An international school in Taipei has excelled again this year in the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) exams, surpassing the global average by 32 percentage points.
Ninety-three percent of AP exam papers completed by Dominican International School students achieved scores of 3 or higher, 4 percentage points above the national average of 89 percent and 32 percentage points above the global average of 61 percent, the school said.
Furthermore, 46 percent of the exam papers by students from the school achieved the maximum score of 5, the school said.
The AP exams, which test high-school students’ ability to perform at college level, score students in a range of 1 to 5.
Students who earn a score above 2 can qualify for credits at colleges or universities.
It is the second consecutive year that the school’s test results have surpassed the global and national average.
Its results have improved sharply in recent years. In 2010, only 58 percent of students from the school achieved scores of 3 or higher, which was below the global and national average.
Mercia de Souza, head of the school’s language arts department, said on Thursday that she believes the hiring of teachers with doctorates, the growing use of online resources and small class sizes are some of the factors that have contributed to the students’ improved performances.
More than 2,700 students from 19 schools around the nation took part in the AP exam this year, according to data from the US-based College Board, which administers the exam.
AP exams are held in May each year and the results are made available in July.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not