How Parents Feel About the School System in Singapore

• As per a survey conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies in which 1,500 parents of school children in Singapore were interviewed (result of the survey was published in July 2017), 90.8% of the respondents felt that Singapore has one of the best educational systems in the world. Also, 90.4% of the respondents said that most primary schools in Singapore impart a high quality education to children.
•  81.8% of the respondents in the above survey felt that Singapore's education system provides the same opportunity to students irrespective of their socio-economic backgrounds. Interestingly, 81.8% of the respondents felt that the country's education system helped nurture socially responsible citizens.

Causes for Most School Transfers Within Singapore

• In Singapore, the primary school transfers are done as per the guidelines of the Ministry of Education. All rules and instructions are listed in their Student Transfer Exercise for Primary Schools (STEPS) webpage.
• In March 2016, the Ministry of Education issued a new guideline to secondary schools wherein they could only transfer students whose PSLE-T scores met the school's cut-off. However, exceptions under special circumstances would be granted.
• The most common reason for school transfers in Singapore is shifting to a new location in Singapore that entails children to study in a school near their new home.
• Another common reason for school transfers in Singapore is the medical condition of the student(s) being transferred. Serious medical conditions like kidney problems or chronic heart conditions, physical disabilities that necessitate the use of crutches or wheelchairs, dyslexia, and autism are reasons covered under the Ministry of Education's STEPS guidelines.
• Some parents also want to transfer their children to single gender schools as they believe such a move will offer them more learning opportunities.
• Some parents transfer their children for fear of bullying or they feel that their classmates are bad influences.
• Parents in Singapore also transfer their children when they feel that the current school does not have all the subjects that can help their child to develop his/her interests.
• There is also a belief among parents that the current school is inferior or not enough to fulfill all the needs of the children.

Main Criteria Looked at by Parents While Researching New Schools

• As per the above survey conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies, the quality of teachers was the primary criterion for 94.1% of the parents interviewed. 94.0% of the respondents considered emphasis on character building as the second most-important criterion.
• Other main criteria for researching a new school were: proximity of location (88.2% of the respondents), support for weaker students (87.6%), and school facilities/infrastructure (83.9%).
• In contrast to the above criteria, parents considered the school's external network as less important. Alumni, parental, and community support (61.9% of the respondents), competitive environment (61.7%), affiliation with a good secondary school (56.4%), parents' alma mater (42.2%), and affiliation with a religious organization (33.4%) all ranked in the bottom five criteria that parents looked at while researching new schools in Singapore for their children.

Summary of Early Findings

• From the initial hour of research, we could identify and list the top reasons for school transfers in Singapore and the main criteria looked at by parents while researching a new school. However, even after extensive search, we could not find the research touchpoints that parents go through while researching new schools in Singapore, like school website, blog and their social media presence, word of mouth, articles on 3rd party website, and Facebook groups and other online research forums. This is due to the paucity of surveys of parents in Singapore that looked at their research touchpoints and the lack of availability of such data points/statistic in the public domain.
• In addition to this public search, we scanned our proprietary research database of over 1 million sources and were unable to find any specific research reports or data points that address the issue of research touchpoints covered by parents while researching new schools in Singapore.