Every cohort is smaller.
Why are more kids getting rejected?
Singapore births have been falling since 2016 — yet the number of children rejected from their first-choice primary school has never been higher. This is the data that shows why.
P1 Seats, Birth Cohort & Rejections · 2009–2025
Smaller classes. More competition.
In 2009, roughly 35,500 children were born — and 3,284 of them were eventually rejected from their first-choice primary school six years later. By 2025 that birth cohort had barely changed (35,330), yet rejections hit 5,814— a 77% increase. Demand didn't spread evenly. It concentrated.
+77%
rise in P1 ballot rejections, 2009 → 2025, despite flat birth numbers
There are more seats than children. Every single year.
Add up every primary school's P1 capacity and the system offers around 40,000 places a year — more than the citizen birth cohort (~33,000) and more than the children who actually enrol. In 2025 roughly 3,900 P1 seats sat empty, yet 5,814children were still turned away from their first-choice school. The places exist. They're just at the wrong schools — the ones nobody is fighting over.
≈3,900 empty seats
unfilled P1 places in 2025 — while 5,814 children were rejected from the schools they wanted
Why? Demand is concentrating at fewer schools.
Singapore has over 180 primary schools. Most are never oversubscribed. But a growing share of families are targeting the same short list — school reputation, proximity to home, alumni ties, catchment speculation. The result: competition at the top tier has intensified even as the total cohort stayed flat. New HDB completions near popular schools add another layer of pressure — demand spikes in Phase 2C (the open-address ballot) while Phase 2A and 2B spots stay reserved for connections.
The 2020 step-change.
Rejections jumped from 2,881 in 2019 to 5,121 in 2020 — a near-doubling in a single year. This coincides with changes to MOE's Phase 2B rules that tightened volunteer eligibility, pushing more families into the open Phase 2C ballot. Since 2020, rejections have stayed structurally elevated. The system didn't snap back.
See your school's 2026 forecast
Every Singapore primary school, ranked by how early the ballot is likely to trigger.
Data sources: MOE P1 registration balloting results and school capacities (2009–2025), SingStat resident & citizen live-births (Table Builder M810091). X-axis is registration year; the birth series show the cohort born 6 years prior (resident = citizens + PRs; SC = Singapore citizens). Total seats = sum of every school's P1 capacity that year. Rejections = children who did not obtain a place at their chosen school across all phases, per MOE's annual release.