Education is serious business in Singapore. This is the country where parents are capable of all sorts of "tricks" to get their children into reputable or popular schools. This is also the country where parents have to do volunteer work, to get a chance to ballot for a vacancy in their preferred school. In recent 1-2 years, it has gotten so bad, that even brand new schools with no established reputation need balloting to get a vacancy too.
Primary 1 registration can be a tears and sweat inducing exercise. Sweat when you have to put in 44 hours of volunteer work, doing things like acting as traffic warden and then the tears come, when despite doing so much extra work, you may not get the 1 vacancy you need.
On my husband side of the family, we have a cousin (not filthy rich) who recently spent all his money on a 30 year old property which cost SGD1.9 million, just to increase his chances of getting his children into one of the most talked about school in the country. Poor chap spent all his cash and had to take multiple loans to finance his new house renovations and furnishings. Even the TV was bought on loan.
So anyway, to cut the story short, this is the year where we have to play victim to the system.
We didn't do any volunteer work, nor join any alumni (not without trying. Pei Hwa does not have an alumni) so all we can do is to keep our fingers and toes crossed and hope J gets into my primary school. Will not hurt to pray!
Pei Hwa..we are coming for you!
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