CHINESE LANGUAGE AND UNIVERSITY ADMISSION

Mr Tay Beng Chuan asked the Minister for Education whether his Ministry has collated any statistics on the number of students who scored excellent grades in other subjects but were unable to enter local universities simply on account of their failure in the Chinese language subject at their O-level and A-level examinations.

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Admission into NUS/NTU is based primarily on A-Level points. The maximum is 76 points, 20 points each for 3 A level subjects and 8 points each for General Paper and Mother Tongue (MT) taken at the AO level. Applicants compete on their total points. A student who scores excellent grades in other subjects but fail their Mother Tongue may have higher points than an average student who passes Mother Tongue. However, a student who does not meet the Mother Tongue requirement (D7 or better) will be offered provisional admission. During his 1st year undergraduate vacation, he must undergo an intensive 1-month mother tongue course and pass the course.

There are thus no students with excellent grades who could not get into the university because of MT. Those who failed MT and were not accepted into University because their results for the other subjects were poor as well.

For academic year 98/99, a total of 21 students were provisionally admitted into NUS/NTU on the grounds that they had failed to obtain at least a D7 in their Chinese Language. This is 0.3% of the 7000 (approx.) JC/CI students who were admitted into NUS/NTU. The percentage of students who are provisionally admitted because of poor performance in MT is very small.