Choose Secondary school for 2010

[ycpang]

yellow-dk:

Sounds Good.
Btw, COP reflected in the PSLE booklet does not take into account those accepted via DSA, right? My friend's boy was on waitlist and got confirmation on the day PSLE results were announced. His T-scole is 256, while COP for last year 259.

There will always be cases like this but they are handful. To calculate your kid's chances into these top IP schools, there are many other factors than the Top X%. DSA pupils with lower than the COP is one of them. Other to consider are:

1. DSA via sports/ music and etc (with lower than COP)
2. Distance & transport - for those above COP but choose to go to the nearby school instead. Schools that near MRTs will be a hotter choice.
3. \"Customer base\" - Mix or single (boy/ girl) schools, SAP (Chinese) or mix races schools. For top 10%, 60% girls and 40% boys would be a good guess. (That is why I guessed boys' schools such as HCI and ACSI will be affected most with lower COP this year). RI although is a boy school, they will always attract the top 3% no matter what.
4. Bonus point for those who take HCL into SAP IP schools.
5. Supply and demand - NJC has increased their intake this year, SOTO, NUSH, SST etc will draw some top students aways from the IP schools.

If you spend some time to go through the data available and make some reasonable estimation, you may be able to \"calculate\" the chances of your kids going to top IP schools, if your kids' scores are among the top 7%. Beyond that it would be more difficult to estimate.

Again, good luck to everyone on 22 Dec.

[CrazyDad]

ycpang:

There will always be cases like this but they are handful. To calculate your kid's chances into these top IP schools, there are many other factors than the Top X%. DSA pupils with lower than the COP is one of them. Other to consider are:


1. DSA via sports/ music and etc (with lower than COP)
2. Distance & transport - for those above COP but choose to go to the nearby school instead. Schools that near MRTs will be a hotter choice.
3. \"Customer base\" - Mix or single (boy/ girl) schools, SAP (Chinese) or mix races schools. For top 10%, 60% girls and 40% boys would be a good guess. (That is why I guessed boys' schools such as HCI and ACSI will be affected most with lower COP this year). RI although is a boy school, they will always attract the top 3% no matter what.
4. Bonus point for those who take HCL into SAP IP schools.
5. Supply and demand - NJC has increased their intake this year, SOTO, NUSH, SST etc will draw some top students aways from the IP schools.

If you spend some time to go through the data available and make some reasonable estimation, you may be able to \"calculate\" the chances of your kids going to top IP schools, if your kids' scores are among the top 7%. Beyond that it would be more difficult to estimate.

Again, good luck to everyone on 22 Dec.

Cannot wait for the 22 to come

But I do not understand :?
Since all the school allocation is computerized, why it takes so long.
In fact, the allocation should have been done overnight. So we can have more time to buy books, uniform, bus services etc.
Why need to take so long??

[VitoRelax]

CrazyDad:

Cannot wait for the 22 to come


But I do not understand :?
Since all the school allocation is computerized, why it takes so long.
In fact, the allocation should have been done overnight. So we can have more time to buy books, uniform, bus services etc.
Why need to take so long??

That was precisely my question in the Primary School PSLE results thread.

On a press of a button on 2nd Dec, the computer software would have allocated all the students. Why MOE takes 20 days to inform us is anybody's guess !!

[poohandtigger]

it’s not fair!!! Parents only have 5 days to decide!

[VitoRelax]

poohandtigger:

it's not fair!!!! Parents only have 5 days to decide!

Anyone working with MOE knows why MOE need 20 days in this advanced technological age ?

[mrswongtuition]

VitoRelax:

poohandtigger:

it's not fair!!!! Parents only have 5 days to decide!

Anyone working with MOE knows why MOE need 20 days in this advanced technological age ?

Firstly, they also need some time to manually key in the data that were submitted on paper. Not all parents are IT savvy or have the resources to submit their options online.

Forgot to add:
Some parents actually do not submit by the deadline and MOE needs to call them up personally to check if they've submitted but the documents got lost or they forget to submit. It's not fair if they've submitted but the documents got lost right?

And with so much data to handle, sometimes the computer will also need time to generate the results. And at the end of it, the computer isn't perfect and there'll be some 'manual work' to be done to complete the whole allocation.

After that initial allocation is done, MOE will need to inform the respective school principals of the possible enrolment for each school and if the school is in real shortage of resources/staff (sudden massive transfers/resignations) and unable to take so many classes, the principals will need to alert MOE and MOE will need to 'reallocate' again.

