chloecube:

hi lemonadeboy,


thank you so much for sharing, as above, my DS is starting his first yr journey with dunman this yr, i really hope he will enjoy school as much as i would want him to.
like you, i was considering between dunman and ngee ann for him, in the end, i chose dunman as it is nearer to my house and i had been to dunman open house, pretty impressed with the school, and students. a pity i had missed ngee ann open house as i was away.
my son's psle is 196, i could have chosen Express stream for him but in another school as dunman has higher COP. but after speaking to him and letting him see dunman and other schools, he decided to choose dunman but in a NA stream. he prefers to go slow and said he will try his best to get into express stream. i certainly hope he can!
as a teenage's mother, what i am most worried abt is they stray and mix with bad company, thus choosing a school with good reputation is very important to me.
in my opinion, having good character far exceed good result. (though result is also important)
this week is orientation week for him and perhaps he will be choosing his CCA soon. he hopes to get into the basketball team.

can you share how are the NA students like and are they as motivated as the express kids? are the teachers dedicated towards them?

Hey there! Thank you very much for your question.

I am in total agreement with your DS in saying that he prefers to go slow and work his way up to the express stream. However it must be noted that he should not feel so much pressure about entering the express stream. Yet, if he does work very hard, I am certain that he will be able to make it because I have seen people who jumped from the NA stream to the express stream and have done quite okay in the o levels.

I am not in the BEST position to share about the NA students but I do have some experiences with them as some of them are in the same cca or that I do see them everyday. DO NOT worry about the academic rigour of being in the NA stream because during my time (should be the same now) Dunman's NA stream has consistently attained rather stellar results (often hovering between band 1 and 2) and Dunman always speaks very highly of their NA stream (often broadcasting their academic achievements in front of the school). With that in mind, I am sure that the teachers are equally dedicated towards teaching the NA stream because many of my teachers also teach the NA stream and I feel that they were really helpful ! Also, because some of my cca mates are from the NA stream, I find that they are very committed to both cca and their studies in the sense that they understand the importance in both excelling in their academics and ccas. Moreover, nearing to major national exams (e.g. N or O levels) the school will most likely engage motivational speakers (e.g. adam khoo for my time) to further spur the students to give it their all for their last lap (not sure if such an opportunity is still present though).

If you are worried about the NA students being very rowdy and unruly, please do not be. When I was in Dunman, the students were generally quite well behaved. Yet, there are definitely some \"black sheeps\" in the school where they are caught for overly tapered pants, their socks being too low, or making loud noises in public e.t.c, but such occurrences happen regardless of one's stream. If you are worried about bad influences (for example smoking, hooliganism e.t.c), I have not really seen any NA students (or any other students for that fact) engaging in such behaviour. You may argue that they may engage in such behaviour outside of school, but that really depends on how close their parents really keeps an eye on them. Generally, the NA students are nice and far from being super rowdy, loud or misbehaved. So do not worry.

Basketball is a good cca to be in! It is intense but this will no doubt teach your son the importance of balance between work and play. All the best if he really does want to go for their trials! But do keep an open mind during the cca walkabout (if there is one) and who knows if he might be interested in another cca?

Hello everyone ! Just if anyone is curious or interested, I was a student from Dunman secondary, express stream and graduated in 2012. I and a few other friends moved on to VJC and just graduated from jc this year. In dunman, I took triple sciences (chem, bio, phy), double math, HCL, combined ss/geog and the other mandatory subjects.


I entered the school with a score of 238. Prior to entering this school, my parents were considering between Dunman sec and Ngee ann and honestly, ngee ann sounded like a better choice because it was more well known because of they had the backing of the kongsi. Yet, during that time dunman was a band 2 school for its express stream and ngee ann was a band 6 one (not trying to defame ngee ann but I am just stating cold hard facts : http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/press/files ... nex-e1.pdf ) and my parents heard about how the school was very grounded in the area of the sciences and thus I was put into the school! The range of points for my year was rather commendable as well (235-272), although it has been slipping after my year (but still quite good though!)

When I was in the school, Mrs Edelweiss Neo was the principal and she was definitely a very capable, influential and endearing leader which propelled the students to attain such academic success. She was later replaced by Ms Beatrice Chong and she was too very down to earth yet stern in her own ways.

During my time in school (not so sure about now, but it should be the same) Dunman was the east zone school of excellence in the area of Life Sciences. In secondary 2, they had this mandatory life sciences programme that ran for half a year and it introduced basic concepts and techniques of life sciences (e.g. Extraction of DNA) to the students and it really enriched my knowledge of the sciences. Other events include care and share day where the school takes a day off to host a carnival in order to raise funds for the needy. I must say that such an event is an ingenious way for class bonding and raising funds at the same time!

Dunman's sports teams and aesthetic groups have already done the school proud during my time. The netball, basketball and volleyball were always within the top 3 during the east zone competitions and some of the groups would then claim the top title for the nationals later on. Dunman's choir had always been a gold with honours choir and excelled in the several overseas competition that it took part in as it bagged home a lot of awards. Its uniformed groups had always done well too.

The teachers are very dedicated as well. Despite it being a mere neighbourhood school, my teachers would often treat us as young adults and independent learners. I remember the year that we sat for our o-levels, the chemistry, bio and humanities department would churn out practice papers and print many past year papers for us to attempt and it did provide us with the resources and opportunity to practice practice and practice. Night classes were compulsory for english and during that time we were given papers to do within the time limit and they would go through them rather throroughly after the time was up. There were also night classes and timed practices for the other subjects. Basically (at least during my year), the students were driven and the teachers were very dedicated and never allowed anyone to fall back.

Do pm me or post on this thread if you have any other queries ! I would be happy to answer them