Reserved Phase 2C places are rising from 40 to 60, and 12 schools — including ACS, Nanyang and Raffles Girls' — are getting a new Two-Track Scheme that strips out home-distance priority within each track. Here's exactly what's changing, and what it means if you've bought (or are buying) near one of these schools.
MOE announced two changes to the Primary 1 registration framework on 10 September 2026, both taking effect from the 2027 registration exercise (for children starting P1 in 2028): more reserved Phase 2C places, and a new Two-Track Scheme at 12 schools that removes distance-based ranking within each track.
The Ministry of Education has confirmed changes to the Primary 1 registration framework that will reshape how much weight "living near a popular school" actually carries — at least for a specific list of 12 schools. The changes were announced on 10 September 2026 and take effect from the 2027 P1 Registration Exercise, meaning the first cohort affected is children starting Primary 1 in 2028. The current registration exercise, already underway for 2027 entry, is unaffected.
Phase 2C is the stage of P1 registration open to any child who doesn't already have priority through an earlier phase — no parent as an alumnus, no sibling already enrolled, no parent or sibling who volunteered at the school. MOE reserves a minimum number of Phase 2C places specifically so that these "cold" applicants always have a real shot, rather than being squeezed out entirely by phases 2A and 2B.
From 2027, that reserved minimum rises from 40 to 60 places at schools with a Primary 1 intake of 180 students or more — the extra 20 places are reallocated from earlier phases. Schools with smaller intakes, under 180 students, keep the existing 40-place reservation, since a fixed 60-seat carve-out would eat up a disproportionate share of a small school's total capacity.
The more consequential change applies to a specific list of schools sitting in neighbourhoods where public housing makes up less than 40% of dwelling units within 2km — notably below the roughly 80% of Singapore's resident population who live in HDB flats nationally. MOE's logic: in these low-HDB-density pockets, the usual home-distance priority within Phase 2C doesn't do much to widen access, because the pool of nearby applicants already skews toward one socio-economic profile.
| # | School |
|---|---|
| 1 | Anglo-Chinese School (Junior) |
| 2 | Anglo-Chinese School (Primary) |
| 3 | CHIJ (Katong) Primary |
| 4 | Methodist Girls' School (Primary) |
| 5 | Nanyang Primary School |
| 6 | Ngee Ann Primary School |
| 7 | Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School |
| 8 | Raffles Girls' Primary School |
| 9 | Singapore Chinese Girls' Primary School |
| 10 | St. Margaret's School (Primary) |
| 11 | Tanjong Katong Primary School |
| 12 | Tao Nan School |
The full infographic MOE released explaining every change, the affected schools, and the balloting example — straight from the source. Enter your email and it'll download right away.
No spam — just the guide. Your email is used solely to send you occasional property insights like this one.
For these 12 schools, the full 60-place Phase 2C reservation is split equally into two tracks: one for applicants living within 2km of the school, one for applicants living beyond 2km. Within each track, there is no home-distance priority — a family 300m from the school gate gets no edge over one 1.9km away, provided both are in the "within 2km" track. If a track is oversubscribed by Singapore Citizen applicants, balloting decides who gets in; if a track has spare capacity after all its SC applicants are admitted, the leftover places flow to SC applicants in the other track. Permanent Resident applicants are only considered after all SC applicants across both tracks have been placed.
Worked example from MOE's own illustration: say a school's 60 reserved places split into two tracks of 30 each. If the "within 2km" track draws 40 SC applicants for its 30 places while the "beyond 2km" track draws only 25 SC applicants for its 30 places, the 5 spare places from the beyond-2km track get added to the within-2km track (now 35 places for 40 applicants), and balloting decides who fills those 35 spots. The beyond-2km track's 25 applicants are all admitted with no balloting needed.
