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Singapore pre-university centres
Posted Date: 21 Nov 2007 Resource Type: Articles/Knowledge Sharing Category: Education
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Posted By: valenteena Member Level: Gold
Rating:  Points: 5
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Pre-university
The pre-university centres of Singapore consists of 17 Junior Colleges (JCs) and a Centralised Institute (CI), the Millennia Institute (MI, established 2004), with the National Junior College (NJC, established 1969) being the oldest and Innova Junior College (IJC, established 2005) being the youngest. The pre-university centres are designed for upper stream students (roughly the top 20%-25% of the cohort) who wish to pursue a university degree after two to three years of pre-university education, rather than stopping after polytechnic post-secondary education.
Originally, junior colleges in Singapore were designed to offer an accelerated pre-university education of two years instead of the to traditional three-year pre-university programmes, but the two-year programme has become the norm for students pursuing university education. Junior college has become synonymous to prestigious education. There are 5 traditional "top" junior colleges; HCJC/HCI, NJC, RJC, TJC and VJC. The Public Service Commission and other coveted scholarships (such as the FireFly, A*Star and the President's Scholarship) are either largely or exclusively reserved for pre-university centre students.
Junior Colleges (JCs) accept students based on their GCE "O" Level results; an L1R5 score of less than or equals to 20 points must be attained for a student to gain admission. JCs provide a 2-year course leading up to the Singapore-Cambridge GCE Advanced Level ("A" level) examination. Centralised Institutes (CIs) accept students based on their GCE "O" Level results; an L1B5 score of less than or equals to 20 points must be attained for a student to gain admission. Millennia Institute, provides a 3-year course leading up to the A-level examinations.
Funding and scholarships
Students in most junior colleges and centralised institute pay a subsidised school fees of S$6 and up to S$22 per month for other miscellaneous equipment and special programmes fees, depending on the status and programmes offered by the college. However, certain independent junior colleges, such as Raffles Junior College and Hwa Chong Institution, will require new students to pay a higher school fees at S$300 per month. Scholarships and bursaries are provided for students whose score was within the 95th percentile from the O-levels, and for students requiring financial assistance. Under these schemes, they are only required to pay an amount equivalent to the school fees of a non-independent junior college. Bursary holders are required to pay a fraction of the full fees, based on their family income. A student whose household salary is S$2000 (75% of an average Singapore household income) is required to pay 75% of the full school fees, while another whose household income is less than S$1000 per month only has to pay 25%. Apart from that, there are also MOE pre-university scholarships awarded to academically-abled students who choose to pursue and specialise their education at a junior college, providing yearly scholarship allowance and remission of school fees. These scholarships include the Pre-University Scholarship, which provides a scholarship allowance of SGD750 per annum, as well as specialised scholarships such as the Humanities Scholarship, Art Elective Programme Scholarship, Language Elective Programme (French, German & Japanese) Scholarship and Music Elective Programme Scholarship which provide scholarship allowances of SGD1000 per annum in addition to a remission of school fees as well as additional grants for overseas trips or programmes (ranging from SGD1000 to SGD2000).
Admissions and matriculation
The Provisional Admission Exercise is a transitional period of 3 months in junior colleges that allows students to have a 'feel' of JC life.
There are two ways to be admitted into a pre-university centre, namely through the traditional Joint Admissions Exercise (JAE) as well as Direct School Admission (DSA). In the JAE, students apply for admission using their Singapore-Cambridge GCE 'O' Examinations scores, while in DSA which is conducted roughly half a year earlier, students apply directly to the various colleges for placement on the basis of talent which can range from the academic, to the cultural and performing arts to sports. Upon acceptance, students will be automatically admitted to the college irrespective of the year's JAE cut-off score, although students will still have to meet the minimum criteria of scoring an L1R5 of below 20 points for entrance into a junior college (although top JCs tend to require a minimum score of 15 points and below to avoid the student from struggling academically). In the JAE, students will have to compete nationally on the basis of their academic scores and credentials to gain admission to their college of choice.
In the past, there used to be two intakes, namely the Provisional Admissions Exercise (PAE) and the Joint Admissions Exercise (JAE). However, from the 2009 academic year onwards, a single intake system will be implemented with the Singapore-Cambridge GCE 'O' Examinations being brought forward to minimise movement and excessive administration work involved in the two-intake system.
