Do the National School Games need a refresh?

SINGAPORE – High jumper Kampton Kam remembers his first foray into athletics in Primary 3 when he competed at the National School Games (NSG), which he calls a “good stepping stone” to his journey as a national athlete and one that ignited his love for sport.

For many Team Singapore athletes, representing their school at the NSG was a rite of passage and an event that they looked forward to every year.

“It gave me an avenue to compete,” said Kam, who won a silver at the 2025 SEA Games and holds the national record of 2.25m.

“It also opens up opportunities, because if you are in upper primary and are able to perform, then it is an outlet for DSA (direct school admission) into secondary school.

“Transitioning from primary to secondary to junior college, the NSG gave me a lot of reasons to stay and instilled discipline in me, to compete at the biggest meet of the school year.

“That’s also a selection point for making the national youth team as well, so it was a super good experience and it’s great to see a lot of kids participating in this.”

Boasting a history of over six decades, the NSG have served the local and school community well, but with newer sports gaining in popularity among young Singaporeans, the question is whether a refresh is needed to stay relevant?

Started in 1959, the NSG – currently organised by the Singapore Primary Schools Sports Council and the Singapore Schools Sports Council (SSSC) – then had seven sports for the primary level (athletics, badminton, biddy basketball, football, sepak raga, swimming and table tennis) and 14 for the secondary level (athletics, badminton, basketball, cricket, football, hockey, netball, rugby, sepak raga, softball, swimming, table tennis, lawn tennis and volleyball).

The roster has since expanded to 29 sports across primary, secondary and tertiary levels – including rope-skipping which is offered only at the primary level.

In 2025, 66,000 student-athletes competed at the NSG, an increase of around 1,000 from 2024.

According to the Ministry of Education (MOE), it is “Singapore’s largest annual youth sports event”, providing opportunities for students to participate in inter-school competitions and “encourage character-building among student-athletes” as they pursue sporting excellence.

Former national hurdler Dipna Lim-Prasad also remembers her time as a student-athlete fondly.

The 34-year-old, who won four medals at the SEA Games and competed at the 2012 Olympics, said: “The NSG is so important. It’s the highlight of many student-athletes and I look back on it fondly and still go down to watch some races.

“When I first started track in St Nicholas Girls’ Primary, my goal was simply to make the school team.

“The following year it was to make the final… And when I was in secondary school (Singapore Sports School) it was the main event and was a stepping stone to qualifying for regional age-group meets like the ASEAN School Games.”

Is a refresh long overdue?

Increasingly, international multi-sport events like the Olympics are refreshing their rosters to keep up to date with trends and draw younger audiences – in Paris 2024, the programme included sport climbing, skateboarding, BMX and breaking.

Closer to home, the Asian and SEA Games have added e-sports, chess and mixed martial arts, among others.

In contrast, the last time a sport was added to the NSG roster was in 2011, when fencing made its debut on the piste, although there were changes in 2023 with the introduction of a new competition format – the classification and pool-and-league system, which replaced the zonal competitions for some team sports.

Cycling, sport climbing and ultimate frisbee are among the sports trying to muscle into the NSG programme, but officials, coaches, parents and members of the fraternity have told The Straits Times that it is an uphill battle.

Responding to queries on the possibility of adding new sports to the NSG, the MOE said in a statement: “The MOE considers several factors when determining the NSG sports roster to ensure the sustainability of competitions.

“This includes students’ interest levels, participation patterns of schools, as well as the availability of facilities, qualified coaches, officials and relevant external sporting organisations with the ability to support the running of the NSG competitions.”

Currently, conveners from various schools are roped in to host the different events in the NSG.

Parent Sean Wong, who has a son in Secondary 2, believes that the MOE has to consider a range of factors when adding new sports.

He said: “These may include the number of participating schools, the availability of qualified coaches and referees, safety considerations, access to suitable facilities and whether the programme can be sustained over the long term.

“There needs to be sufficient nationwide readiness to ensure fair and high-quality competition. There are likely constraints related to time, resources and scheduling within the school calendar, as the NSG already involves many sports and a large number of students.”

In a congested school sports calendar, questions have also been raised by the fraternity about those with low participation numbers and whether these sports should be removed from the programme to reallocate resources to newer ones.

Squash has only five schools competing in each of the boys’ and girls’ B Division this season, while there are seven each in the A Division. There are four each for A and B Division cricket, which does not have a girls’ competition.

In these two sports, Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) has dominated for years, winning golds in various boys’ divisions in the last decade.

Water polo also has relatively low participation, with the boys’ B Division in 2026 contested by eight teams – including two combined schools teams – while the A Division has four schools. There are also no girls’ teams.

In comparison, sports such as football (79 schools in B Division) and badminton (88 schools, C Division) draw healthy participation from both genders.

Alex Wan, general manager of the Singapore Squash Rackets Association admitted that “numbers are dwindling” at the school level, but believed more could be done to fix this.

“It’s dwindling because one school is dominating the whole scene, and more and more schools are not willing to invest in the sport because they know there’s no chance for them to even do remotely well,” he added.

“It is very demoralising for the kids… My entire national junior team is made out of players from two or three schools – that’s the kind of standard that we are looking at.

“The possibility (of the sport being dropped) is always there and every day we are worried about it… But at the same time, the NSG is something which the national sports association (NSA) has no influence over.

“Squash is an individual sport, but it’s being competed as a team event in the NSG. From what we see in our outreach programmes, we have a lot of kids from different schools, but to find a school with eight good squash players to form an NSG team is quite rare.”

