Do away with preferential admission to primary schools
The first day of school for students from Unity Primary School.
It is that time of the year in July and August, when the Primary 1 registration exercise is ongoing, and I am surprised that preferential admission still exists.
Under the various registration phases, children whose parents have connections with the school — as alumni or staff members, as volunteers or members of the school’s advisory or management committees — are considered in earlier registration phrases.
To put it bluntly, the scheme is reminiscent of patronage, which is not the conventional and meritocratic way of getting things done here. Given how admission to secondary school onwards is based on meritocracy, the Primary 1 admission scheme should be reviewed.
The present system is unfair because applicants will not have equal opportunities to get a place in a school. This is especially so for the popular “elite” schools.
Recent statistics on the website of the Ministry of Education (MOE) show that balloting had to take place for numerous preferred schools, after places were allocated to children whose parents had connections. This leaves limited spots for children whose parents are not within the network.
To be fair, MOE tried to level the playing field by reserving 40 places in every primary school for children without any ties to the school. However, this only applies in the later registration phases. Reserving 40 seats is merely tokenism and does little to significantly change the demographics of the school.
With many pupils having parents connected to the school in one way or another, the schools risk being an enclave for those with similar backgrounds, reducing the diversity that the MOE has always wanted, for pupils to interact with different peers.
This worsens the inequality between elite and neighbourhood schools, going against the “every school is a good school” axiom by MOE.
With all the recent talk about reducing economic and social inequality among different groups in society, MOE needs to review this.
I suggest allocating pupils based purely on the distance of the child’s home from the school.
Although imperfect, such a distance-based allocation kills two birds with one stone: It eradicates patronage from preferential treatment while giving pupils the convenience of studying at a school nearest to their homes.
Let us put words into action in the discourse on inequality.
