ADDENDUM - GOVERNMENT PRIMARY SCHOOLS (Admission and non-admission figures)

Mr Chew Swee Kee, pursuant to his reply to the following question for oral answer asked on 4th April, 1956 (Official Report, 4th April, 1956, Volume 1, No. 28, columns 1749 to 1750)

"Mr John Ede asked the Minister for Education (i) how many new students were admitted to Government primary schools at the beginning of the present school year; (ii) how many students of the age of 7 years who applied were admitted and how many were refused admission; and (iii) how many students of the age of 6 years were admitted.",

supplied the following information:

(i) 15,553.

(ii) (a) 10,116.

(b) No Singapore children were refused admission. As far as the Ministry of Education has been able to discover, no children of 7 years old were, eventually, refused admission. It is true that considerable numbers whose parents failed to register them for admission within the prescribed period were in the first case refused. But arrangements were subsequently made to provide places for all these children in additional classes formed after the schools had re-opened. Records were not kept by schools as to numbers of non-Singapore children who were refused admission. This particular piece of information is therefore not available.

(iii) 4,849.

It will be observed that the figures in (ii) (a) and (iii) together come to nearly 600 less than that given in (i). This balance is made up partly of children born in 1947, for whom special efforts were made to create school places, and of children from outside Singapore.