P1 registration: Is it time to stop giving parent volunteers priority?

Queue for Hello Kitty, queue for pre-school places, and now, queue for the chance to be a parent volunteer at a popular school.

This was how The Straits Times reported in 2014 on the popularity of parent volunteering. Back then, more than 80 people had lined up outside a popular Punggol primary school to register as parent volunteers.

Only about 50 volunteer places were available on a first-come, first-served basis and those who got the place – and completed a minimum of 40 hours of service – would get priority to register their child in that school for Primary 1. 

It’s been more than a decade since then, and the physical queues may be no more. But the fierce competition for a spot as a parent volunteer has remained, although there are no guarantees their child will eventually get a spot in the school. 

Social media is rife with anecdotes on this score. In one public Facebook group for local parents with more than 80,000 members, posters regularly ask questions about various schools’ parent volunteer schemes and the likelihood of getting in.

One parent cited how she had to compete against more than 100 other parents to get one of 12 volunteer slots in a school. 

It is clear that parents are willing, some even desperate, to volunteer. What’s more important is whether the schools want them.

With demand for volunteer spots outstripping supply, schools have had to raise the bar over the years to keep the numbers manageable. Some schools increased the minimum volunteering commitment to 60 or even 80 hours. 

They also look for parents with the skills to work on more sophisticated volunteering projects beyond simply directing traffic. One school’s approved project, as reported by this newspaper in 2012, involved making a mounted map of the world, with sample currencies of every country. 

Some schools no longer accept parent volunteers, citing the administrative workload and challenges of managing parents whose children did not eventually get a spot in the school. 

The situation has become, to quote an unfortunate term oft cited in relation to Singapore’s education system, an arms race. How did we get here, and where should we go from here? 

Good intentions

The parent volunteer scheme was introduced to encourage parents to get to know the school they’re interested in better. In 1998, the Ministry of Education (MOE) announced that parents who complete at least 40 hours of volunteer work for a school will be able to register their child in an earlier phase of admission. 

The inclusion of volunteering in the wider Primary 1 Registration Scheme reflects the values seen as important at the time, said Jason Tan, an associate professor from the National Institute of Education (NIE). 

That same year, a national advisory council known as COMPASS (Community and Parents in Support of Schools) was formed to advise MOE on ways in which the school-home-community collaboration could be strengthened and promoted. 

Seen in tandem, the moves highlighted a push towards encouraging parents to engage more with their children’s education. 

There are real benefits to this. Research, both international and local, shows that children whose parents are more involved enjoy school more and have better school attendance. They are also more emotionally and socially well-adjusted and better able to handle stress. 

A 2022 NIE study found that students are more engaged with school and enjoy it better when their parents take an interest in their school life by getting involved in activities, such as volunteering, parent-teacher meetings or school events. 

By volunteering with a school, parents can also build bonds with school staff and see at first hand what their children go through on a regular basis, said Tan. Speaking on an episode of the In Your Opinion podcast, he noted that parents can also better appreciate the complexities of school life, and how tough teachers’ work can be. 

With this in mind, it’s easy to understand the logic of incentivising volunteering. Getting parents through the doors of a school could encourage them to continue even after their child enters Primary 1. Needless to say, parent volunteers are also an extra resource to help schools run more smoothly.

And, in considering the various priority schemes in Primary 1 registration, why shouldn’t parents be rewarded for putting in the time and effort to make their child’s prospective school a better place? 

Wouldn’t a parent who had stood outside a school for days on end directing traffic or invested time to build a website be making a more direct contribution to the school, compared with, say, a parent who had studied in the school decades ago, and never set foot there since? 

Competition and disappointed parents

The policy intent aside, the parent volunteer scheme has brushed up against the realities of a competitive education system. Despite MOE’s longstanding efforts at promoting the idea that every school is a good school, parents do prefer certain schools over others, which has turned the Primary 1 registration system into a headache for many.

“If we look at the amount of parental strategising that’s still going on, it would appear that not every parent subscribes to this ideal (of being school-agnostic) wholeheartedly,” said Tan.  

Primary school marks the start of a child’s formal education, and there is a widespread perception that the school a child goes to will set the course of his or her life for years to come, especially when factors like secondary school affiliation come into play. 

“I don’t think any parent wants to regret later on not having tried harder to get their children a good head start in life,” Tan added. “That’s why there’s a lot of parental anxiety over this crucial decision.” 

Against this context, rewarding volunteering, via priority registration, can become a double-edged sword. 

Parents have no control over which school they went to as children. Others simply don’t have the financial means to afford housing near a popular school. 

