year, in terms of a Primary One cohort of Indian pupils, over half (57.3%) proceeded to post secondary institutions and one out of ten made it to the local universities. In addition, the proportion who entered the polytechnics is more than double that in 1992 - 26% compared to 12%.

8 These good results reflect the hard work the community has put in to rise to the challenge and raise the standards. There is much to be pleased about but no room for complacency. For example, the proportion of a Primary One cohort of Indian pupils proceeding to post secondary institutions is 57%, still some way from the 77% nationally. I would like to encourage you to continue your hard work together and support each other. Leverage on the strengths and traditions of your community to improve the education of the young, both academically and in the moral, social, physical and aesthetic aspects.

9 Whilst participating actively in self-help projects, we must remain sensitive to the interests, needs and aspirations of our other communities in Singapore. It must be borne in mind that we live in a multi-racial society. We need to work closely with each other for the greater good of Singapore and all Singaporeans as a whole. Such an approach will prevent us from being inward-looking.

10 I am confident that the community will continue to work with the Government and other Singaporeans, to enable Indian pupils to take full advantage of the educational opportunities available and prepare for future challenges. I note the good progress made by the Hindi Society in its self-help project to provide instruction in Hindi. I am heartened to learn that there are now 1,600 students enrolled in your Centres, an increase of nearly 200 over 1997. I wish you all continued progress in this direction.

11 To conclude, may I offer my heartiest congratulations to all the students who have done well in the Hindi examinations and will be awarded prizes today. Keep up the good work!

1. The Ministry of Education has been releasing data on the performance of the various ethnic groups since 1988. The aim is to provide feedback to the different communities on how their children have performed in the national examinations.

2. Attached are three sets of charts showing the performance of the different major ethnic groups in the PSLE, GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level Examinations for the past ten years (1988-1997).

3. Chart A1 shows the percentage of pupils who qualified for secondary schools at the end of primary six. This has been increasing gradually. For this chart, the percentages are based on all pupils, including those in the EM3 stream.

4. Charts A2-A5 show how well EM1 and EM2 pupils have performed in English Language, Mother Tongue Language, Mathematics and Science, in terms of percentage scoring A*, A, B or C. The grades are chosen so that the results can be compared to past data. Besides these, there are also grades D, E and U (for ungraded). Note that these are not considered as failure grades.

5. Charts B1 and B2 shows the percentage of pupils passing at least 3 and 5 O-levels respectively. There are no significant changes in the two pass rates last year. Note that grades obtained in previous sittings are not included.

6. Charts B3-B5 show the pass rates of O-level pupils in English Language, Mother Tongue Language and Mathematics. Performance in the languages is little changed, but there is a slight decline in Mathematics pass rate.

7. Three charts showing the performance of the different ethnic groups at the A-level are also provided. The first (Chart C1) shows the overall performance in terms of percentage passing at least 2A and 2AO-levels including General Paper. The other two (Charts C2 and C3) show the pass rates in GP and Mother Tongue Language.

8. This chart shows the percentage of a P1 cohort going for post-secondary education viz. pre-university, polytechnic and ITE. Unlike the other charts which are based on those who took the examinations, Chart D is based on the cohort who was admitted into Primary One ten years ago.