A-level curriculum and examinations
From January 2006, the two-year and three-year pre-university curriculum framework in pre-university centres was replaced with a new and revised curriculum with the first batch of students sitting for the GCE "A" Level examinations in 2007. In this newly enforced curriculum, the system of categorising subjects according to "Alternative Ordinary (AO)", "Advanced (A)" and "Special (S)" papers or levels has been scrapped and is replaced with the Higher One (H1), Higher 2 (H2) and Higher 3 (H3) categories. H1 subjects are worth 1 Academic Units (AU), H2 subjects 2 AUs, H3 subjects 1 AUs and students are expected to take a minimum of 10 AUs (viz. 3H2+1H1) and a maximum of 12 AUs (viz. 4H2) inclusive of Mother Tongue Language (MTL), Project Work and General Paper or Knowledge & Inquiry. Students who have taken Higher Mother Tongue language paper at the GCE "O" Level and have obtained a minimum grade of 'D7' are exempted from taking formal MTL lessons and examinations, albeit still having to attend MTL-related enrichment and not being allowed to replace the MTL unit with another subject as MTL is still regarded as an integral component of the curriculum.
In tandem with the MOE's aim of achieving more depth rather than mere breadth, the H1 and H2 categories complement each other; in general, a subject taken at H1 is half the breadth of that taken at H2, but is of the same depth and difficulty. For example, students studying Mathematics at H1 will study lesser Pure Mathematics topics (which are largely Physics-related) than those studying Mathematics at H2, but will still face the same depth and difficulty in similar topics (such as Statistics). As such, a H1 paper can theoretically be said to be half of the content of a H2 paper albeit being at equal depth and difficulty (as opposed to how "AO" level subjects were merely easier papers than the "A" level subjects previously). Subsequently, for certain subjects such as History, students taking the subject at H1 level will only sit for Paper 1 (International History from 1945-2000), while students taking the subject at H2 level will sit for the same Paper 1 (International History from 1945-2000) in addition to having to sit for Paper 2 (Southeast Asian History from 1900-1997) as well. Students taking Science subjects such as Physics, Chemistry or Biology at H1 will only sit for the Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ) and one written paper, and are not required to take the SPA or Practical examination as those taking the subjects at H2. Consequently, this new grouping system bears some semblance to the International Baccalaureate Diploma A1/A2/SL/HL grouping system.
Syllabus wise, the new curriculum framework gives students more choice of subjects to choose from and enables more permutations of subject combinations. However, unlike in the old curriculum which was criticised for being too specialised and unholistic, students are now required to take up at least one contrasting subject - i.e. Science students have to take up at least one Arts/Humanities subject, while Arts/Humanities students must take up at least one Science-based subject. For example, subjects previously not available to Arts/Humanities students such as Physics, Chemistry and Biology are now made possible at both H1 and H2 levels, while Science students now have more choice of doing an Arts/Humanities subject (such as Literature) at either H1 or H2 level. Alternatively, students can choose to take up a new subject, Knowledge & Inquiry, in lieu of the General Paper (GP) as a contrasting subject, as Knowledge & Inquiry (KI) is designed to expose students to Epistemology as well as to the construction and nature of knowledge, thus calling for the need to learn across disciplines such as Mathematics, the Sciences and the Humanities. KI is said to be similar to the IB Diploma's Theory of Knowledge paper, albeit being more difficult, as students have to sit for both an examination paper and do a 2500-3000 word Independent Study research paper. Due to its intensive nature, KI is classified as a H2 subject instead of a H1 subject like the General Paper (GP).
The "highest" level subjects, the H3 subjects, are meant to be more pragmatic and promote critical thinking unlike the previous "S" Papers. Under the revised curriculum, H3 subjects are examined either in the form of Research Papers (be it by Cambridge, or by local Universities), Research work (such as the HSSRP and A*Star Research Programmes) or (advanced) University Modules offered by the various local Universities which are approved by the MOE. Consequently, students are able to gain extra credits and skip several modules in the University with the H3 paper done with their other GCE "A" Level subjects. However, in order to do a H3 subject, students must offering the corresponding subject at H2 level. H3 subjects are not offered in Millennia Institute and SRJC.
