The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), held every five years since 2001, included 319,000 students from around the world.
More than 6,500 students from all 177 primary schools in Singapore took part in the latest test, which for the first time included a new component measuring how well students understand and navigate online content.
In this task, Singapore led the world, coming out ahead of the United States and 13 other countries.
Students were asked to study two reading passages – narrative fiction and information-based texts such as news articles. Students then had to answer multiple-choice and written-response questions.
More than a quarter of Singapore’s students achieved the “advanced” benchmark - the highest level of attainment in the 2016 study, similar to 2011’s results. The international proportion of such pupils was only 10%.
The results mean that the pupils did well in higher-order skills such as interpreting and evaluating information.
The Ministry of Education (MOE) attributed Singapore's improvement in literacy performance to changes in the way the English language has been taught in schools in the past decade.
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