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They have the next eight years to expand their facilities, build new campuses or cut enrolment.
The Ministry of Education will spend $600 million to build 18 new schools over the next 10 years and $700 million over the same period to upgrade 80 existing schools, to make sure the facilities can cope with one school session each day.
Rosyth School in Serangoon North Avenue 4, which has 2,400 pupils spread over two sessions, is doing a feasibility study on expanding its facilities.
Said principal Celine Ng: 'We need to build more rooms, play areas, see to transport logistics, and how this will impact the neighbourhood's traffic conditions.'
Parents may be relieved to hear that the school does not expect to cut back much on its 12 Primary 1 classes of 30 pupils each.
A popular neighbourhood school in Choa Chu Kang, South View Primary, is also confident of meeting the 2016 deadline despite bursting at the seams with an enrolment of 2,400.
Principal Jenny Yeo said she is considering options to expand on site, relocate to a new, bigger site, or have two campuses.
'Building up or around the current site would pose safety and noise issues especially as we are surrounded by HDB flats. Reducing enrolment would mean disappointing more parents,' Mrs Yeo said.
The school will also be limiting the number of parent volunteers for the 2011 enrolment so there are fewer disappointed parents when it comes to balloting for places.
At popular Raffles Girls' Primary (RGPS), principal Yue Yoke Mun said the 'ideal' situation would be to expand the school's infrastructure while also reducing enrolment.
Mrs Yue said: 'My preference is to have the whole student population on one premise which allows the building of camaraderie among the girls and the role-modelling across levels. It enhances the sense of school identity both for the students and staff.'
She added: 'Reduction in enrolment would be good to ease the pressure of too large a school cohort and build a closer knitted community.'
But the prospect of reduced enrolments at these popular schools has left many parents worried.
Madam Sandy Liew, 42, who will be volunteering 44 hours this year to get her six-year-old daughter Fion a place at South View Primary, said: 'I will be very disappointed if my daughter can't get in. I hope that my volunteering work will get her a place.'
Putting some of the concerned parents at ease, Senior Minister of State for Education Lui Tuck Yew yesterday said: 'Our intention is to make sure that the same number of places are available for entry into Primary 1. Particularly for popular schools, whether they are national catchment schools, government-aided or government schools such as such as RGPS, we will make available the same number of places as before.'
This means more intensive use of the land that is currently available since some schools like RGPS are double-session schools.
'This is the intention of MOE and this is why the entire scheme will take a number of years to come to fruition,' RADM Lui told The Straits Times at the River Hongbao Festival at Marina Bay yesterday.
Government-aided schools, among which are popular schools such as the double-session Anglo-Chinese School (Junior), can take their time to make the change.
Schools are also free to set their start and end times, an issue which has been decided by the availability of school buses. Bus operators are reluctant to have start times change because they transport factory workers later in the morning.
At a press conference last Friday, Senior Minister of State for Education Grace Fu said MOE would leave it to schools to decide their hours.
She said MOE is planning to work with the Land Transport Authority to discuss the school bus transport issue.
Separately, RADM Lui added that all the changes that have been recommended are evolutionary, not revolutionary.
'Most importantly, it is a reminder to all parties, educators, parents, students that we need to shift a little away from this emphasis on assessment to a more holistic development of the child. It is something we have already talked about...but I think the changes we are making here will move us even further along the spectrum.'
Additional reporting by Amresh Gunasingham
