Remaining Vacancies in Secondary Schools following DSA Exercise and Affiliated Admissions

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament

Ms Gho Sze Kee, Mountbatten

Question

To ask the Minister for Education (a) whether Direct School Admission (DSA) offers reduce the Secondary 1 quota available for students from non-affiliated schools; and (b) whether there have been cases where a secondary school had no remaining slots for students from non-affiliated schools after DSA and affiliation admissions.

Response

1. Since the 2019 Secondary 1 Posting Exercise, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has required affiliated secondary schools to reserve at least 20% of places of their Secondary 1 cohort for non-affiliated students. This requirement is applied to each posting group, so that our schools remain open to students of different backgrounds. Overall, over the past five years, non-affiliated students have comprised about half of the Secondary 1 cohort of affiliated secondary schools.
2. The total number of Secondary 1 places offered in each school is the sum of planned places offered under the Secondary 1 Posting Exercise and the Direct School Admission (DSA) exercise. While the DSA admissions do not reduce the number of Secondary 1 places available in a school, non-affiliated students admitted via the DSA exercise will be considered as taking up reserved places for non-affiliated students.
3. In the past five years, there have been only two instances where an affiliated secondary school filled all the reserved places for non-affiliated students in one posting group via DSA, and no non-affiliated students were posted for that posting group during the Secondary 1 Posting Exercise. However, non-affiliated students in the other two posting groups were still admitted via the Secondary 1 Posting Exercise.