A preliminary analysis of Certificate of Education Examination results has found a sustained rise in pass rates for nearly all major subjects in Chinese-medium schools.

The second cohort of students admitted to Secondary 1 upon the introduction of the Government's medium of instruction guidelines in 1998 sat for the exam this year.

From the 1998-99 school year, about 300 secondary schools adopted Chinese as the medium of instruction at junior levels, while 112 continued teaching in English.

Principal Assistant Secretary for Education & Manpower Fanny Lam said results in the past three years have shown that mother-tongue teaching is working successfully.

"Mother-tongue teaching indeed can enhance our students' acquisition of subject knowledge without necessarily a trade-off for proficiency in English. It is possible mother-tongue teaching and good English standards can be achieved at the same time," she said.

Performance in major subjects continues to rise

For the high ability groups, the proportion of students obtaining five or more subject passes this year rose 4.9 percentage points from 2002 and 2.1 percentage points from 2003, while for the mid ability group the increases were 3.4 and 1.8. The pass rate for the low ability group remains steady.

Comparing individual subjects, Ms Lam said between 2002 and 2004 there were significant rises in pass rates in the majority of subjects for the high and mid ability groups.

"Many of the rises are greater in magnitude than those in 2003. These are seen in the subjects of Chinese, mathematics, geography, history, economics and biology," she said.

Students of the high ability group show continuous improvement in Chinese history and chemistry, and their rises in pass rates are greater than those in 2002 and 2003.

"It is worthwhile to note that in physics and chemistry, the pass rates of both English and Chinese-medium students in general are consistently lower than those in 2002 and 2003," Ms Lam said.

"Nevertheless, the high ability group of Chinese-medium schools has managed to attain a rise in the pass rate in chemistry whilst maintaining a steady result in physics when statistics indicate a general decline in the pass rates of the two subjects."

Rises in English pass rates for all ability groups

Compared to last year, there are rises in the pass rates for all ability groups, with the mid and low ones registering pleasing improvements, back to 2002 levels.

"Though the pass rate for the high ability group is slightly lower than that of 2002, there is a perceptible improvement over that of 2003. Overall, the English language standard of students in Chinese-medium schools is on the rise," Ms Lam said.

She said pass rates for English in some 80 schools which have switched to Chinese instruction is higher than those of 2002. Last year, there were only 40 such schools.

"This may be attributed to the fact that an increasing number of these schools have progressively improved their English teaching strategies," Ms Lam said.

"Quite a number of schools have also provided appropriate English programmes to suit students' ability and as a result, they have achieved improved results."