Education in Singapore

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In Singapore, most children first go to a pre-nursery school when they are 3 or 4, and then they attend kindergarten for 2 years, starting at the age of 5. It is in the kindergarten that children start learning English. Formal education really begins at the age of 7, with primary school. Primary school is free, and it is also compulsory.

By law, everyone must attend primary school. Children stay at primary school for 6 years. Something that can be difficult for many children is that all lessons are done in English. In the last year of primary school, children take a national primary school leaving exam.

Anyone who fails must repeat the last year of primary school, and then take the exam again. Those who pass the exam can go on to secondary school for 4 or 5 years, depending on the grade they got on the primary school leaving exam. At the end of secondary school, students take a GCE O level exam, which is national. It usually tests 10 of the subjects that students have been doing, and is a demanding exam.

For a lot of students, everything depends on this exam, so they prepare for it for years. Depending on their results, they can then go to a junior college, a polytechnic, or a pre-university centre. The luckiest students are, of course, those who are admitted to a junior college, as they only have to study for another 2 years before they go to university. The environment in most schools in Singapore is extremely competitive.

A lot of children also go to special private tuition centres in the evening, where they get extra tutoring so that they can cope with the schoolwork and do better in the exams. In addition, most schoolchildren also buy and use a number of assessment books, as they are called, which contain hundreds of additional practice exercises for each subject. These are in addition to the books that they use at school and in the tuition centres.