Direct admission exercise starts for secondary schools, JCs from May 7

Source: The Straits Times
Author: Gabrielle Chan

SINGAPORE - Students keen on applying for direct admission to secondary schools and junior colleges (JCs) may do so from May 7.

Those who wish to apply for early admission to the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) can start doing so from May 21, while early admissions to polytechnics start on June 3 respectively.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) said in a release on May 6 that the Direct School Admission (DSA) exercise allows students to gain entry to secondary schools and JCs based on interests, aptitude and potential, beyond their performance at the national examinations.

Secondary schools and JCs can admit up to 20 per cent of their students through DSA, the ministry added.

The ministry did not specify how many schools are participating in 2024's DSA exercise.

In a parliamentary reply in February, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing had said the number of pupils admitted to secondary schools through DSA has gone up from about 3,500 in 2019 to about 4,400 in 2023.

Students who take part in DSA will still be required to take the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) or O-level examinations.

If their DSA applications are successful, students will be informed by the respective schools they applied to, and will need to decide whether to take up the offer before their exam results are released, said MOE.

Students who accept their DSA offers will be guaranteed a place in the specific secondary school they applied to, provided their PSLE results meet the minimum requirement for a posting group that the school admits students from.

This comes with the implementation of full subject-based banding starting from the 2024 Secondary 1 cohort, where students take subjects at a higher or lower level based on their strengths, and students will be posted through three posting groups - G1, G2 or G3.

G1 will roughly correspond to today's N(T) standard, G2 to N(A) standard, and G3 to Express standard.

Similarly, those who applied to JCs will be guaranteed a spot provided that their O-level results meet the minimum requirements for admission.

Once an offer of admission through DSA has been accepted, students will not be eligible to participate in the S1 posting exercise or Joint Admissions Exercise (JAE), or be allowed to transfer to another school after obtaining their examination results.