How to Choose Secondary School after PSLE

It was 6 years ago that I blogged about Primary School registration. Time flies, now our firstborn is moving on to the next milestone - choosing Secondary School! 

I believe that it is important to involve our children in the decision-making process, after all, they are the ones who will spend a few years in secondary school! After PSLE, we sat down with our firstborn to discuss her strength and interest. 

We used Ministry of Education's School Finder to shortlist some secondary schools. How did we do the shortlisting? Based on our child's preliminary examination results, we considered the possible range of her PSLE score and looked at the past-year cut-off point of the secondary schools. The School Finder website allows the users to filter based on the range of past-year cut-off point, then from there, we shortlisted some secondary schools.

Next, we checked the schools' programs and CCA from the schools' websites. Some secondary schools offer programs for languages, art and music, so if your child has interest and capability, you should check out which schools offer those programs. As CCA is compulsory, it is important for our child to identify which schools offer CCA that she is interested in. 

In addition, distance from home and accessibility are also part of the consideration. As school hour for secondary school is longer, especially on CCA days, we do not want our child to spend too much time on travelling as it would be very tiring.

When our child was in Primary 5 last year, we had visited open house of some schools. Due to Covid situation this year 2020, the open house go online, so we attended some online open house for Secondary School, you can find the list of Secondary Schools e-Open House 2020 here. 

Another 2 weeks before PSLE result is released. We shall make the decision based on the result that our child achieves. Personally, I would consider putting the choices of secondary schools such that her actual score is higher than the past-year cut off point of the school, because I do not want our child to be stressed out to be the "bottom" of the cohort. 

What are your consideration when you and your children choose secondary school?

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