Education Minister Desmond Lee framed the changes around keeping schools "open and inclusive, where our children learn and form friendships beyond their immediate social circles" — language that echoes years of public debate about elite schools clustering in a handful of well-off neighbourhoods and effectively pricing out access to families elsewhere. MOE says the 12-school list will be reviewed periodically as housing profiles shift, but doesn't expect frequent changes, since a neighbourhood's HDB-to-private housing mix doesn't move quickly.
This is narrower than a wholesale scrapping of school-distance priority — a possibility raised in a Business Times opinion piece last month that argued for dropping home-school distance from P1 allocation entirely. What MOE has actually done is more surgical: distance priority survives as the line that sorts you into the "within 2km" or "beyond 2km" track, but it stops mattering once you're inside a track. That's a meaningful distinction for anyone who has paid a premium to live extremely close — say, within 500m — to one of these 12 schools specifically for a Phase 2C edge.
Under the old rules, distance ranked every applicant within Phase 2C, so being closer than the next family in the queue could be the difference between getting in and being balloted out. Under the new rules, at these 12 schools, that fine-grained distance advantage disappears within the near track — you're grouped with everyone else inside 2km and it comes down to a lottery if oversubscribed. The 2km line itself still matters enormously, though: it's now the gatekeeping cutoff for which of two applicant pools you're even competing in, and the near-pool applicants aren't diluted by competition from the wider catchment the way they would be under a single combined Phase 2C queue.
The net effect, in plain terms: living inside 2km of one of these 12 schools still matters — arguably it now matters in a more binary, threshold way rather than a sliding-scale one. What's diminished is the value of living extremely close (100-500m) versus merely close (1.5-1.9km), since both now sit in the same track with equal odds. If your property decision was banking on being the closest house on the street to one of these specific 12 schools, this change reduces that edge; if you're comfortably within 2km without being right next door, you haven't lost much.
Worth noting too: this only touches Phase 2C, the last and smallest-priority phase. Phases 1, 2A and 2B — covering siblings, alumni parents, and school-affiliated volunteers — are untouched, and those phases typically fill the bulk of places at popular schools well before Phase 2C is reached. For the 12 schools on this list, buying in the area still helps most through those earlier community-connection phases over time, not primarily through the Phase 2C distance queue this change reshapes.
I'd read this as MOE tightening the target rather than firing a broadside at school-proximity premiums generally. Only 12 schools are affected, and even for those 12, the 2km radius itself is preserved as a real cutoff — it's the fine-grained "how many metres closer than the next family" competition inside that radius that's been replaced with a lottery. If you're a buyer specifically chasing one of these 12 schools, I'd stop optimising for being the closest possible unit to the gate and instead just confirm you're comfortably inside the 2km line — the marginal cost of a unit 200m closer than another, both under 2km, no longer buys you anything extra here.
If you already own near one of these schools: this shouldn't move your property's value much on its own — proximity to a sought-after school remains a genuine draw for future buyers, and this change doesn't touch phases 1, 2A or 2B where most seats at popular schools are actually allocated. If a client asks whether it's still "worth it" to buy tight next to one of these 12 specifically for the P1 edge, my honest answer now is: less than before, but the broader lifestyle and resale draw of the school's reputation hasn't gone anywhere.
Weighing a purchase near one of these schools, or wondering how this affects your own address?
WhatsApp Bryan → More guides →Sources: Ministry of Education, Singapore, press release "Enhancing the Primary One Registration Framework for Greater Access and Inclusivity," 10 September 2026, and MOE's accompanying explainer graphics; Mothership.sg, "More Primary 1 spots reserved for children with no prior connection to school, starting with 2027 registration exercise," 10 September 2026; AsiaOne, "Primary 1 registration: 12 schools in areas with less public housing to get new 2-track scheme from 2027," 10 September 2026. See also our earlier piece on the school-distance priority debate. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
No pressure, no obligation. Tell me what you're working through and I'll get back to you within 24 hours to arrange a time that works.
Your details are used solely to follow up on your consultation request. No spam, ever.