SINGAPORE : The banding of secondary schools is out, replacing
school ranking tables which line up the academic performance of
schools.
In the top tier are Cedar Girls', CHIJ St Nicholas, River Valley
High and Singapore Chinese Girls'.
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But what is missing from the list are six secondary schools
offering the Integrated Programme, including Raffles Institution
and ACS Independent.
Junior Colleges too are not included.
The Education Ministry has also introduced the top School
Excellence Award and the next tier - School Distinction
Award.
River Valley High is one of three schools which are the inaugural
winners of the School Excellence Award.
The other two are ACS Independent and Raffles Institution.
To get there, schools must have won at least three Sustained
Achievement Awards in areas like academic and sports performance,
two Best Practice Awards for developing students and teachers, and
attained Singapore Quality Class.
They were also assessed by a team from the Education
Ministry.
Ek Soo Ben, Principal of River Valley High, said: "They have given
us many good insights on how the school has done well. They have
also given us good points on where we can move further...such as
our teaching and learning processes, some of the good practices
that we have put in place, our integrated pupil development
programme to teach students values and character education. These
are good areas that I believe we can even do better."
River Valley High is in Band One in the new banding system.
Schools are banded according to this year's GCE 'O' level
results.
No stranger to awards, Xinmin Secondary School has built up a name
for itself.
And this year, it won the School Distinction Award - only given to
schools which have achieved a level of excellence in a range of
academic and non-academic fields.
Sim Ay Nar, Principal of Xinmin Secondary School, said: "We have
this vision in the school that is captured in this very simple
formula, that is x = q, that is Xinmin equals quality and that
permeates all activities in the school and the programmes
too."
"Now if we feel that something should be implemented we can
actually draw up proposals and we can hand them in to the school
administration, and if it's feasible, the thing will be implemented
in school."
"You see our school have all those values for the month. Every
month we have one value. So we will have that value as a goal for
that month and try to improve on that value."
What's also interesting this year is that a culture of excellence
has been pervading our schools.
A record 141 schools won awards this year, 24 more than last year.
- CNA
Honestly to say, isn't this overdued? The top 50 ranking is bo
liao