Now fast forward to P6, the Direct School Admission (DSA) exercise.
What is DSA?
Best definition would be from MOE website.
But in short, DSA is a process in Singapore education system to allow matching of talents to the secondary school with a little compromise on academic result.
By pure academic result, students are posted to secondary school based on the PSLE cutoff point. Until this year, using normalised score, this can be pretty cut throat.
Through DSA, talented students enjoy a little bit of leeway.
What field of talents required?
For the full list, please visit the secondary school website. MOE website also lists a few talent area. In general, it would be sports, arts, language, math, science, STEM, leadership, ... some even include entrepreneurial.
How is the process?
In past four to five years, I see the process being tweaked almost every year. Best to check out the detailed steps from both MOE and target secondary school website.
Simplified steps are application (now centralised by MOE except for SSP and a few other schools), test/audition, interview, result, and... student option whether to accept the school offer.
There are three possible result. Confirmed Offer (CO), Waiting List (WL), or rejected. Students must lock in their reply before PSLE result announcement. For those WL, definite in/out will be indicated in the PSLE result slip.
How much of academic result trade off are we talking about?
Although normally the prerequisite to accept the offer is pretty low, but the school selection process will take the academic result into consideration. This is to ensure that the students accepted through this process can survive the 4-6 years. What I observed, DSA ‘discount’ is not more than 5 to 10% off the normal cutoff point.
Why is it good?
* Allow children to brush up non academic field, while still enjoying the challenging academic requirement in secondary school. To me, this is like a safety net for the children to switch back to academic if they want to.
* This scheme also helps student with a very strong particular subject but less of a well-rounder.
* Some argues that this lifts up some PSLE pressure from the kid. But please beware. My personal experience is No 1 is even more stressed after receiving a CO. In fear of cannot match up to peers entering via normal path.
How it can backfire?
Students entering the school via DSA is obliged to both performing the activities in the field they apply through for 4 years minimum.
Example, talents in sport must compete for the school with no option to drop even if the secondary school academic result suffer.
Another possible case is that the PSLE result is way below the expected result. This mean the student cannot back off (because option is locked before result announcement), finger crossed and work hard to catch up.
Any good tips?
* Visit the secondary school open house in P5 (IP schools normally hold it in May, and most school hold it in November). To me this is useful for two reasons: good to let the child see and strive for the P5 result, and in case there’s anything preventing the open house in P6.
* See see look look kiasu parents website. Normally they have a dedicated forum for each year of DSA. There are some practical tips and info that cannot be found elsewhere. Just take it with a pinch of salt since not all the contributor opinion is up-lifting.
* If you are a parent with a child talented in art or sport and willing to spend or do the work, build up the portfolio early to avoid costly brush up in P4-P5. To do a demo video, some agents charged an unbelievable sum.
Hope this post is informative, to provide a balance between the DSA hype and the risk. See ya!
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