Balloting and Placement Data for 2025 Secondary School Posting Exercise

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament

Ms Gho Sze Kee, Mountbatten

Question

To ask the Minister for Education (a) how many students were subject to balloting in the 2025 Secondary 1 posting exercise; (b) of this number, how many were unsuccessful and consequently considered for their next choice of school despite having met the cut-off points of their higher-order choice; and (c) since 2021, how many students have been similarly unsuccessful in balloting each year.

Response

1. The Secondary 1 Posting Exercise operates on merit, with students achieving a better Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) score receiving priority for their preferred schools. Under the Achievement Levels (AL) scoring system, more students will have identical scores. When two or more students have identical scores and are competing for the last available vacancy at a school, the Ministry of Education (MOE) applies tie-breakers in the following order: the student's citizenship status, then the student's ranking of that school in their choices and finally, computerised balloting if needed.
2. In the 2025 Secondary 1 Posting Exercise, around one in 10 students underwent computerised balloting. This has been stable over the last few years. MOE does not track the number of students who were not successful despite meeting the cut-off point for a school, as this number can vary widely for individual schools each year, depending on students' choice. Instead, MOE tracks the percentage of students who were placed in a school amongst their top six choices. Since 2021, more than eight in 10 students were posted to a school within one of their top three choices, and more than nine in 10 to a school within their six choices.