SINGAPORE: Masjid Angullia, one of Singapore’s oldest mosques, held its final prayers on Friday (Feb 23) before closing for upgrading – which will see it transform into a four-storey building that can accommodate 2,500 congregants.

Located on Serangoon Road, the two-storey mosque was first built by the late merchant and philanthropist Mohammad Salleh Eusoff Angullia in 1890. It was rebuilt in the 1970s.

Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs Yaacob Ibrahim launched the start of upgrading works at the mosque, the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) said on Friday.

The redevelopment is part of MUIS’ mosque upgrading programme and is projected to be completed in the fourth quarter of next year. 

As part of its redevelopment, 1,000 more prayer spaces will be added, while its main prayer hall will be moved to the second level to allow for a larger multi-purpose area on the first floor.

It will boast features that are catered to the elderly and people who are visually or hearing impaired. 

The new building will have a lattice steel dome and a minaret. There will also be a new auditorium, a roof terrace and a dedicated floor for female congregants.

The upgrading will cost about S$6.35 million, said MUIS. The Mosque Building and Mendaki Fund has contributed S$500,000, and the mosque management board is reaching out to the Muslim community for donations to raise the remainder.

Dr Yaacob, who is also Minister for Communications and Information, said the mosque’s redevelopment will cater to the needs of workers and people living in the Little India area.

He also encouraged members of the Muslim community to step forward and contribute to the mosque.

SINGAPORE: SBS Transit (SBST) has edged out five other bidders and won a contract to continue operating the Bukit Merah bus package for an estimated S$472 million, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) announced on Friday (Feb 23).

The new five-year contract will start from the fourth quarter of 2018.

The Bukit Merah package consists of 18 bus services, including two cross-border services. These services will operate out of the new Ulu Pandan Depot, which will be handed over to SBST in March 2018.

Under the package, SBST will continue to manage Bukit Merah and HarbourFront Bus Interchanges, as well as four bus terminals – Kampong Bahru, Marina Centre, Queen Street and Shenton Way Bus Terminal.

SBST was one of six companies that had bid for the tender, which LTA called on Apr 28, 2017. The other bidders comprised SMRT Buses, The Go-Ahead Group and Tower Transit Singapore, Shenzhen Bus Group and a consortium of Jiaoyun Group and Travel GSH.

LTA said greater consideration was given to quality over price during the evaluation process.

SBST was awarded the contract because its proposal demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of the operational considerations, and strong competence in bus service scheduling that would enable the optimal deployment of buses and resources, it added.

“The proposal showcased SBST’s extensive experience in bus operations, while offering good value for money,” it said, adding that SBST had prepared comprehensive contingency plans for cross-border services, and committed a significant number of experienced technicians to ensure high maintenance and reliability standards.

SBST also demonstrated innovative IT solutions for infrastructure and asset maintenance, as well as security management, with the development of several in-house mobile applications for staff to report defects and incidents.

It also presented a career development programme to up-skill its staff, with more opportunities for career progression, the authority said.

SINGAPORE: A total of 238 students from four junior colleges who sat for their GCE A-Level examinations last year had part of their H2 Chemistry answer scripts stolen in the United Kingdom, before the papers were delivered to the examiners.

As a result, the final grades for the students were derived through a projection, the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board (SEAB) revealed on Friday (Feb 23).

The students, who received their results on Friday, are from Anderson JC, Anglo-Chinese JC, Hwa Chong Institution and Nanyang JC. 

The stolen scripts were for Paper 3, which consists of free-response questions and carries a weightage of 35 per cent of the entire H2 Chemistry examination.

The H2 Chemistry exam consists of four papers – Paper 1 which has multiple choice questions, Paper 2 which has structured questions, Paper 3, as well as Paper 4 which is a practical assessment. The 238 students make up about 3 per cent of the 8,843 school candidates who took the A-Level Chemistry exam at H2 level last year.

HOW THE PAPERS WERE STOLEN

The theft occurred on Nov 16 in the UK while the exam answer scripts were in transit from Cambridge Assessment’s office to the examiner for marking. A parcel containing the scripts – 60 each from Anglo-Chinese JC, Hwa Chong Institution and Nanyang JC, and 58 from Anderson JC – was stolen from a locked courier company van, along with seven other unrelated parcels.

The courier reported the theft to the UK police on the same day. To date, the case remains under UK police investigation and the scripts have not been recovered.

The affected candidates were informed of the theft on Friday, when they received their results, and SEAB said it had carefully considered the implications of when to reveal the incident to them.

The initial indication, it explained, was that the stolen scripts might be recovered. If so, the scripts could still be marked. However, the UK police had not managed to arrest the culprits or locate the stolen packages by the end of January, when the marking of all Chemistry papers for the whole cohort was completed.

SEAB said that informing the students without being able to give them their awarded grades would be alarming and cause “undue anxiety”, and grade projections for the affected students could only be done after the marking of all Chemistry papers was completed. 

On the other hand, informing them of just their awarded Chemistry grades would not be meaningful, as they would not know their grades for their other subjects, SEAB explained.

