Best Schools In Singapore For Locals and Expats (2024)

Parenthood often means thinking three steps ahead. Education is one of the major milestones in a child’s development and getting them into a good educational institution remains one of the foremost priorities for parents. 

Consistently positioned within the top five in the PISA Education rankings worldwide, Singapore is synonymous with being the premier education hub within the Southeast Asian region. The reputation of Singapore’s educational offerings brings forth large swathes of children of the regional elite prepared to spend to enrol them into the top schools in Singapore. This in part has also led to Singapore instituting distance-based admissions for junior schools because of the competitiveness as well as a desire to reduce travel times to school for students. 

Distance-based criteria is only relevant for admission into local primary schools, and future students enrolling must be residing within a 1km radius of the school that they are intending to study at. To this end, the core of the elite junior schools still are concentrated in the areas of Districts 9,10 and 11, along the Bukit Timah Stretch. 

Here’s our pick of the top 10 list of Best Schools across a range of qualities that they boast. 

Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) (Primary/Junior)

This Anglo-Chinese School is famous for being name-dropped in Kevin Kwan’s movie-adapted book, Crazy Rich Asians. Its aim is to produce “gentlemen, scholars, leaders, officers and global citizens”, and the all-boys school has done so by counting at least three ministers in the current Singaporean Government among their alumni, as well as prominent business leaders such as Mr Phillip Ng of Singapore’s largest real estate developer Far East Organisation and members of the Shaw family. As one of the oldest schools in Singapore, its alumni extend deep into the generational networks of the old money in Singapore. For those seeking valuable connections for their child as they grow, this is one school to keep on your list. 

Location: 50 Barker Road(Primary), 16 Windest Road (Junior), District 11 (Primary), District 10 (Junior)

Singapore Chinese Girls School (SCGS)

Situated right beside Anglo Chinese School Primary, the Singapore Chinese Girls’ School caters to the well-heeled crowd in the Newton Catchment Area. The provenance of its name speaks of its age and establishment as the first Chinese girls’ school in Singapore. SCGS Primary is known for producing alumni such as Mdm Halimah Yacob, the current and eighth president of Singapore. It is a non-denominational school. However, schools do not prejudice admissions based on faith and religion and participation in the school’s faith-based activities are by choice. SCGS has a secondary school section that gives it affiliation points off the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), as well as further affiliation to a pre-university institution, Eunoia Junior College.  

Location: 190 Dunearn Road, District 11

Methodist Girls School (MGS Primary)

Even though MGS Primary is not located beside ACS Primary like SCGS, as a Methodist school, it is the sister school to the ACS. It is located slightly further down the road, in District 21, and like ACS, it boasts similar networking qualities that your child may stand to gain from. While it is not a specialised school for academics nor sports, MGS performs well in all domains and students develop and excel holistically, with alumni such as the late Kwa Geok Choo, the wife of the late founding Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew to Southeast Asian Games swimming gold medallists Joscelin Yeo and Nicolette Teo. 

Location: 11 Blackmore Drive, District 21

Nanyang Primary School 

Nanyang Primary School is nestled within a large cluster of desirable bungalow estates, the ‘creme de la creme’ of private real estate purchases you can make in Singapore. Many notable local celebrities like singer Stefanie Sun and prominent politicians, like Senior Minister Tharman Shamnugaratnam have sent their children to Nanyang. In fact, the current Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, studied at Nanyang Primary. Its illustrious alumni coupled with its reputation as the leading institution for bilingual education makes it a prime choice to plan for your child’s future enrolment. Bungalows in the area cost upwards of $20 million. However, this does not mean that proximity-based admission is exclusive to those that buy them, as there are plenty of decently priced apartments in the vicinity. For example, D’Leedon is an architecturally renowned apartment complex within a 0.71km radius of Nanyang Primary. One of the furthest apartments within the 1km radius limit is Leedon Residence, a luxury boutique apartment built in 2015, while one of the cheapest options available within the area is Spanish Village, though the cheapest apartment available is still a sizeable S$2.63 million. 

Location: 52 King’s Road, District 10

Raffles Girls Primary School

Named after the colonial founding father of Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles, the institution’s senior divisions are famed for producing scholars including Mr Lee Kuan Yew. Raffles Girls Primary School is a junior institution popular among parents not just for its coveted name, but its high academic standards, having produced consistent highest scorers in the PSLE. While the ministry has shied away from proactively ranking schools based on academic performance and has instead pivoted to labelling all schools as “good schools” in line with the government’s meritocratic ideals, RGPS has an extensive teaching resource accumulated over the years and teaching staff that gives students a solid grounding in academic capability. 

