The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) on Friday sent a team to the school, where they registered more than 350 students for their NRICs.

Armed with a passport-sized photograph, application form and their student pass, which doubles as an Ez-Link card, students queued up inside a classroom as they waited to be ushered to tables manned by ICA staff.

There, they submitted the three items and a scan of their thumbprints, and paid a $10 processing fee with their student pass, an Ez-link card, or credit card.

Permanent residents are charged $50. This is the first year since 2000 that NRIC registration is taking place in schools. Before, 15-year-olds had to go to the ICA building in Lavender Road.

NRIC registration used to take place in schools before 1991, but this was discontinued because ICA found it not practical to bring bulky equipment from school to school and moved the process to its headquarters instead.

Mr Tan Kok Guan, ICA's citizen services centre senior manager, said that since secondary schools became single-session, many students would throng the ICA building in the afternoon, leading to long waiting times for both the student and their parents who accompanied them.

Now, a mobile team from the ICA will visit each school every day with laptops and portable thumbprint scanners. Bedok Green Secondary School is the fifth school the ICA team visited on Friday.

'It's quite a smooth process and very convenient,' said Ms Doshi, who lives in Bedok. 'Since it's within school time, I don't have to spend too much time travelling to ICA and back.'

ICA said students will receive their brand-new identity cards within three to four weeks from the day of registration.