The bar chart illustrates the average years of education of male and female during the period 2000 and 2010 in Singapore and two pie charts compare percentage distribution of highest education among the Singaporeans between 2000 and 2010.
Overall, increasing trends can be seen in average years of education for both male and female although the figures for male were always higher than the figure for female. At the same time, more people get a highest of the university qualification and diploma and professional qualification and less people stopped going to school after secondary or below secondary.
In terms average number of years in school, the figure for males started at 9.2 years in 2000 and rose gradually by about 0.3 for every two years to 10.5 years in 2010. Similarly, female average witnessed a steady growth from 8.0 years in 2000 to 9.1 years in 2010. Generally, the gap between male and female narrowed.
As for highest education level, in 2000, the proportion for four levels ( Below secondary, secondary, diploma and professional qualification, and university qualification ) were evenly distributed, all around 25%. Although the percentage of people reaching university qualification is the lowest in 2000 at 21.1%, it doubled to 44.1% in 2010, which took precedence over all other categories at that year. Similarly, there was a substantial increment in the amount of diploma and professional qualification. Starting at 27.7%, which ranked first in 2000, it was 33.9% in 2010. In contrast, the trends for secondary and below secondary were totally different. To specify, 27.6% of highest education achievement at secondary level in 2000 was halved to 13.4% in 2010, while the figure for below secondary declined to a negligible of 8.6% in 2010.