DSA 2025
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@bbbay as with GEP tests, i can guess that somewhere out there, somebody has compiled a list of the common questions & answers, or sold some training programs that claim high success rate. Furthermore, some schools dont conduct tests for DSA but select based on competition results (which selection protocol/criteria is not transparent either).
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In pre tertiary stage education offerings by spore , my view is, in the long run, spore will benefits from opening our doors to foreigners. Never mind about short term benefits we are giving out. Bcos the child may choose to live a different life from the parents when they have grown up. It is the child decision that matter. The child may choose to settle down in spore eventually. And the parents who may want to game the system, nothing they can do about it.
I have heard of a story about a father, educated in Spore, move his family back to China and then New Zealand. Eventually he still decided, for the sake of his young son , to settle back down in Spore, despite his own old parent objection. His old parent prefer NZ’s way of life. But that father thinks NZ slow pace of life will render his young son losing out his edge, in today’s competitive world. China’s society still has its share of inefficient culture.
Today’s foreigner parents may make good use of Spore offers. But it will be their children’s decision where to settle down eventually , not these parents.
I’m not sure what you mean by opening doors. Do you mean take in more AEIS or award more scholarships? We cannot discount the ill-sentiments felt especially by boys when their AEIS and scholarship peers do not have to serve NS and are two or sometimes 2.5 years ahead. MOE already spreads the scholars and AEIS kids across schools - the AEIS kids are paying substantial school fees - perhaps the Singapore student population can accept and absorb more of them, but I’m not sure how much more appetite the population has for increasing the scholar pool much further.
The sentiments are possibly exacerbated at the university level because the scholars don’t serve NS, and the number of Singaporeans getting full scholarships and/or bursaries is not that large. Many Singaporeans have to take tuition fee loans from parents’ CPF etc and that is counted as financial aid. Unless you are in the bottom 10 or 20th percentile of household income, I hardly hear of financial aid covering full tuition fees and living allowances for Singaporeans - I would be happy to stand corrected on this.
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@zac-s-mum said in DSA 2025:
@bbbay as with GEP tests, i can guess that somewhere out there, somebody has compiled a list of the common questions & answers, or sold some training programs that claim high success rate. Furthermore, some schools dont conduct tests for DSA but select based on competition results (which selection protocol/criteria is not transparent either).
Actually I think in some aspects, these parents are contributing to our education system. In a hackerton event, hackers are invited to hack an organisation system. The winner will be rewarded and the organisation get to know their system vulnerabilities and then fix them. And their system will be more resilient. Previous GEP is an example where MOE ended it after learning the selection questions could be pre learnt.
DSA has many domains. Each has different selection process. Leadership selection has to see consistent portfolio and undergo interviews. Such requirements are not so easy to game. Other academics DSA criteria of international Olympian medals I think are also not easy to hack an achievement by memorising questions. There may be few have successfully gamed the system out of good luck, but I don’t think it a system wide spread prevailing problem now. During NUS open house a staff from the scholarship team shared with me, best the child answered scholarship application question truefully. If child give a memorised answers the selector would know it because they have heard such answers many times before.
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In pre tertiary stage education offerings by spore , my view is, in the long run, spore will benefits from opening our doors to foreigners. Never mind about short term benefits we are giving out. Bcos the child may choose to live a different life from the parents when they have grown up. It is the child decision that matter. The child may choose to settle down in spore eventually. And the parents who may want to game the system, nothing they can do about it.
I have heard of a story about a father, educated in Spore, move his family back to China and then New Zealand. Eventually he still decided, for the sake of his young son , to settle back down in Spore, despite his own old parent objection. His old parent prefer NZ’s way of life. But that father thinks NZ slow pace of life will render his young son losing out his edge, in today’s competitive world. China’s society still has its share of inefficient culture.
Today’s foreigner parents may make good use of Spore offers. But it will be their children’s decision where to settle down eventually , not these parents.
I’m not sure what you mean by opening doors. Do you mean take in more AEIS or award more scholarships?
I mean continue keeping the door opened and keeping the numbers controlled.
We cannot discount the ill-sentiments felt especially by boys when their AEIS and scholarship peers do not have to serve NS and are two or sometimes 2.5 years ahead.
Citizen boys serving NS will have more privileges than foreigners on AEIS/pre tertiary scholarships. Citizen boys will pay less for government services, their children will have priority in school admissions etc.
MOE already spreads the scholars and AEIS kids across schools - the AEIS kids are paying substantial school fees - perhaps the Singapore student population can accept and absorb more of them, but I’m not sure how much more appetite the population has for increasing the scholar pool much further.
My children secondary school had a Malaysia scholar that top in many subjects. After O level, he went Dunman high for his A level, not RI or HCI and not even NYJC or VJC, considering his good O level results. These scholars will not compete with sporean for top schools’ spot. MOE has the flexibility to assign schools to these scholars not at the expense of any sporean.
The sentiments are possibly exacerbated at the university level because the scholars don’t serve NS, and the number of Singaporeans getting full scholarships and/or bursaries is not that large. Many Singaporeans have to take tuition fee loans from parents’ CPF etc and that is counted as financial aid. Unless you are in the bottom 10 or 20th percentile of household income, I hardly hear of financial aid covering full tuition fees and living allowances for Singaporeans - I would be happy to stand corrected on this.
I mis understood your point earlier.
Admitted foreigners on scholarships or not, are a few notch higher in capabilities than citizens in the same course plus they have to work 3 yrs in Singapore. I can only hope among them, one will start a new company in future that employ 100 Singaporeans with decent paying jobs; another one will create an AI model the detect disease earlier to benefit Singaporeans first.
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Admitted foreigners on scholarships or not, are a few notch higher in capabilities than citizens in the same course plus they have to work 3 yrs in Singapore. I can only hope among them, one will start a new company in future that employ 100 Singaporeans with decent paying jobs; another one will create an AI model the detect disease earlier to benefit Singaporeans first.
My foreign scholar classmate is a respected Prof in NUS teaching and, hopefully, discovering a breakthrough in his field of work. May not have employ 100 Singaporeans but I’m sure he has taught / trained more than 100 Singaporeans
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Direct School Admission (DSA-Sec): Application will start in about a month’s time - 11am on Tuesday, 7 May 2024 to 3pm on Monday, 3 Jun 2024.
Start exploring the school choices and after shortlisting, use MOE’s application template to help you prepare the relevant information together with your child, before starting the online application.
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@floppy hi may i know apart from this platform, what are the platform is good to get DSA info ? am planning to apply for my dd .
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I don’t think there are many other platforms. You can gather some info on Facebook, Rednote or “support groups” in school. This forum used to be active but I guess the format change has put off quite a lot of people.
Good luck to your DSA application. May I know in which talent area?
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