But volunteering 40 hours over the course of one year is something many parents can control. As a result, volunteering has become another option for parents to use in their “strategising”.

“Very often, policy intentions appear noble,” said Tan. “But when they are rolled out, they may get incorporated into pre-existing attitudes and beliefs about education – and then they become part of that education arms race instead of serving its original policy intent.” 

It’s no wonder that the scheme’s popularity is through the roof. And disappointed parents – especially those who volunteer, but end up being balloted out in Phase 2B – are inevitable. 

Take, for example, the case of one Hannah Chua, who spent more than 100 hours volunteering in Rosyth School’s library, but walked away back in 2007 as the only applicant under Phase 2B who failed to get a spot in the school. The school had 13 applicants whose parents were volunteers, but only 12 places available. 

Even local celebrities, like actress Zoe Tay, can get thwarted. According to a 2011 report, Tay and her husband failed to get a spot for their son in Nanyang Primary despite completing the required 80 hours of volunteer work.

One parent even wrote a letter to the Straits Times Forum back in 2020, calling for schools to guarantee places for the child upon a parent’s completion of the required volunteer hours. 

It’s hard not to sympathise with disappointed parent volunteers. But they went in with their eyes wide open. Volunteering does not offer any guarantees of a place. 

The situation raises questions. When one feels that a reward should be “guaranteed”, doesn’t that go against the spirit of volunteering as something one does without expecting anything in return? 

Furthermore, parents who successfully get their child into the school of their choice may not need to continue volunteering after their child gets in. Doesn’t this defeat the original purpose of encouraging parents to be part of their child’s education and school life? 

Tan also noted that not every parent is equally well-placed to volunteer their services to schools. Those in white-collar jobs with more flexible hours, or more well-to-do families where one parent can stay home, would be more able to volunteer their time to a school. 

And with schools increasingly prioritising higher-value volunteer projects, like teaching courses, parents with the required skill sets would have an advantage. 

In short, the scheme has ended up inadvertently giving parents who have the time, money and skills a leg-up over those who do not.  

Time for change?

Given the situation parents and schools are now in, it is clear that the volunteer scheme should be tweaked. But is there a way to bring it back to its original intention? 

Two opposing possibilities come to mind. The first is to double down on volunteering.

Schools could require successful parents to commit to volunteering with the school for a fixed period after their child becomes a student there. One school reportedly once got parents to sign a pledge to this effect.

But Tan said that making this a mandatory requirement could end up making the flow of volunteers even more unmanageable for schools.

This could also mean parents of existing students who would like to volunteer – simply to be more involved in their child’s school life – could be squeezed out. 

It could also give parents with the time, money and skills an even bigger advantage over those who don’t.

The alternative would be the opposite: De-linking volunteering from the Primary 1 registration system.

By removing the incentive, the parent volunteers schools could likely end up with are parents of existing students, who may be genuinely motivated to make the school a better place, or have a sincere desire to be more involved in their child’s school life. 

Despite the stiff competition among parents, the numbers also suggest that across the board, schools are already taking in fewer parent volunteers overall.

In 2023, MOE said in a parliamentary response that the proportion of children successfully registered via Phase 2B dropped from 6 per cent to 4 per cent over the past decade. They attributed this to a decrease in the number of parent volunteers, which schools select based on their needs.

As early as 2014, it was reported that at least five schools had scrapped the parent volunteer scheme, saying that they simply do not have enough volunteer opportunities for the flood of hopeful parents. Anecdotal evidence suggests even more have done the same.

But despite the smaller pool of opportunities to be a parent volunteer, demand still has not let up. A change like this could ease it somewhat.

Of course, every school needs volunteers, and some less popular schools could find themselves without sufficient volunteer numbers. This would need to be managed carefully. Any change would also need to be carefully balanced to weigh the advantages and potential implications on the other phases of priority registration.

It has been almost three decades since the 40-hour requirement for parent volunteers was introduced. But societal norms have shifted since then. Parents seem increasingly willing to take an active role in their children’s lives because they see the benefit of doing so, rather than because they get something out of it. 

The increasing number of stay-home dads, for instance, reflects a broader rise in hands-on fatherhood in Singapore. 

There has also been an increase in formal parent support groups in schools. Today, almost all schools have parent support groups. That number was 53 per cent in 2001, according to an NIE research paper.

MOE is currently reviewing the Primary 1 registration scheme, and will share details when ready. But perhaps the system should reflect that being involved in their children’s lives is reward enough for parent volunteers.