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'.
Advertisement
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
They are banding by bands.. From 1 to 9