This is the first time that answer scripts from a national examination have been stolen. Chief executive of SEAB Tan Lay Choo said that the last time a similar incident occurred was in 1993, when 261 Literature scripts from the GCE O-Level exam were lost.

But she added that there is a “major difference” in how the grades for affected students have been projected for the two cases.

“For the Literature exam, there was only one paper, and the script missing was 100 per cent of the outcome of the results,” she said. “In this case, we have 65 per cent of their results, and the methods used will be very different.”

“This time, we could actually use their real performance to project the 35 per cent, which is a smaller percentage than what is missing. The other time, we didn’t have any of their examination results, and therefore, the projections were based on their school-based prelim results.”

She added that she is “very confident” of the method that was used to project the affected students’ grades. 

“It’s a tried and tested method, it’s an established methodology, and has statistical soundness,” she said. “It’s not a new method we have invented for this case. We have used it for candidates who may have missed some papers for very good reasons in the past, so we are confident that this method is something that worked.”

AFFECTED STUDENTS HAVE CHOICE OF ACCEPTING AWARDED GRADE, TAKING EXAM AGAIN

To award the grades for these affected candidates, both Cambridge Assessment and SEAB considered their performance in the other three chemistry papers, and the performance of all the other candidates in the subject.

In each case, Cambridge Assessment used the candidate’s marks in Papers 1, 2 and 4 to work out the candidate’s position in terms of percentile ranking within the cohort. The percentile ranking was then used to derive the missing Paper 3 mark, which allowed a total mark to be worked out and a grade awarded.

The candidate’s school-based exam results were also considered, to check for consistencies in affected candidates’ overall performances. Additional attention was also paid to borderline cases.

Following this, all 238 candidates got at least a pass grade for the subject. At least 81 per cent of them scored an A or B grade, SEAB added. The results are comparable to the performance of their peers in the four schools, and all candidates attained better grades or maintained their grades in the national exams compared to their school-based exams.

However, given the unique circumstances, Cambridge Assessment and SEAB have made arrangements to offer the affected students an opportunity to re-sit the H2 Chemistry Paper 3, if they wish. They will have a choice of taking the paper on Apr 25, or in November 2018.

Those who wish to opt for the re-examination will have the better of their two grades – the awarded grade and the re-examination grade – recorded in their GCE A-Level result slip and certificate. Those who do not wish to take the re-examination will have the awarded grade recorded as the final grade.

The re-examination will be based on the same curriculum that the candidates had been taught, and of the same standard and format as the 2017 A-Level H2 Chemistry Paper 3 exam.

SEAB said that it will also work with the local autonomous universities to consider the re-examination results for those students who take up that option, for the purpose of shortlisting for interviews, as well as final course admissions or scholarship applications. It added that it has taken the necessary actions to ensure that the affected candidates are not disadvantaged and are given a “valid and fair assessment”.

SEAB also noted that it understands that Cambridge Assessment is reviewing their processes to ensure the security of examination papers and scripts, and “safeguard the integrity of our national examinations”.

In a media statement, Cambridge Assessment offered its sincere apologies to the affected candidates, their families and their schools. 

“The security of examination papers is of the utmost importance to us,” said Roderic Gillespie, Cambridge International’s director of assessment. “Cambridge Assessment will continue to review the situation with the police and the courier company.”

SINGAPORE: The new four-in-one rail and bus depot in East Coast will save taxpayers S$2 billion in construction costs, Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan said on Friday (Feb 23).

The East Coast Integrated Depot, which will combine three depots of the Thomson-East Coast Line (TEL), Downtown Line (DTL) and East-West Line (EWL) as well as a bus depot, is expected to be built at a cost of S$3.2 billion.

“If we were to build the four depots as separate depots, we would have to incur an additional $2 billion! So this 4-in-1 solution saves taxpayers a huge sum of money,” Mr Khaw wrote in a Facebook post. 

He also noted that the design frees up 44 hectares of land – the size of two Changi Terminal 4s.

“A truly excellent example of maximising land use through creative thinking,” he said.

First announced in 2016, the East Coast Integrated Depot is expected to be ready by 2024. It is said to be the first in the world to combine three train depots and a bus depot within a single site. 

The facility stacks three train depots above one another – the DTL depot will be located underground, followed by the TEL depot on ground level and the EWL depot on the level above. All three depots have been designed to operate independently of one another, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said in a media release on Friday.

“Careful planning has been done for them to share the same layout so that MRT lines with different number of train cars can be stacked on top of one another,” LTA said, adding that the integrated depot can house 220 trains.

The bus depot will be an independent three-storey structure next to the train depots. The workshops are located on the first level while parking bays for around 760 buses are planned on the second and third levels.

By integrating the depots in a single site, the saved land space can be put to other uses and also allows sharing of facilities, LTA said.

“The same set of foundations and columns is shared among the three train depots, leading to structurally efficient and economical design. The co-location of the depots also enables cost savings through the centralisation and sharing of common facilities and systems,” it said.