Pupils holding a confirmed offer or a wait-list place through the Direct School Admission for secondary schools (DSA-Sec) have five days to lock in their choices, from 9am on Monday 19 October to 4.30pm on Friday 23 October. A child who submits nothing in that window is treated as having withdrawn from DSA-Sec.
Schools released DSA-Sec outcomes by 28 August. Parents of pupils with an offer or a wait-list place get instructions for the preference exercise by SMS and email from postman.gov.sg.
What you submit, and how
You list up to three schools in order of preference, through the DSA-Sec Portal. School of the Arts counts as one of the three if it is among the schools your child is choosing.
Only one parent has to submit. During the five days, you can update the list, withdraw it or submit it again. The portal works best in Chrome or Microsoft Edge on a desktop or laptop.
Children from home-schooling, international, private, religious or SPED schools log in to the same portal with the registration number and password used for the original application. The child’s offers appear after login. Print or save the acknowledgment page at the end.
What a confirmed offer and a wait-list place mean
A confirmed offer reserves a place, but it is not final. The child still has to choose that school during the October window, and still needs a PSLE score that qualifies for a Posting Group the school offers. A school that offers only Posting Group 3, for instance, needs a PSLE score of 4 to 22.
A wait-list place may turn into a reserved place later.
The commitment that comes with a DSA place
Putting a school on the list is a commitment. A child admitted through DSA-Sec cannot submit school choices in Secondary 1 Posting and cannot transfer to another school after PSLE results are out.
On the Singapore-Cambridge Secondary Education Certificate (SEC) track, the commitment runs from Secondary 1 to 4. On an Integrated Programme it runs for six years, from Year 1 to Year 6. DSA students must also take part in activities linked to the talent area they were admitted for.
Not submitting keeps Secondary 1 Posting open at the end of the year, if the child is eligible.
What happens in November
DSA-Sec allocation results come out with the PSLE results, on Tuesday 24 or Wednesday 25 November. MOE lists both dates as tentative.
A child who is not allocated a school through DSA-Sec takes part in Secondary 1 Posting and can still list schools applied to in DSA-Sec, except specialised independent schools, which do not take part in S1 Posting.
Families who have changed the official residential address on their NRIC have to tell the child’s primary school by the end of October, so the school can update its records.