In general, the subjects offered under the new Singapore-Cambridge GCE "A" Level Examinations are (although not exhaustive):
Science & Mathematics Group:
Offered at both H1 & H2 level: Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Physics
Offered only at H2 Level: Computing
Languages Group:
Offered only at H1 Level: Chinese Language, Malay Language, Tamil Language
Offered at both H1 & H2 Level: French, German, Japanese
Note: Language Subjects taken at H1 do not qualify as contrasting subject(s) for Science students. Only Language Elective Programme (LEP) students are offered to study French, German or Japanese at H2 level.
Humanities and the Arts Group:
Offered at H1 level only: General Studies in Chinese (GSC)
Offered at both H1 & H2 level: Economics, Geography, History, Literature in English, History in Chinese, China Studies in English, China Studies in Chinese
Offered only at H2 Level: Chinese Language & Literature, Malay Language & Literature, Tamil Language & Literature, Theatre Studies & Drama, Art, Music (Higher Art and Higher Music is offered to Art Elective (AEP) and Music Elective Programme (MEP) students respectively)
Business Group (for CI only)
Offered at H2 level: Principles of Accounting, Management of Business
Offered at H1 and H2 level: Economics
Others:
H3 Subjects:
1.Research Papers: Papers are offered by Cambridge for all core subjects including new "hybrid" subjects such as Proteomics, Pharmaceutical chemistry and Essentials of Modern Physics
2.Research Programmes: Humanities and Social Sciences Research Programme (HSSRP) by National University of Singapore, NUS Science Research Programme by NUS(NUS SRP), H3 STAR Science Research Programme (only offered to students of NJC), H3 NAV Science Research Programme (only offered to students of VJC).
3.University Modules: Modules such as "Geopolitics: Geographies of War and Peace" for Geography and History students and "Managerial Economics" for Economics students are offered and examined by the National University of Singapore. NTU will also be offering several modules in 2007.
Other Compulsory Subjects:
Offered only at H1 level: Project Work, General Paper (for those who do not take KI)
Offered only at H2 Level: Knowledge & Inquiry
Previously, students take two subjects at "Alternative Ordinary" level ("AO" level), namely their General Paper (GP) and Mother Tongue, and three or four subjects at "A" level. "A" level subjects include Economics, Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English Literature, History, Geography, Art, Art with Higher Art ("A" level) taken by students in the Art Elective Programme, Theatre Studies and Drama, Computing, Higher Chinese, Chinese ("A" level) Language Elective Programme, Music ("A" level), Music with Higher Music ("A" Level) taken by students in the Music Elective Programme, General Studies in Chinese, French, German, Japanese ("A" level), Malay ("A' level), Tamil ("A" level). Project Work was also made compulsory from 2003.
To gain admittance to local universities, students must pass the General Paper (GP) or Knowledge & Inquiry (KI) and obtain a minimum grade of D7 for the "AO" or "H1" level Mother Tongue Language paper. The grade obtained for the Higher Mother Tongue paper taken at "O" level may be used in lieu of an "AO" or "H1" level Mother Tongue Language grade. From 2008 onwards, the scores of a student's three H2 and one H1 subject will be computed inclusive of Project Work (PW) and either GP or KI for admittance into local universities (namely NUS, NTU, SMU and UniSIM).
Elective Programmes offered in Junior Colleges
Art, Music & Language Elective Programmes. Humanities Programme.
Centralised Institutes
The Centralised Institutes accept students based on their GCE "O" level results and their L1R4 score (which must be 20 points or below). A Centralised Institute provides a three-year course leading up to a GCE "A" level examination. There were originally four Centralized Institutes: Outram Institute, Townsville Institute, Jurong Institute and Seletar Institute. Townsville Institute and Seletar Institute stopped accepting new students after the 1995 school year and closed down after the last batch of students graduated in 1997.
There currently remains only one Centralised Institute in Singapore, the Millennia Institute, which was formed following the merger of Jurong and Outram Institutes. Additionally, only Centralised Institutes offer the Commerce Stream offering subjects such as Principles of Accounting and Management of Business. The standard of teaching and curriculum is identical to that of the Junior Colleges.
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Responses
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| Author: kthangamani 21 Nov 2007 | Member Level: Silver Points : 1 | Hi,
ITt gives information regarding Pre universities.So, it nice to have such an education system.
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