Direct School Admission Programme

Ms Mary Liew asked the Minister for Education (a) whether autonomous secondary schools have a cap on the percentage of students admitted through the Direct School Admission (DSA) programme; and (b) whether the Ministry will consider abolishing the DSA programme across Secondary schools to ensure equal opportunities for all Singaporean youths.

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The Direct School Admission (DSA) scheme seeks to promote holistic education by recognising a more diverse range of student achievements, abilities and interests as criteria for school admission, other than performance at the national examinations, that is, PSLE. Under the DSA scheme, students are admitted based on their strengths in the niche areas of the participating schools.

Autonomous Schools offering the Integrated Programme (IP) have full autonomy over the admissions of their IP students, but only admitted between 25%-40% of their IP students through DSA in 2011. Autonomous Schools offering the "O" level Programme are allowed to admit up to 10% of their Secondary 1 intake through DSA. Both admissions via DSA or PSLE results are based on merit and transparent criteria.

Overall, DSA has served to broaden the definition of success and promote holistic education by reducing the emphasis on national examination results. MOE will continue to monitor and refine the DSA Scheme where necessary to ensure that it remains relevant and effective.

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