Gaps in educational outcomes: analysing national examination performance of Singaporean Malay and non-Malay students in the past 20 years

Abstract

Singaporean students generally perform very well in international tests of mathematics and science. Nonetheless, in multi-cultural Singapore, there exist gaps with the Malays, a minority group in Singapore, systematically lagging behind the other ethnic groups of the Chinese and Indians in many educational performance indicators. While there have been previous qualitative assessments of this issue, rigorous statistical analyses are lacking. In this article, I analyse data from 1991 to 2011 of aggregate percentage passes in national examinations for the different ethnic groups in Singapore. Using time series techniques and regression, I uncovered two major findings. First, the Malay trends in percentage passes for the last two decades were strongly correlated with the non-Malay, national trends. Second, despite the correlation, there remained fluctuations around the national trend by Malay cohorts in the past two decades. Malay cohorts tended to perform better during an upward national trend, but also performed worse during a downward national trend, indicating systematic volatility in performance. The implications of these findings are discussed in the light of current research on educational gaps and three decades of community self-help to improve the educational achievement of the minority Malays in Singapore.

Keywords:

• Singapore
• Malays
• educational performance
• PSLE
• GCE “O” Level
• time series

Notes

^1. According to the MOE, PSLE grades A^* to C from 1993 and onward are comparable to pass grades before 1993, so the two terms are used interchangeably in this paper.

^2. The term “ethnic group” is used by the Ministry of Education and I have followed the convention. I do, however, acknowledge that “race” might be a better term but the intersection and differences between ethnicity and race are beyond the scope of the paper.

^3. Generally, defined in a patrilineal nature. There is another group called “Others”, but they make up a very small proportion (less than 4%, even in recent years) of the national cohorts and it is not clear what their make-up is over the long time frame analysed in this paper unlike the presumably relatively more homogenous Malay, Chinese, and Indian cohorts.