Students in public secondary schools received a grade of C or above in slightly more than half of the Cambridge IGCSE exams they took this year, Government revealed yesterday.This is the first year a substantial number of public school students have taken the IGCSE exams under the Cambridge curriculum for core subjects, and while Education Minister Dame Jennifer Smith praised the results, she added: “We still have much to do, and a long way to go.”In English, 62 percent of the 168 students taking the subject received a grade of C or better.Seventy percent of the 142 students taking Maths received a grade of C or better.And in science, 20 percent of students received a grade of C or better. Sixty students took the exams in Combined Science, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Coordinated Science.There was good news in foreign languages, where 40 students took French and/or Spanish and 88 percent receiving a grade of C or better.Private school announced their GCSE results last month.Ninety four percent of Bermuda High School for Girls students received grades between A* and C in five or more subjects. while the figures for both Warwick Academy and Saltus were 90 percent and 84 percent respectively.Saying the results belied “all the doom and gloom others seem to see when they view education”, Dame Jennifer added: “We have no intention of settling for good when we can do better.“It is our goal to one day be the subject of a headline stating that Bermuda leads the world in education.”As well taking the GCSE exams in senior schools, students sat the Cambridge International Primary Test (CIPAT), and the Cambridge International (Checkpoint) exams at the middle school level.Bermuda, the Minister said, is now “the only jurisdiction where an entire public school system uses the Cambridge curriculum, and is therefore the only country that requires all of its students to sit such exams”.Calling 2010 to 2011 “a benchmark year”, she said that 76 percent of P6 students graded satisfactory to excellent in English, as well as 66 percent for Maths and 73 percent in Science.“According to Cambridge International Examinations, 75 percent of students worldwide achieved ratings between satisfactory and excellent,” Dame Jennifer continued. “Therefore, Bermuda’s P6 students were at the worldwide average for English.”They were ten percent below the world average for Maths, and two percent below average for Science.The same figures for middle schoolers who sat Checkpoint were 71 percent, 77 percent and 73 percent for English, Maths and Science respectively.The Minister noted that middle school students are performing near the worldwide Cambridge International average.Dame Jennifer also said 16 Sandys Secondary Middle School Students had taken and passed the GCSE Mathematics exam.These GCSE results take all results from grades A through G as passing grades. In the case of Sandys, actual figures released earlier by the school showed two students receiving an A grade, two with B’s, and five with C’s plus six D grades and one E.Different schools vary in the grade level considered an acceptable pass.Dame Jennifer called the P6 scores “a benchmark for three of our core subjects”.“At the Ministry of Education, we are involved in a deeper analysis of these results, so that we can build on this first experience, and set public targets by which we can be held accountable,” she said, adding that feedback would be a key factor in improving students’ performance.Useful website:www.cie.org.uk