Allocating Students to Junior College Courses Before Knowing if They Qualify under Joint Admissions Exercise

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim asked the Minister for Education under the Joint Admission Exercise for junior colleges (JCs), what is the justification for allocating a student to a JC first without consideration of whether they will qualify for their preferred stream of study.

Under the Joint Admission Exercise, students select either the Arts or Science course for each junior college (JC) they apply to. Thereafter, students will be posted to the relevant JC and course for which they met the respective cut-off points. In other words, students are posted to the JC only if they meet the cut-off point of their preferred course of study.

In isolated cases where a JC assesses that the student is likely to face significant difficulties in coping with certain subjects or subject combinations in the course that he or she is posted to, they may advise the student to take a different subject combination or be transferred to a different course. There was one such case in 2025, where the student was not offered a subject combination of the course he was posted to.