We have finally come to the penultimate phase of the Primary 1 (P1) Registration Exercise. It has been a journey with fewer surprises this year. Phase 2C Supplementary will begin tomorrow, 19 August 2021 at 9.00am and end on Friday, 20 August 2021 at 4.30pm. There are no new registrants in Phase 2C Supplementary; those who find themselves at this stage are likely to have been balloted out of their first choice school in Phase 2C.
We believe that Phase 2C Supplementary should be treated as the end-game. If an application is unsuccessful in Phase 2C Supplementary, the child will be posted to a school with available vacancy. The applicant does not get to decide and has no option to reject the posting when it happens. It is not the most ideal situation to be in because no one would like to be assigned to a school that is more than an hour away by public transport.
Therefore, one should avoid balloting in Phase 2C Supplementary as far as possible. In order to identify the schools that are at risk of balloting in this phase, we have taken into consideration the schools’ past Phase 2C and Phase 2C Supplementary data, and compared them with this year’s data. After evaluating, we present the following 39 schools that we think are at high risk of balloting for Phase 2C Supplementary.
The first group of 11 schools are schools with 0 vacancy for Phase 2C Supplementary in 2020, i.e. their places had been completely filled up by Phase 2C last year. For some reasons, they weren’t filled up by Phase 2C this year and have vacancy available for this phase. If the registrant is not a Singapore Citizens (SC) living within 1km of the school, avoid! However, there is one notable exception that we are uncertain of: West Grove Primary School. West Grove Primary School has never appeared in Phase 2C Supplementary in the last 10 years but is offering a sizeable 53 places this year (likely a result of an increase in their 2022 cohort intake by 30 places).
The second group of 18 schools are primary schools whose number of applications made in 2020 Phase 2C Supplementary is higher than the number of vacancy in 2021, i.e. schools that are estimated to have greater demand than supply.
Finally, the last group of 10 schools are primary schools that had balloted in Phase 2C Supplementary last year, but whose vacancies in 2021 Phase 2C Supplementary is more than the number of applications received last year. There is uncertainty whether this group of schools will be balloting within the same or different home-school distance category distance as per last year or not at all due to the additional number of places.
We understand that the schools available in Phase 2C Supplementary may not be everyone’s favorite or first choice. However, it’s pointless to focus on “what happened” or whom to blame at this point. Remain focus on getting the child into a school by the end of this phase without balloting and then start planning for the next lap, primary school.
Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.
John Holt, American author and educator
Little Red Dot Data 