ANLY482 AY2016-17 T2 Group15 Project Overview
As a country, Singapore is heavily reliant on its population due to its resource constraints. Therefore, its students are the key to shape the future generations of Singapore. Education in Singapore is managed by the Ministry of Education (MOE), which controls the development and administration of all public and private schools in Singapore.
After six years of education, all primary school students across Singapore will be have to sit for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), which they will be tested in 4 main subjects: English, Mathematics, Mother Tongue and Science. Students will then choose the secondary school of their choice based on their results in the examination. Based on their merit and order of choice, they will then be assigned to a secondary school.
Upon completion of their 4- or 5-year secondary school education, they will have to undertake the ‘O’ Levels and this important examination will determine their next stage of education, whether it will be in Junior Colleges, Polytechnics or Institute of Technical Education.
Established in 2010, Edufy Secondary School is located in the North-East region of Singapore to provide quality education to students living around the estate. Equipped with the newest facilities and the latest technologies coupled with curriculum innovation, the school is committed to provide the ideal learning environment and experiences for its students. It is currently in the process of setting up a Data Analytics Team to tackle educational problems faced by teachers and students.
This dilemma of choosing a subject combination is not just limited to other countries, but is also pertinent in Singapore. For many Secondary 2 students in Singapore, choosing and selecting a subject combination for the next two years leading to the GCE ‘O’ Level examinations can be a tough decision.
It is also difficult for teachers to decide whether or not to encourage or let students take on the subject combination of Double Science or Combined Science. Should schools stream students based on their overall subject grades, or should they base their decisions on students’ individual science grades? Often, many parents feel that their children are able to qualify for Double or Triple Science subject combinations. Without proper analytical evidence, it is difficult for teachers to convince parents that the recommended subject combination would be a better choice for their child.
While various research papers have focused on the effects of streaming on students, little have discussed about how schools and teachers can accurately formulate the right streaming practices and criteria that would benefit all students. As students ourselves, we can relate to this problem that students face clearly, and the consequences a student might face should he or she perform undesirably as a result of a wrong subject combination. Hence, we will propose an analytical model to shed light on a more scientific and data-driven approach for our Project Sponsor to formulate better streaming practices.
Utilizing past data of students’ grades from the school’s database, we aim to discover useful and practical insights which will allow teachers to better decide and advise students on choosing their Secondary 2 subject combination, particularly on whether they should take one of the following subject combinations:
- Combined Science
- 1 Pure Science and 1 Combined Science
- Double Pure Sciences or
- Triple Pure Sciences
We will attempt to analyze the trends of students' academic performance by examining their past subject grades and subject combinations.
To achieve the above mentioned, we will perform an in-depth analysis on the historical data
with the following aims:
- To help secondary schools and teachers better formulate the right streaming practices and criteria that would benefit all students
- To develop an application using R for the school so that they can input future data to improve the accuracy of the model in predicting students’ GCE ‘O’ Level examinations results
To measure and analyze the academic performance of students requires a multidimensional approach. Various past research have supported the hypothesis that the academic performance of students is dependent on the student’s socio-economic, psychological and environmental factors (Hijazi and Naqvi, 2006). For example, a student’s academic performance may be a result of tuition and family’s status and environment. For the purposes of our analysis, we will focus our analysis solely on the environment factors which are directly attributed to our Project Sponsor, basing it to the context of Singapore as shown in Figure 1 below.
According to a research done by the Bangladesh e-Journal of Sociology, it has pointed out three main variables in determining the academic performance of students, namely Environmental, Psychological and Socio-economic factors. The environment that a student is immersed in school affects their academic performance, which includes their subject combination, class and co-curricular activities (CCA). As such, these factors form the basis of our analysis, which we have performed an exploratory data analysis on the historical results of the students.
The psychological factors include their intellectual and emotional ability to cope with the workload. Finally, the socio-economic factors include their gender, race, family background, and parents’ marital status.
Staffolani and Bratti (2002) asserted that the most important measure of the future academic performance and achievement of students is their previous educational outcomes, as cited from Ali, Shoukat, et al. (2013). In other words, the higher the student’s past academic performance, the better their future academic performance. As such, we will be analyzing students’ historical results which forms the basis of our analysis.
- Ali, Shoukat, et al. (2013) "Factors Contributing to the Students Academic Performance: A Case Study of Islamia University Sub-Campus." American Journal of Educational Research 1.8 (2013): 283-289.
- S. T. Hijazi, and R. S. M. M. Naqvi (2006), “Factors affecting student’s performance: A Case of Private Colleges”, Bangladesh e-Journal of Sociology, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2006.
- Tanggaard, Lene, Nielsen, Klaus, & Jørgensen, Christian Helms. (2015). Students' Experiences of Ability-Based Streaming in Vocational Education.Education & Training, 57(7), 723-737.
- Factors Affecting High School Students’ Academic Motivation in Taiwan (https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2006_Hardre_et_al_APJE.pdf)
- Ali, Shoukat, et al. (2013) "Factors Contributing to the Students Academic Performance: A Case Study of Islamia University Sub-Campus." American Journal of Educational Research 1.8 (2013): 283-289. (http://pubs.sciepub.com/education/1/8/3/#)
Besides the team and our supervisor, the other stakeholders are:
Sponsor
- Mr Lee Peck Ping, Principal of Edufy Secondary School (ESS)
- Mdm Lim, Vice Principal of ESS
Other Stakeholders
- Students of ESS
- Teachers and Heads of Department (HODs) of ESS
- Parents of students studying in ESS
