More Primary Schools in Mature Estates

Mr Lim Biow Chuan asked the Minister for Education whether the Ministry will consider building more Primary schools ahead of demand in mature estates like Mountbatten.

MOE regularly reviews the trends in demand and supply both at the national and local levels to ensure that there are sufficient school places for every P1-going child. While MOE tries to ensure that every child of school-going age in Singapore has a place in a school reasonably near his or her home, it will not be possible to build a Primary school in every estate. Every new school needs to have a sufficient catchment of students to enable it to mount a range of activities for the benefit of the students, and to be run efficiently.

Our school planning takes into account the projected population and planned housing development programmes to ensure that there are sufficient school places to meet the current and future demands from each town.

There are currently two Primary schools, Kong Hwa School and Tanjong Katong Primary School, located in the Mountbatten constituency. There are also other Primary schools, for example, Geylang Methodist Primary School and Stamford Primary School, which are located just outside the Mountbatten constituency.

As there are sufficient Primary school places after taking into consideration the planned housing development programmes in this estate, we have no plans to build any new Primary schools in this area.