ANGLO-CHINESE School (Independent) students taking the International Baccalaureate (IB) examinations for the first time have produced results that are among the best in the world.

Nine obtained the perfect score of 45, making up almost half of only 20 candidates worldwide with that score. About 5,500 took the examinations around the world last November.

ACS(I) is the first Singapore school to offer the IB in place of the A levels. The new School of the Arts will also offer it.

The IB was first started 40 years ago in Geneva and is now offered by 2,200 schools in 125 countries.

All students sit for a standardised exam set by an international panel of university academics, and the scripts are marked in various countries.

ACS (Independent) student Samuel Chan did not let cancer get in the way of his getting a perfect score in the International Baccalaureate exam. The 18-year-old braved surgery, a stem-cell transplant, chemotherapy and radiotherapy from January to June last year, yet went on to become one of his school's top nine students.

ACS(I)'s perfect scorers were Kevin Tan, Matthew Lee, Clement Tan, Yeo Yao Wen, Colin Chan, Jeremy Choo, Samuel Chan, and two girls - Charleen Chan and Elsa Goh.

Said Elsa, 18, formerly from Methodist Girls' School and the daughter of a company director and financial consultant: 'The IB is a challenging programme partly because we have to work hard throughout the two years.

'There are a lot of graded projects and presentations, so it feels like taking a two-year long exam.'

ACS(I) offers a six-year integrated programme from Secondary 1 through to Junior College 2 level. It takes in girls only in the final two years, when the IB diploma programme is offered.

The IB programme is considered by educators to be more broad-based than the A levels, with all students taking six subjects and Theory of Knowledge, a course that combines philosophy, religion and logical reasoning.

Students also do a research project, write a 4,000-word essay on it, and have to clock 150 hours of service to the community over two years.

The final exams make up about 70 to 80 per cent of the final grade.

The regional director of the IB Organisation in the Asia Pacific region, Ms Judith Guy, described ACS(I)'s results as 'very impressive' and said it is one of the top performing schools in the world.

The Straits Times understands that ACS(I)'s performance puts it among the top three schools worldwide, after a British school and an Australian one.

Of the 357 ACS(I) candidates, only one did not get the full diploma.

Their average score of 39.4 out of a maximum of 45 was higher than the Asia-Pacific average of 34.1 and the world average of 30.7.

More than half scored above 40, qualifying them for top universities like Harvard and Oxford.

The school's overall pass rate of 99.7 per cent was also significantly higher than the Asia-Pacific's 89.7 per cent and the world's 80.8 per cent.

Principal Ong Teck Chin was ecstatic about the results and told reporters yesterday that he literally jumped up and down when he got the good news during the weekend.

He said it had been a long journey since the school decided to offer the diploma in 2001.

'Parents and students would question us if our teachers were trained properly, there was no 10-year series to follow, and we had to do many things from scratch,' he said, before praising his teachers for working hard.

'I told the students to target getting an average of 36 points - they got 39 points. We probably have to shift the standard up for the next batch,' chuckled Dr Ong.

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