Singapore’s new Primary 1 rules: Who lives around the 12 schools getting a wider catchment?

Across the 12 schools, public housing accounts for between 5 per cent and 37 per cent of homes within a 2km radius. This is far below the national picture, where about four in five residents live in public housing.

Compared with other primary schools, there are generally fewer housing units surrounding the 12 schools.

Waffle chart comparing public and private housing near 12 Singapore primary schools, each square representing 1,000 homes.

Figures are rounded to the nearest thousand for display.

Part of the reason is the physical landscape around these schools. Some of them are surrounded by lower-density landed housing. For others, parks or the sea take up parts of their 2km catchment, further reducing the number of homes within reach.

Vincent Chua, an associate professor from the National University of Singapore’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, said the housing mix around the schools would have shaped their student populations, as distance has long played an important role in Primary 1 registration.

The 12 schools were selected by the Ministry of Education based on the housing mix around them, rather than how popular or oversubscribed.

A wider catchment

Under the new system, the 60 places reserved for Phase 2C at each school will be split equally: 30 for children living within 2km and 30 for those living farther away.

Distance priority will not apply within either group. More places could also be available in Phase 2C if there are vacancies after earlier phases.

Chua said this could open the schools to families from a much wider area.

ST’s analysis shows how the housing mix changes once the catchment expands.

For most of the 12 schools, public housing makes up more than 40 per cent of homes within 3km, compared with less than 40 per cent within 2km.

This heat map visualises the concentration of public housing across increasing distances (1km to 5km) from 12 schools in Singapore

Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number.

This means the pool of families applying from beyond 2km could look quite different from the population living closest to the schools.

While it remains to be seen how much the student mix of the schools will change, Chua said the wider catchment could reduce the advantage of living nearby and give children from different socioeconomic backgrounds more opportunities to mix.

Many of the 12 schools are also highly sought after.

Chua said their appeal can come from a combination of academic reputation, history, alumni networks and affiliations with secondary schools.

At Anglo-Chinese School (Junior), for example, some parents may be drawn not only to the primary school itself, but also to the pathway its affiliation with Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road) offers.

“Material advantage, social capital and symbolic status intersect within these schools,” said Chua. This appeals to parents seeking a “total institutional package” that compounds educational and social opportunities for their children, he said.

For some families, the pursuit of a preferred school has even influenced where they choose to live.

Data from property technology platform Realsmart.sg gives a glimpse of how closely school and housing decisions can be linked.

Its co-founder Zach Tan, 36, a Singaporean software engineer based in California, said the company analysed a random sample of 19,812 questions submitted to its artificial intelligence assistant over three months in 2026. About 3 per cent were about primary schools.

Of more than 500 such questions, about half involved finding or shortlisting homes, or checking how close they were to schools.

Parents asked whether homes near particular schools were within their budgets, whether an address fell within 1km of a school and whether they should buy nearby or rent while keeping their existing home.

Since the new two-track rule was announced, Tan said users have also been asking whether they still need to move closer to a preferred school, and what they could afford if they widened their search.

Among the schools that came up most often in queries were Tao Nan School, Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School and Nanyang Primary School, all three of which are among those identified for the two-track system.

The distance question

But giving families farther away a shot at these schools raises a practical question: How will their children get there every day?

Chua said public transport will be important if the wider access offered by the new system is to work in practice.

“Expanding geographical access on paper only works in practice if daily commuting is made feasible and manageable for young children and working parents,” he added.

Distance alone also does not tell the full story. A family several kilometres away with a direct MRT or bus connection could have a simpler commute than one living closer but needing several transfers.

The average school in Singapore is next to a transit point, but some of the schools implementing the two-track scheme might require more of a walk.

For example, families in Bedok South and the upcoming Bayshore precinct could reach Tao Nan School, CHIJ (Katong) Primary and Ngee Ann Primary School via the Thomson-East Coast Line. The journey comprising three or four stops would take around eight minutes, excluding waiting and walking time.

The Downtown Line could similarly make Methodist Girls’ School (Primary) and Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School more accessible to families living near Bukit Panjang MRT station. Even though the homes are 5km to 6km away, the four or five stops in the train journey would take only 10 to 12 minutes, excluding waiting and walking time.

But not all 12 schools are as well-connected.

St Margaret’s School (Primary), Raffles Girls’ Primary School, Anglo-Chinese School (Junior) and Nanyang Primary School are farther from their nearest transit node than the average primary school in Singapore.

For children travelling from outside the neighbourhood, that extra walk could add to an already longer journey to school.