Your average 4-pointer will be faced with a tough decision. which school to pick as his first choice? what if RI only has a Sec 1 enrolment class of 400 and your 4-pointer knows that there are 4000 4-pointers in Singapore? He is not guaranteed entry into RI any more. The school of his second and third choice becomes very important also – if he picks HCI, for example, and their cut off is also 4-points, he basically has no chance of getting in if there are400 x 4-pointers who put HCI as first choice. so he will be forced to diversify his choice of schools.
In the past, your PSLE 260++ students would all just go straight for the RIs and the HCIs and the RGSes, and go on to hang out together, go to tuition together, apply for scholarships together, marry each other, work in the same high paying jobs together, continue to decide policy together, and send their kids back to same schools together in an entire career and life track cut off from the rest of Singapore.
With this scheme, there is a strong chance that they will end up in any number of 20-30 other schools instead of 2-3… spreading the talent pool. Doubling down on “every school is a good school”. Breaking the concentration of elitism. And this happens all the way down. It’s a good move.
The next step is to end affiliation and to clamp down on DSA.
Source: Joshua Ip
