I think they should revise the Pri School Registration system. Keep it simple.


1. Phase 1: Siblings.

2. Phase 2: Alumni and old boys/girls.

3. Abolish Phase 2B–parents are already so stressed out in Singapore fighting for jobs (fighting with PRs and FTs!), why have this parent volunteer/slave scheme? Parents should volunteer when their children are in the school. Not before. The whole idea of parent volunteer work in most other countries is for the parent to be involved with the children WHEN they are in the school.

To do "volunteer work" to get the children into school negates the altruistic intent behind the word volunteer. Do the schools really need traffic wardens, canteen wardens? If the schools aren’t funded enough for such admin work or tasks, perhaps the ministry should stop tearing down perfectly good/new schools and building new ones and channel more resources to staffing. Phase 2B also appears to favour the incumbent party–grassroots and community leaders. For mission schools, they can keep 2B for the church affiliation.

My query is also whether for PV in 2B, do foreigners (not PRs or citizens)–can they qualify via that route? If so, is that a way they can get in before Phase 3? We heard of one of our friends, a PR, who did PV at TWO schools.

4. They should keep Phase 2C for Singapore citizens and create Phase 2D for PRs. This is not meant to deny PRs a spot in our schools. There can be some percentage allocation of spaces like what they do for 2B and 2C. So that we do not fight in the same pool. The MOE should also work closely with MoM and Immigration to forecast the number of PRs and their children vs citizen births. The way the MOE does the balloting via distance is extremely fair and transparent; but onemap.sg is not widely publicised and it is only when we get the booklet the month before the registration exercise starts before people know it. I’ve heard of parents trying to be within 1km, buying or renting a place and basing it on streetdirectory or propertyguru, but not realising that they should have to check with onemap.sg.

5. My last observation was that there are so many PRs who know how to work the system much better than Singaporeans. When I was queuing up for the P1 registration, I noticed that of the 10 parents ahead of me on Day 1, about 7 had blue ICs and these were within 1km of the school. I was a minority with my pink IC. If I hadn’t moved to within 1 km, these PRs would be guaranteed a space in the school, and I would have had to go for balloting as my original address was 1-2km. This happens because there are just too many PRs fighting with the citizens. PRs have a choice and they made a choice to stay in Singapore vs their home country. We are citizens, we have no choice, and this is the only place our kids can go to school unless we migrate or work overseas. Perhaps depending on the population make up (and if ICA studies it and actually talks to MOM and MOE about it), they can determine an equitable allocation of available slots. For example, 60% of remaining seats to Singapore citizens and 40% to PRs. Then whatever is left is for Phase 3.

Right now, all I feel that my citizenship is worth is 1 extra ballot slip if there is balloting (a big deal!!!), and NS for my son.

I thought my kids were born in 2005, a year with quite a low number of births. So I am very surprised to see such intense competition, even for the neighbourhood schools, which only means one thing …