Once all these is done, MOE will need to double check again to make sure there's no error (imagine if they posted wrongly & parents will go through alot of trouble). Then there's the printing of the results to be posted out. And they also need to give a list to the respective secondary schools to prepare for registration and other admin work to be done.

It's not an easy process. Imagine in 1 school we already take 1 whole day to allocate S2 students for the streaming exercise, what more the entire SG's P6 population?

I understand your anxiety but all things take time. It's better to explain to our children the virtue of being patient for the results as others need time to 'do their work' rather than be impatient about it. I'm a very impatient person but I try my best to be patient, especially for my boy.

[VitoRelax]

mrswongtuition:

Firstly, they also need some time to manually key in the data that were submitted on paper. Not all parents are IT savvy or have the resources to submit their options online.

Noted but 3 days should be enough for the schools to key in the data into the system on behalf of the parents, right ?
[quote]And with so much data to handle, sometimes the computer will also need time to generate the results. And at the end of it, the computer isn't perfect and there'll be some 'manual work' to be done to complete the whole allocation.[/quote]From what I understand, once all data are in, the software should be able to allocate all students based on the algorithm. With supercomputers these days, this task will only take a couple of hours to run.
[quote]After that initial allocation is done, MOE will need to inform the respective school principals of the possible enrolment for each school and if the school is in real shortage of resources/staff (sudden massive transfers/resignations) and unable to take so many classes, the principals will need to alert MOE and MOE will need to 'reallocate' again. [/quote]Shouldn't the variable like number of places in every schools be obtained much earlier from the principals before the software runs ?
[quote]Once all these is done, MOE will need to double check again to make sure there's no error (imagine if they posted wrongly & parents will go through alot of trouble). Then there's the printing of the results to be posted out. [/quote]Agreed
[quote]And they also need to give a list to the respective secondary schools to prepare for registration and other admin work to be done.[/quote]That means by now, the sec schools should have the list already, right ?
[quote]It's not an easy process. Imagine in 1 school we already take 1 whole day to allocate S2 students for the streaming exercise, what more the entire SG's P6 population?[/quote]Agreed it is an enormous task but then again MOE is also a huge Dept with enormous resources & high tech softwares
[quote]I understand your anxiety but all things take time. It's better to explain to our children the virtue of being patient for the results as others need time to 'do their work' rather than be impatient about it. I'm a very impatient person but I try my best to be patient, especially for my boy.[/quote]Sound logical, that is why all of have been waiting

[WeiHan]

We don’t need a supercomputer to do the posting. 50k students with 6 choices each-an ordinary pentium PC can handle this kind of data already.And the algorithm is very simple. NUSH’s sec 1 students can write such as programme already provided he/she is taught a computer language.


But I do suspect…since everybody are kiasu, the MOE also kiasu…they just want to keep more time for themselves so that nothing goes wrong and reflect badly on them. But that is just my guess.

[VitoRelax]

WeiHan:

We don't need a supercomputer to do the posting. 50k students with 6 choices each-an ordinary pentium PC can handle this kind of data already.And the algorithm is very simple. NUSH's sec 1 students can write such as programme already provided he/she is taught a computer language.

Yes, the algorithm is not complex. Should be able to come out with a list within minutes. All variable like number of places in each schools are pre-determined & feed into the computer before it is being run.

[quote]But I do suspect...since everybody are kiasu, the MOE also kiasu...they just want to keep more time for themselves so that nothing goes wrong and reflect badly on them. But that is just my guess.[/quote]kiasu until need 20 days meh ?

[James Ang]

VitoRelax:

WeiHan:

We don't need a supercomputer to do the posting. 50k students with 6 choices each-an ordinary pentium PC can handle this kind of data already.And the algorithm is very simple. NUSH's sec 1 students can write such as programme already provided he/she is taught a computer language.

Yes, the algorithm is not complex. Should be able to come out with a list within minutes. All variable like number of places in each schools are pre-determined & feed into the computer before it is being run.

[quote]But I do suspect...since everybody are kiasu, the MOE also kiasu...they just want to keep more time for themselves so that nothing goes wrong and reflect badly on them. But that is just my guess.

kiasu until need 20 days meh ?[/quote]in my previous designation in a top Singapore corporation, I come across an approval process in the SAP system that needs to be approved by many responsible levels or approving authorities; creator, verifying officer/Supervisor, approving officer/AO, higher approving officer/Manager, Vice president, Senior vice president, finally CEO.

I can only guess that for the results to be foolproof, all approving authorities in the ministry must check carefully before they click on \"Approve\" on SAP or other equivalent ERP system.