These are the cut-off points for Junior Colleges for next year, to do A Levels or IB.
You get 1 point for an A1. Means lower is better.
Some of these schools need 3 points out of 6 best subjects leh. So you score A1 for your 6 best O Levels also not enough.
How to get three points from six subjects, you ask?
First, your L1R5 is the aggregate of your English marks and 5 best subjects. If you get 6 A1s, your L1R5 score is 6.
Then you can bring down your score further by another 2 points by passing Mother Tongue at Higher Level.
Having a Co-curricular Activity (CCA) distinction will give you another 2 points less.
Or if you have a school affiliation, another 2 points off.
So in theory, you can get an aggregate of 0 with 6 A1s.*
So if you are a 100% A1 O Level student who represented your school in an international Maths Olympiad for your Maths Club CCA, plus a school swimmer who won an ASEAN games medal, while being extremely gifted in Higher Chinese, and hail from an elite secondary school, you will have no problem.
No pressure, kids and parents. No pressure at all.
*(Ok, I exaggerated a little. The maximum you can minus is 4 points, so the lowest possible L1R5 is 2 points.)
Update: This was shared by my friend who explained the system further to me. Let me see if I can explain it correctly. He said if you get 20 pointers or fewer, you are guaranteed a place in JC, What's on the table above is the first-choice lowest point score that you needed to get into a course based on the previous year's batch.
There is no such thing as a predetermined cutoff point. If only 18-20 points students applied for RI as their first choice, then all those 18-20 pointers would get in. It is based on market forces. The COP is therefore based on the market in the previous year, where many super-low pointers aimed for that school as their first choice.