The Usual Place Podcast

P1 registration: Are parents in Singapore going too far to get their kids into a ‘good’ school?

How far would you go to get your child enrolled at a primary school of your choice?

Natasha Ann Zachariah

How far would you go to get your child enrolled at a primary school of your choice?

One woman

repeatedly lied about her home address

to get her daughter a spot

at the primary school the mother wanted in 2023.

But the school discovered the truth, and she was handed a one-week jail sentence in November for subverting the admissions process.

While her sentence has raised eyebrows, she’s not the only one to have attempted this, with other parents over the years having been fined between $4,000 and $5,000 over similar attempts.

In a 2007 case, a parent was jailed after lying about his residential address in order to get his daughter into a certain school in Bukit Timah.

Data from the Ministry of Education showed that between 2020 and 2024, there were about nine such cases each year.

In this episode of The Usual Place, I speak with three guests about why some parents think they need to game the system to get their child a good education.

They are:

• Pooja Bhandari, founder of non-profit EveryChild.SG, which looks to raise awareness about the need for education reforms and the well-being of children in Singapore,

• Esther Foong-Tan, a family life education specialist, who helps families work on their interpersonal relationships by equipping parents with up-to-date resources and training, and

• Assistant Professor of Sociology Jacqueline Ho, who teaches at Singapore Management University. Her research is focused primarily on the Singaporean education system.

In this episode, we discuss: Is this just ‘kiasu’ culture taken to extremes? And what’s driving parents to go to such lengths for a place at a “good” primary school?

Highlights (click/tap above):

4:36 Emotional impact on the child whose parent was jailed for lying about their address

6:14 Unfairness in the P1 registration system

12:46 How inequality in society builds anxiety in parents

24:52 Bullying in an elite school

37:14 How the lack of information about school culture has spurred anxiety among parents

39:40 Could an automatic allocation to primary schools create a fairer admission system?

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