The bar chart provides data on the average number of years spent at educational institutions, while the pie charts illustrate the highest education levels of the Singapore population between 2002 and 2010. Overall, the number of years people spent studying increased steadily, regardless of gender. However, male students showed consistently higher figures throughout the period than their female counterparts. Regarding the pie charts, one can easily notice that there was a big shift towards obtaining higher education, with large proportions of people pursuing master’s and bachelor’s degrees in 2010.
Looking at the bar chart, it can be seen that there was a small discrepancy between male and female students at the beginning of the period, with approximately 9 years for men and 8 years for women. However, the figures for men rose steadily in the next few years, accounting for 9,5 years in 2002, 9,8 years in 2004, and 10.1 years in 2008. Consequently, there was a substantial growth to 12 years at the end of the period. By contrast, numbers for women did not witness any major changes, hoovering around 8,2 years and reaching 8,3 years in the final year.
Finally, more and more people entered universities, which is indicated by the increasing number of students in higher education. In 2000, a mere 7.5 % of people studied for a master’s degree, which is almost 4 times less than in 2010 (30.31%). Similarly, the number of students with a university qualification constituted only 8.3 % in 2000 and rose dramatically to 32.93% in 2010.
Conversely, the percentage of people with basic school education decreased. Starting with primary school education, the rate of people plummeted from 25.77% in 2000 to 2.1% in 2010. People who obtained secondary school qualifications accounted for 26.3%, but dropped to 15.2%. Furthermore, a considerable decrease was seen in the percentage of people with highschool diplomas, with 19.55% in 2010 compared to 32.13% in 2000.