The Island’s public senior school students show a 95 percent graduation rate for the latest school year, according to Education Minister Dame Jennifer Smith.The minimum grade point average set by the Board of Education is a 2.0 — the equivalent of a 70 percent across the subjects.Said Dame Jennifer: “This means that 217 out of 229 senior school students achieved a minimum GPA of 70 percent.”Double the number of students in the public school system also sat external exams in the academic year past.The 2010 introduction of the Cambridge Curriculum for core subjects was one of the recommendations of the Hopkins Report.All S2 students sat the Cambridge International Exams in English, maths and science this year — two years earlier than they have previously, she said.For Primary students, the Cambridge Primary exams show the Island’s students performing at just one out of six levels below the world Cambridge International average for English and Science.Bermuda’s P6 students are ahead of the game in English and Science by the Cambridge International Exam’s reckoning of how many students should rank between satisfactory and excellent: the bar is set at 75 percent worldwide, and local primary students were ahead of that by 13 percent and 4.8 percent respectively.They fell behind in maths by 10.4 percent, however.For Middle School (M3) students, 74 percent got satisfactory to excellent grades for the Cambridge Secondary 1 Checkpoint exams in English.Sixty percent scored in that range for maths, and 74 percent in science.“We note that we have work to do to raise the number of students achieving at grade three and above,” the Minister said. According to the Cambridge exam system, level three is ranked as “proficient”.Primary and middle school student performance is “significantly up — especially at the primary level”, Education Commissioner Wendy McDonell pointed out.She said this reflects, in part, the greater familiarity of younger students with the new curriculum versus older students.For the IGCSE/GCSE exams, senior school students’ results are as follows:English: 325 students sat the exams; 38 percent scored a C or higher, and 91 percent received a grade between and A and G.Maths: 299 students sat the exams; eight percent scored C or higher; 74 percent were graded.Science: 278 sat the exams; 25 percent scored C or higher; 95 percent were graded.Foreign languages: 53 students sat the exams; 69 percent scored C or higher; 100 percent were graded.Arts: 53 students sat the exams; 41 percent scored C or higher; 98 percent were graded.Business and Technology: 90 students sat the exams; eight percent scored C or higher; 92 percent were graded.Physical Education: 31 students sat the exams; 68 percent scored C or higher; 100 percent were graded.Family Studies: three students sat the exams; none scored a C or higher; 100 percent were graded.There is no pass in the context of the IGCSE, the Minister said: the only fail registered is a ‘U’ grade, meaning ungraded.The Minister added that it was important to stress that the Island’s public education system is comprehensive.“This means that we teach to all student levels and abilities,” she said. “We do not have, not should we have, the discretion of selecting students, or only putting forward certain students. The decision to implement the Cambridge Curriculum was to provide an international benchmark to compare our students to their counterparts in other jurisdictions.”For Advanced Subsidiary (AS) subjects, the Minister said 56 students took the AS English exam.A total of 34 percent received a grade C or above.