New kids on the block

There are several emerging sports – including sport climbing, tchoukball and ultimate frisbee – whose NSAs have tried lobbying for their sport to be included in the NSG over the years.

There are over 6,000 people playing ultimate frisbee in Singapore, while that number is over 2,000 for tchoukball.

Rasip Isnin, general manager of the Singapore Sports Climbing and Mountaineering Federation, said that they have tried multiple times over the years to push for inclusion, but the response from the MOE was underwhelming.

He said: “We asked them back in 2013, but back then our sport was not in the SEA Games or Asian Games, so the push was not that strong.

“What we did was to organise our own national school climbing championship and did that for a few years.

“Despite the good response that we received from schools, we were still not able to get sport climbing into the NSG and the reason given was that the calendar is too packed with a limited number of spots available.”

Delane Lim, general secretary of the Tchoukball Association of Singapore, noted that there should be a “periodic review of sports and not waiting over 10 years”.

“Over the years, there are new sports that are gaining popularity and there are some with lesser participation,” he said.

“The NSG should be about student interest and they should be given an opportunity to compete at the school level.”

Being a part of the NSG would also allow student-athletes to be eligible for the SSSC Colours Awards, added Lim, who noted that “if you are going into higher education, they look at this certificate as one of the key considerations”.

Agreeing with Lim, Wong said: “Inclusion in NSG signals that a sport is recognised by our government and worth students committing their time and effort to.

“Once a sport becomes part of the NSG, schools tend to invest more seriously in coaching programmes and facilities, which raises standards and supports student development.”

For some non-NSG sports, the NSAs run their own inter-school competition – an estimated 280 participants competed at the ultimate frisbee tournament in 2025.

The ministry also said that it already works with some NSAs to run NSG sports, with the Basketball Association of Singapore providing game officials and Netball Singapore co-running competitions with the MOE.

Jonathan Yeo, head coach of national youth training programme at the Ultimate Players Association Singapore, says that the association pays for medals and manpower costs. He is hopeful that the MOE will consider adding the sport to the roster.

Mind sports like chess are also keen to join the NSG party. The game is hugely popular worldwide and, in Singapore, the National Schools Individual Chess Championships run by the Singapore Chess Federation (SCF) in March attracted a record 1,897 students from 270 schools.

In a move to recognise the growing diversity and aspirations of Singaporeans, in January the Singapore Sports Council (Amendment) Bill was passed in Parliament to formally recognise chess, bridge, e-sports and others as sports.

Though when asked if mind sports would be considered for the NSG, the MOE said that it “prioritised physical sports” as regular physical activity is fundamental to students’ holistic development and essential for health.

“There are competition platforms organised by various organisations for students to represent their schools in other types of sports,” it added.

NSG a pathway to elite sport

From sprint queen Shanti Pereira to Lions captain Hariss Harun, many national athletes got their start on a school track, court or field.

While noting that the NSG can help nurture school pride, Mark Chay, secretary-general of the Singapore National Olympic Council, stressed that their goal could be sharpened and more focused on sports that are contested at major Games.

“There are a few things that they (MOE) can improve. It’s a good programme and sports in schools is where kids learn to play and compete, where we hope to inculcate certain skills and values through structured sport,” added the former national swimmer.

“What I struggle with is that some of the other sports which don’t have a pathway to major Games are included, but to do what? As an administrator, these are what I would call dead-end sports and we are putting these resources for what?

“And if a student is going to choose tchoukball... I just don’t know how it’d fit into the larger scheme of things.”

But other insiders like Vincent Ong, former vice-principal at Methodist Girls’ School and administrator at Sport Singapore disagreed with Chay.

He said: “For schools, their priority will be to broaden the base and to ensure that there is a variety of sporting experiences for the students at that age group and not be doing too much in terms of the performance pathway.

“There is a conflict when it comes to the exam period and when training is halted. So that’s really disruptive if you expect them to be the key performance pathway, although some sports end up relying very much on the school sport system.”

What does the future hold?

Looking ahead, the MOE said that it is constantly reviewing the programme, adding: “The NSG roster maintains the flexibility to include or exclude sports based on evolving student interests and shifting sports landscape.

“While MOE regularly considers the feasibility of adding new sports into the NSG roster, any addition will need to be carefully considered, to ensure that resources are optimally allocated for students’ benefit without compromising existing NSG competitions or overloading school resources and facilities.”

When asked if the roster needs a refresh, Ong said he believed that the ministry has done a fair bit of rethinking.

“One of the big developments that is going the right way is the change in the way primary school sports programmes are run,” he said.

“The competition allows athletes not to specialise too early and events like track and field are a lot different from our time, and they make sure that they are forced to take multiple events.

“This is to ensure that no coaches focus only on a few athletes and develop them where your potential talents are left out and sitting on a bench, because they may be a late maturer.”

In his speech in Parliament in March, Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) David Neo said that they are looking to expand the roster to provide more opportunities for student-athletes.

He added: “MCCY and MOE will start a new initiative to work with ready, able and willing NSAs to introduce more sports into the NSG.”

While the door appears to be open for some sports, SCF chief executive Kevin Goh is doubtful that chess will get an opening move any time soon.

He said: “The last time we visited this topic, there doesn’t seem to be any inclination to add any more disciplines to the NSG and we don’t foresee that this will change, despite the fact that the popularity of chess is growing every year.

“Perhaps the way forward is to introduce a multi-mind sports event and we can call it the National Mind Sports School Games and see whether we can bring this along another path.”

Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, we said that there were two Sports School combined teams instead of two combined schools teams. This has been corrected. We are sorry for the error.