SINGAPORE: Students applying to secondary schools through the Direct School Admission (DSA) exercise will be able to do so online from 2019. This means they will no longer need to submit hardcopy applications to each school they are applying to.
In making the announcement on Thursday (Nov 8), the Ministry of Education (MOE) said it is streamlining the DSA application process with the launch of a centralised online portal in 2019.
AdvertisementThe DSA scheme was first introduced in 2004 to allow students with non-academic talents to secure a place in secondary schools even before they sit for the Primary School Leaving Examination.
Students will be able to use a common application form to apply to multiple schools. Currently, parents and students have to submit hardcopy applications individually to schools, which may have differing application deadlines.
Students may apply through the portal using one of their parents’ SingPass login.
With the portal, MOE said all schools will have a common application timeline, with the exception of the Singapore Sports School and School of the Arts, which will still require students to apply directly to them due to their unique admission requirements.
AdvertisementAdvertisementNext year’s exercise will run over a four-week period from May 8 to June 4.
Upon application through the portal, a student’s official data – including school results and co-curricular activity records – will be shared directly with the secondary schools that the student has applied to. This eliminates the need for students to submit hardcopy documents to each of the individual schools, and for the various secondary schools to expend additional effort verifying the documents.
Application through the portal will also be free-of-charge. Currently, some schools charge an administration or test fee, which can be as high as S$50.
However, while students could previously apply to as many schools and talent areas as they wanted, there will now be a limit of three schools and three talent areas for each student. Students may apply for up to two different talent areas from the same school.
MOE said the limit of three choices will encourage students and parents to consider their DSA selection judiciously, and “manage the time and effort” participating in multiple DSA trials and interviews. It added that based on past application data, more than 90 per cent of students already apply to three or fewer schools.
[h=3]READ: Poly grads applying for NUS, NTU won’t have O-Level grades considered from 2020[/h]SIMPLIFIED APPLICATION PROCESS TO ENCOURAGE MORE STUDENTS TO APPLY
In explaining the rationale for the portal, MOE said the application process was simplified in order to encourage students to tap on the expanded DSA opportunities. It added that it hopes to encourage more students with talents and potential to opt for the DSA, regardless of their family backgrounds.
It comes on the back of earlier announcements about the scheme. In 2017, then-Education Minister (Schools) Ng Chee Meng announced that the number of DSA places would be expanded. From this year, all secondary schools can now admit up to 20 per cent of their non-Integrated Programme Secondary 1 intake via the DSA. This is an increase from 5 per cent for schools with distinctive programmes, and 10 per cent for autonomous schools.
[h=3]READ: DSA to exclude general academic tests as criteria by 2018[/h]As a result, more students were able to gain admission through the scheme. This year, which is the first year of this expansion, 3,000 students received confirmed offers from schools, compared to 2,500 in 2017.
Speaking at the Arts Education Conference on Thursday, Second Minister for Education Indranee Rajah noted that DSA selection processes have been refined with a set of selection principles, which are meant to help schools identify the potential in students even if they may not have had the opportunity to demonstrate their talent yet.
“For example, during the selection for Arts DSA, schools will look out more for potential ability - such as a sense of rhythm, an eye for aesthetics, or the ability to sing in tune - and place less emphasis on whether the child has gone for many competitions or won awards locally or overseas,” she said.
She added that all schools, including those offering the Integrated Programme, have refined their selection processes to be more judicious in identifying and recognising potential and specific talent.
“One positive change is that schools no longer administer general academic ability tests during their DSA selection,” she said. “Doing so brings our schools’ DSA process and objectives back to the original intention of recognising specific talents, not general academic talents.”
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