From the 2028 intake, students applying to enter polytechnic in the first year will do so under amended admissions criteria, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said.
Currently, students must offer five G3 (or O-Level equivalent) subjects, computed into an ELR2B2 aggregate score. This refers to the grades obtained for English language (EL), two subjects relevant (R) to their polytechnic course choice, and the two best (B) subjects where they obtained the next highest scores.
Under the amended admission criteria from 2028, students will be able to offer one (B) subject taken at either the G2 or G3 level, in their aggregate score.
Mr Chan disclosed this in Parliament on Friday (March 1) while presenting the budget for the Ministry of Education (MOE).
MOE said in a media release on Friday that the remaining four subjects must continue to be offered at G3 to ensure that students can cope with the academic rigour of the polytechnics.
With this change, all students will be assessed on a common benchmark of four G3 subjects and one G2 subject, instead of five G3 subjects.
Students who choose to continue offering both (B) subjects at the G3 level will have their (B) subject with the lower grade mapped from G3 to G2 based on an “empirically validated grade mapping table”, MOE said.
Correspondingly, the net aggregate cut-off for admission to polytechnic in the first year will be adjusted from 26 points to 22 points. For nursing courses, the net aggregate cut-off for admission will be adjusted from 28 points to 24 points.
The changes come into effect with the roll-out of the full subject-based banding from this year, a move first announced at the 2019 Budget debate.
Starting from the 2024 Secondary 1 cohort, full subject-based banding will be introduced and the decades-long practice of streaming will be scrapped entirely.
“With the removal of streams, and flexibility for students to offer subjects at different levels, MOE has reviewed the admissions criteria for post-secondary pathways,” the ministry said.
“The updated criteria better recognises the different subject levels offered by students and provides options for different learner profiles, while ensuring that students have the foundational competencies to thrive in their chosen pathway.”
SECONDARY EDUCATION CERTIFICATE (SEC) TO REPLACE GCE
From 2027, the first cohort of graduating secondary school students under the full subject-based banding system will also no longer sit the GCE O-Level or N-Level examinations.
They will instead take the Singapore-Cambridge Secondary Education Certificate (SEC) examinations, Mr Chan said on Friday.
The SEC national examinations will continue to be jointly examined and awarded by the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board, MOE and the Cambridge International Education.
This is to ensure that the certificate preserves its high standing, the minister said.
There will be no change to the examination format, though students will sit for the papers at their respective G1, G2, and G3 subject levels.
Mr Chan added that the SEC examination timetable will also be streamlined into a common examination period to allow students to “learn at a better pace”.
With this, the current option to take the mother tongue written examination at a mid-year sitting will be scrapped.
“I understand that some may be concerned that they will have one less chance to improve their mother tongue language grades,” he said.
“But we need to strike a careful balance between striving for excellence, chasing the last mark, and allowing our students to learn at a better pace.”
He put it into context that when the mid-year O-Level mother tongue examination sitting was introduced in 1980, less than 40 per cent of students had passed both their first and second languages.
Thus, the ministry allowed students to take their mother tongue examination twice, to meet the second language requirement for pre-university admission.
“Today, almost all our O-Level mother tongue language students already meet the language requirement within their first sitting,” he said.
MOE’s analysis showed that taking a second sitting only changed the post-secondary posting outcomes for less than 2 per cent of students taking the exam.
“Most importantly, the new system will allow our students and teachers to better pace the mother tongue language curriculum, with four more months of learning, rather than to squeeze everything into less than 3.5 years in preparation for the June sitting,” Mr Chan said.
There will therefore be only one written examination sitting in the second week of September for all mother tongue subject levels from 2027.
To “spread out the exam load” at the end of the year, students will also sit their English language written examination in the same week — a month ahead of other subjects.
And while the GCE O-Level and N-Level examinations were previously held in separate periods, graduating students would sit their written examinations together from 2027 — regardless of whether they are taking their subjects at the G1, G2 or G3 levels.
These written examinations will be conducted from October to November, similar to the current O-Level examination timetable.
The SEC examination results will be released altogether in January the following year, regardless of subject level.