Single admissions process to replace JC, poly and ITE postings from 2028
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Students will use one common platform to submit up to 12 choices as part of the new Post-Secondary Admission Exercise.
ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG
SINGAPORE - Current Secondary 3 students will be the first to go through a simplified application exercise in early 2028, for admission into post-secondary institutions.
Instead of applying in separate exercises held on different dates and navigating multiple online portals, students will use one common platform to submit up to 12 choices as part of the new Post-Secondary Admission Exercise (PSE).
This includes courses at junior colleges (JCs), Millennia Institute, polytechnics and the Institute of Technical Education (ITE).
Currently, students navigate a timeline of examinations and admissions that stretches from September through January of the following year.
Speaking at the debate on the Education Ministry’s budget on March 3, Senior Minister of State for Education David Neo said that needing to keep track of the different application processes and timelines may create more uncertainty for students regarding their posting choices.
With all pathways and courses available for selection on a single platform, students can now select and rank their choices based on their preferences, he added. They will no longer need to keep track of various admissions exercises.
This administrative shift follows the move away from placing students in the Express, Normal (Academic) (NA) and Normal (Technical) (NT) streams.
The 2024 Sec 1 batch was the first to experience full subject-based banding that year. Instead of being sorted into academic streams, students take subjects at varying difficulty levels – G1, G2 or G3 – depending on their PSLE scores and strengths.
They will also sit the new Singapore-Cambridge Secondary Education Certificate (SEC) examinations
The SEC written exams for English and mother tongue language will be held in the second week of September, one month ahead of other subjects, to spread out the exam load.
There will also be one common exam period for the written papers of other subjects, starting in October.
These students will receive their SEC results in mid-January 2028, which can be used to apply for various education pathways via the new PSE.
They will then use the PSE application portal, open over six days and accessible by Singpass, to submit the up to 12 choices of post-secondary courses they are eligible for.
Posting results for these students will be released at the same time – between the end of January and early February 2028.
Students posted to the JCs and Millennia Institute will report to school the next school day. Those posted to the polytechnics and ITE will report later in April.
To encourage students to prioritise schools and courses based on their strengths and interests, choice order – whether a student indicates a particular course as his or her first choice, for instance – will be introduced as a posting tiebreaker for the PSE, said Mr Neo.
This is similar to the Sec 1 posting exercise.
Mr Neo said choice order will be considered after citizenship, followed by gross aggregate score and computerised balloting.
Tiebreakers will be applied when two students with the same net aggregate score are vying for the last available vacancy in the course.
The new application process replaces the existing system, where examination results for the different courses are released at different times.
Currently, written examinations for the GCE (NA) and (NT) levels are typically held from mid-September to late October, and results are released in December that year.
The GCE O-level written examinations are usually held from mid-October to late November, and results are released in January the following year.
Separate posting exercises for different institutions then take place on several portals at different times of the year – Joint Admissions Exercise, Polytechnic Foundation Programme Admissions Exercise and the ITE Joint Intake Exercise.
MOE said the admission exercises that recognise students’ diverse strengths, beyond academic grades, will remain.
These include the direct school admissions to JCs and the early admission exercises to the polytechnics and ITE.
