IB exam results: Singapore continues streak of surpassing global average

SINGAPORE - Belle Phang, 18, was never content to just go through the motions as a student at Anglo-Chinese School (Independent).

Recognising the hard work of her elders to provide her family with educational opportunities and a supportive family environment, she was determined to do her best in school.

Belle, who has an older sister and younger brother, topped her school’s cohort for physics, chemistry, economics and Spanish, and clinched the Ministry of Education’s Engineering and Tech Programme Scholarship in 2024.

She aced the International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma exams with a perfect score of 45.

A total of 2,442 students in Singapore sat the IB diploma exams in November 2024. Their average score was 38.4, higher than the global average of 29.2.

The Switzerland-based IB organisation, which conducts the exams, said that diploma programme and career-related programme students in Singapore received their results on Dec 17. There were 21,894 candidates globally.

 In 2023, Singapore students’ average score was 37.8 out of 45, higher than the global average of 29.1.

Starting with the November 2024 session, the IB has brought forward the release of the exam results, which was done in January in previous years, to help students meet university application deadlines in December.

There are 22 schools in Singapore that offer IB programmes. They include St Joseph’s Institution (SJI), ACS(I), Singapore Sports School, School of the Arts, Singapore (Sota) and Madrasah Aljunied Al-Islamiah. Students in the international school arms of ACS, SJI and Hwa Chong also collected their results.

Since May 2023, the IB has stopped releasing data on the number of IB students with perfect scores of 45. This is to discourage the use of assessment results for comparisons among students, schools or communities, it said in a statement.

Ever since it joined the IB programme in 2005, Singapore has consistently produced close to half of the perfect scorers worldwide.

Belle, whose mother is a regional sales manager and father is a project manager, said that she appreciated how the IB emphasises self-directed learning and collaborative thought.

“There are a lot of internal assessments, and many classroom discussions which really focus on building that environment where students grow together,” she said, adding that consistent effort and time management were key in helping her juggle her many tasks and responsibilities.

She held leadership roles in the school’s student council and Young Diplomats’ Society, and even found time to lead two service projects to promote the well-being of the elderly.

This is on top of attaining a silver award in the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition in 2024.

She hopes to study engineering and liberal arts at a university in the US. “I think it’s a wonderful place to get a more holistic education, just like the IB, actually. And it’s where I can exchange global perspectives with other youth, who are also motivated and very outspoken,” Belle said.

All 452 students from ACS(I) – the first Singapore school to offer the IB diploma programme after it was accredited in 2005 – passed the exam. Their average score was 41.2 points, with 356 of them obtaining 40 points and above.

A total of 159 students from Sota sat the IB exam, with more than half scoring at least 38 points.

Of the 30 student-athletes at the Singapore Sports School who took the IB diploma exam, more than 75 per cent scored at least 38 points.

Both Sota and the Singapore Sports School declined to give the average score of its students.

A total of 283 students from SJI sat the diploma programme exam, with an average score of 40 points. About six in 10 students attained at least 40 points.

SJI International’s cohort of 207 students all passed with an average score of 38 points, and 39 per cent of them attained at least 40 points.

Choosing the IB to pursue an acting career

Having been bitten by the acting bug when he was 11 years old, Dharshan Nathan, an only child of a corporate trainer and leadership consultant, wanted to pursue his secondary education in an institution that would allow him to deepen his acting skills alongside academics.

“When I attended Sota’s open house, I learnt that it offers a career path later on in the years, and that they blend art forms into academic learning.”

Dharshan eventually enrolled in Sota’s IB career-related programme, where he learnt about theatre. In the programme, students take compulsory core subjects, but fewer academic subjects compared with those on the diploma track.

After building his confidence and acting chops in Sota’s theatre productions, he took part in external productions. These include being part of the main cast in Crack The Case – Mind Hunter, an immersive play by Sight Lines Entertainment.

Dharshan, who declined to share his results, hopes to enrol in a drama school in Britain, once he completes his national service.

“I find meaning in the process of working with different types of people, taking art and processing it for myself, and then sharing that entire experience with an audience,” he said.