Almost all students get a shortlisted school for Sec 1

The recent Secondary 1 posting outcomes were “comparable” to the previous cohort, with more than 80 per cent of pupils being posted to a school of their first, second or third choice.

Also similar to previous years, more than nine in 10 secured a place in one of the six schools they chose, said the Ministry of Education (MOE).

Most pupils who needed a tie-breaker were sorted by citizenship and school choice order, with about one in 10 going through computerised balloting, said a spokeswoman for MOE. These trends are similar to previous years.

Since the Secondary 1 posting results were announced, some parents have taken to online forums to express concerns that their children did not make it to their secondary school of choice. They said there seem to be significant changes in school cut-off points and wondered if this is due to the larger Dragon cohort size.  

In 2024, 40,894 pupils sat the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), compared with 38,088 in 2023, 37,095 in 2022 and 39,119 in 2021.

The Dragon Year occurs once every 12 years in the Chinese zodiac cycle, and each time the year has historically marked the peak of live births in Singapore.

The Straits Times spoke to several parents whose children went through the Secondary 1 posting process in 2024, all of whom said they noticed a drop in cut-off scores by at least one point. According to the parents, the cut-off points of Raffles Girls School, for example, dropped from 6 to 5 and Hwa Chong Institution from 7 to 6.

Some said their children were not posted to any of their six choices, despite them getting scores that would have qualified in previous years.

The parents cited a possible increase in demand for various schools due to the bumper 2024 Dragon Year batch, with some turning to discussions on Facebook groups and Reddit forums in the past week.

One parent said her daughter did not get into any of her top six choices, and instead got posted to a school “an hour’s journey away without direct bus or MRT services”. Other parents chimed in, saying that their children faced similar issues and have since appealed to the school of their choice.

In response to queries about how the ministry accounts for fluctuations in cohort sizes and how it accommodates larger cohorts, MOE said: “The planning of school places takes into consideration the projected demand at the national and local levels to ensure there are sufficient vacancies for all eligible Secondary 1 students.

“MOE has always and will continue to ensure that there are sufficient places in our secondary schools for students in every cohort.”

Ms Jenny Jiang, a 42-year-old store manager, said she felt “disappointed” that her son, who got 12 points, did not get into any of his six choices.

“I didn’t think that with my son’s score, he would not be able to get into any of his choices,” she said.

She thought he would meet the mark for St Patrick’s Secondary School, his fifth choice, as the school had a cut-off point of 14 in 2023. This dropped to 11 in 2024, she said.

Ms Jiang has appealed to Tanjong Katong Secondary School.

Another parent, who wanted to be known only as Mr Tan, said his daughter also did not get into any of her six options.

Mr Tan, who is in his 40s and works in the electronics industry, said: “When the results came out, we were shocked to find out she did not make it to any of her choices.”

“We did everything – we referenced the cut-off points not just of last year’s but also the last three years’ and we even prepared three ‘safety net’ schools,” he said. “I did not expect this.”

“We tell our children that you need to work hard to get into the school that you want, but now my child cannot get into any of her choices and she does not understand why,” he said.

Other parents said they were surprised that their children were posted to their last option.

Ms Emma Wang, 42, a housewife, said she had put Hwa Chong Institution, National Junior College (NJC) and Catholic High School (CHS) as her son’s top three choices, thinking he would make it based on the previous year’s cut-off points. He was given his sixth choice.

While she has appealed to CHS and NJC, she has been encouraging her son by telling him the school he got into is also a good school.

Another parent, who wanted to be known only as Ms Shirley, said her son was posted to his fourth choice, Deyi Secondary School. The 43-year-old educator noted that her son’s score would have qualified him for his first three schools based on the previous year’s cut-off points.

MOE said the “comparable” posting outcomes suggest that “students and their parents, like in previous years, have generally made informed school choices by selecting a range of schools with different cut-off points, including those that the student was able to meet”.

On Dec 20, ST published a forum letter by Ms Chen Han, which noted that the cut-off points for “almost every secondary school” had dropped by one or two points.

In this new scoring system, which started in 2021, each pupil will be given Achievement Level (AL) scores from 1 to 8 for each subject, instead of grades like A* to E. A pupil’s total PSLE score will be the sum of the AL of each of the four subjects, with the best possible total score being 4.

The new AL system of broader bands are meant to be less stressful than the old T-score system, as pupils do not have to chase the last mark in a bid to outperform their peers.

If there are two or more pupils with the same PSLE score vying for the last place in the school, they will be placed according to tie-breakers, in the order of citizenship, school choice order and computerised balloting.

Ms Chen, a Chinese language tutor, said cut-off points have been “the most critical reference” for parents when they select secondary schools.

She said the “Dragon Year effect” may have caused the cut-off points to drop due to “increased competition for limited vacancies”, adding that a potential solution would be to adjust students’ scores through moderation.

Actual cut-off points are not pre-determined before the posting and may vary from year to year depending on the pupils’ PSLE results and their school choices for that particular year’s exercise.