Release of O Level Results

I was pretty worried for my students' results and could not sleep well yesterday - especially when my students took the subject O level Economics for the first time and also it was our last batch of Pure Geography students. I worked till 2 a.m. on 6 e-lessons - Social Studies Skills (Sec 3, 4 and 5), Fun Geography (all), Economic links and resources (Sec 3) as well as providing some educational links for the students. I have also already posted them on the HS portal and I hope that the students will find them useful, especially for the Social Studies skills which I took pain to build up two years ago.

I was exhilarated when I found out that all the Economics students passed with 57.1% getting distinction! I am so happy and proud of the students - they were not from the best class but they have definitely performed the best! They were the pioneer batch to take the subject at O level in Singpaore and they have really set a record! Though I was trained to teach Economics in 1991 (which is 16 years ago!) for A level Economics, this was the first batch we had to teach for O level. There was no textbook available in Singapore for O level and I must say we have limited resources when we compare ourselves with England as it was available to the students long ago. I must say I had to do a lot of research and also attended enrichment /refresher courses related to the subject. It took us a lot of efforts - both for the teachers (Mrs Patty Gan taught them in Sec 3) and the students.

We did not do badly in the other Humanities subjects either. We managed to get 97.2% passes for Pure Geography with 2 failures. I think the questions set for 2007 were quite a surprise - especially the one on crustal movement as it was combined with weathering. But I must say it is still an achievement compared with the results for Prelim. I think Junlin was very disappointed that he did not get his A1 but A2 - I felt the same too. I was quite comforted when those who did well came to thank us. However, my heart sank when I saw those in tears as their results were not satisfactory.

I was also proud that Chin Kheng is 2nd top student in Express with 8As - he has proven that he could excel both in academic and CCA. He had already passed his VI course and I hope that being attached to our school as VI for our Red Cross unit will inspire the cadets - that we can excel both academically and in our CCA!