Journey to Apply Primary School in Singapore — Part 1, How does Education System Work in Singapore?
The Beginning
As Claire is getting closer to primary school admission, i.e. 2022 intake, we started our journey to find her an “appropriate” primary school in Singapore. It’s a huge undertaking as both of us didn’t go through primary education in Singapore, everything is brand new.
After weeks and months spent on research and talking to other parents, we had identified a few target schools for Claire. Given the complexity of this process and fragmented information gathering, I started to document what we had learned and happy to share with any prospective parents who might be interested.
The content will be organized into 4 stories.
Part 1 — How does the Education System Work in Singapore?
Part 2 — Types of Primary Schools & Key Milestones in Primary Schools
Part 3— How to Choose “Appropriate” Primary School Targets?
Part 4— How to Apply to Target Primary Schools & What Happened After Primary Schools Application?
Part 1 — How does the Education System Work in Singapore?
Singapore public education system is well known for its strong academic results produced. Media coverage frequently popped up on all the good results Singapore students received internationally, such as Top OECD global survey in problem-solving through teamwork and Top in maths, science and reading in Pisa international benchmarking test.
Beyond academic results, Ministry of Education (MOE) Singapore had been focusing on building Core Competency of 21st-century students.
Primary school education is the foundational element of implementing this framework. There are 185 primary schools in Singapore. The essential resources for the research is the MOE website and Kiasuparents website.
- MOE website is for understanding the Singapore education system and primary school system 101.
- Kiasuparents website is an effective way to view parents feedback for a particular school. I’ll mention it more during Part 2 of this series.
After going through the research, we had tried to answer the following questions.
#1: Which year should my kid go to primary school?
This is the birth year plus 7. For example, if the kid was born in 2014, the primary school intake is 2014+7=2021. So the kid shall apply for primary school admission of 2021.
#2: Who needs to go to a public primary school?
Primary education is compulsory for all Singapore citizens, including due nationality where one of the nationalities is Singapore. An exemption can be made on a case by case basis. Please check the details on the MOE website: Compulsory education.
We also validated this information with some International Schools in Singapore. MOE is giving International School very few quotas for Singaporean kids to enter Primary 1 to International Schools. Singaporean kids are free to enter International Schools after primary school.
#3: After Primary School, where does my kid go? How does Primary, Secondary, and Post-Secondary education link together?
Before we apply for any Primary School, we all want to find out what happens after Primary School education. This is the answer from MOE website.
It looks really overwhelming and I wonder which path my daughter has to go through to reach university. After lots of research, this is the 4-step path that I would prefer Clair to go through.
Primary School -> Express Secondary School -> Junior College -> University
There are many alternative paths to university and as you can see from the chart. You might also be wondering what’s the differences between different types of institutions and paths to university. I would go through one by one below.
Primary Education Section — 1, 5, 14
All Singapore citizens have to go through compulsory public primary schools. Foreigners, including Permanent Residents, can pursue both public primary school and private primary school, such as International Schools. Therefore, private primary school is not an option for any Singaporean kids.
There are 2 types of public primary schools in Singapore.
- (1) Primary School: This is also called mainstream primary schools. It’s the default primary school option for all kids.
- (5) Special Education School: This type of school is for kids who may need special education at the age of Primary 1. MOE website listed the conditions for parents to find out if kids require special education, e.g. kids who need to develop skills to overcome some developmental delays.
- (5) Special Education School in Secondary and Post-Secondary: This path continues beyond Primary School needs. This page documents the journey of special education for the kids.
At the end of 6-year of primary school education, all kids have to sit through a national level Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), i.e. (14) in the chart. The result from PSLE is used to decide which Secondary school or education the children will go through. More details on PSLE will be covered in the later section.
Secondary Education Section — 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 15
As we can see from the chart, secondary education offering in Singapore has many choices given the diverse and metropolitan nature of Singapore. To make the MOE chart a bit more comprehensible, I drew the below chart to provide more structure to the Secondary School Education varieties.
At the top level of secondary education offering, there is private education and public education.
- Private education (#6 in the chart) — All educational institutions that are privately funded, such as most of the International Schools and any other non-government funded schools. At this point, Singaporean kids can go for any private education. MOE doesn’t mandate public education anymore.
- Public education (#2, 5, 7, 8, 9 in the chart) — All government-funded schools. The posting from PSLE to different secondary schools is mostly by PSLE scoring with a few exceptions. I’ll go through the different type of secondary schools one by one.
Express Schools (#2 in MOE’s chart)
Express Schools has 2 streams: Integrated Program and GCE O-level program.
- Integrated Program (IP): It is a scheme that let kids skip “O” levels exam (#15 in MOE chart) and go straight to “A” levels, International Baccalaureate or an equivalent examination after six years of secondary education for university administration. This stream usually takes the kids with the highest PSLE score from the cohort. List of schools offering IP program can be found here.
- GCE O-Level Programme: This stream is the regular 4-year courses leading up to the “O” Level examination, after which kids will be posted to Junior College (JC), Polytechnic, or Institute of Technical Education (ITE) based on their O-level score. From 2024, MOE is going to replace current O-level exam with a national secondary leaving examination, which I’ll explain more later in the normal stream.
Normal Schools (#8 in MOE chart)
Normal stream is a 4-year course leading up to a Normal-level (N-level) exam, with the possibility of a 5th year followed by an O-level. Normal is split into Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical). After N-level, students will be posted to ITE.
However, this N-level with possible O-level posting mechanism will be changed from 2024. The new scheme is called Subject-Based Banding (SBB) which will include both the O-level and N-level students. A new national exam will be launched in a later year for SBB students (#15 in MOE chart). The IP Programme will remain independent.
The chart below from The Straits Times illustrated the timeline and activities for transition from current O-level and N-level exams to Subject-Based Banding.
Specialised Independent Schools (#7 in MOE chart)
Specialised independent schools offer education catering to students with talents and strong interests in arts, sports, mathematics, and science, and applied learning. There are currently 4 specialised schools in Singapore.
- NUS High School of Mathematics and Science
- School of Science and Technology, Singapore
- School of the Arts, Singapore
- Singapore Sports Schools
I didn’t spend enough time research this area as at this point Claire is too early to decide if she has the specialised talent. More research needs to be done if later this area become more relevant.
Specialised Schools (#9 in MOE chart)
Specialised Schools stream is designed for kids who have difficulties to keep up with PSLE exam. Therefore, the training in these schools is designed for hands-on and practical learning, including vocational training such as mechanical servicing, facility services, hospitality services, etc.
There are 2 Specialised schools in Singapore.
- Northlight School
- Assumption Pathway School
Specialised Education School (#5 in MOE chart)
This is continued education for kids with special education needs, e.g. kids who need to develop skills to overcome some developmental delays.
Post-Secondary Education (#3, 4, 11, 12, 13 in MOE chart)
There are 5 different types of institutions in this category. I’ll explain the paths after each institution.
- Junior College (#3 in MOE chart): students after junior college can apply for university domestically or internationally.
- Polytechnic (#12 in MOE chart): students after polytechnic can join workforce or universities through a separate poly to university process.
- ITE (#11 in MOE chart): students after ITE can join the workforce or polytechnic. If they did well in polytechnic, they could also apply for universities through the poly to university application process.
- Arts Institutions (#13 in MOE chart): There are two publicly-funded arts institutions in Singapore, LASALLE College of the Arts (LASALLE) and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA). They have both diploma and degree courses and post which students will join the creative industry.
In the next story, I’ll zoom into primary schools in Singapore including Types of Primary Schools and Key Milestones in Primary Schools.