Location: 21 Hillcrest Road, District 11

Tao Nan School 

Moving away from the Bukit Timah stretch of primary schools, Tao Nan School is one of the few schools that admitted Gifted Education Programme (GEP) students into their existing cohort. The Gifted Education Programme caters to the top 1% of the cohort and is aimed at further advancing students able to manage the academic rigour with more thought-based research projects. Selection for GEP generally happens in the middle of primary education at Primary 3, however, admission into the school at P1 is not a guarantee of admission into the program. Despite this, given that the teachers in the school are equipped with the resources to teach GEP students, this may translate to a better quality of education in one of the better educational institutions located in the East of Singapore. 

Location: 49 Marine Crescent, District 15

Pei Hwa Presbyterian School 

Pei Hwa Primary is a Presbyterian denominational school that has been accorded the Special Assistance Plan (SAP) since 1992. An SAP school “capitalises on its distinctiveness in its promotion and inculcation of Chinese values culture and tradition”. Pei Hwa has an Arts and Bi-cultural Enrichment program that deepens students’ appreciation of cultural goals. It is also a school with a long history, established in 1889, and is one of the schools along the Bukit Timah stretch that deviates from traditional sport-based Co-Curricular Activities such as Rugby and Swimming, instead having Chinese Dance and Chinese Drum as one of their anchor activities to reinforce a sense of cultural belonging and understanding at a young age. It’s a good choice for expat parents with Chinese roots looking to improve their child’s ability in bilingualism and enhance cultural appreciation. 

Location: 7 Pei Wah Ave, District 21

Red Swastika School 

Like Pei Hwa Presbyterian, Red Swastika School is also a SAP school, located in the East of Singapore rather than in the West/Central region. It also has consistent batches of students achieving an almost 100% pass rate in the PSLE, attesting to its ability to develop and nurture academic qualities in its students and has also been ranked by KiasuParents, a forum-blog on Singaporean education, as having one of the hardest Preliminary examination papers for the PSLE. 

Location: 350 Bedok North Ave 3, District 16

Catholic High School (Primary Section)

Catholic High School boasts having the current Prime Minister of Singapore as one of its alumni (though he only enrolled at the secondary level), and the institution’s qualities can be best explained by PM Lee’s speech at the 80th Anniversary of the School just two months ago. 

“They (the elder Mr Lee and Mdm Kwa) explained to me they chose it because it was a Chinese-medium school but it has high standards of both English and Chinese — bilingual. Also, it has strict discipline. Furthermore, it was a Catholic mission school.”

Location: 9 Bishan St 22, District 20

Rosyth School 

Established in 1956, Rosyth School, like Tao Nan was one of the first few GEP schools that the government established for higher academically performing students. Given that there are only nine GEP Schools in Singapore, students that qualify for admission into the program are given the choice of enrolling in each of the nine schools at Primary 4. However, most of the schools are usually located within Districts 10,11, 21. Rosyth, therefore, caters to eligible GEP students in the north and central of Singapore, while Tao Nan caters for the East. Rosyth’s plethora of academic resources could benefit students by leapfrogging their cohort in their academic pursuits. 

Location: 21 Serangoon North Ave 4, District 19

Beyond that, here are also some other considerations that you may wish to consider when purchasing a property near these schools. Kanebridge News spoke with realtor Clement Lim to understand more about additional factors that may affect your child’s choice of admission. 

Kanebridge News: Are PSF (per-square-foot) prices significantly higher in areas with good schools? 

Clement Lim: Yes. In my view, the three most important features of any private property is its location. This is especially so in land-scarce Singapore. On this small island, a good residential location almost invariably means being near reputable schools. This effect is compounded because good schools in Singapore are usually clustered together. 

The reason for high per-square-foot prices near top schools in Singapore is a simple reflection of behavioural psychology and a hearty dose of Singaporean Kiasu-ism (Read: elitism or; meritocracy). Affluent parents fight tooth and nail to send their children to some of the best enrichment and to the best schools and will pay any premium for the convenience of their children. Like a competitive bidding system, prices of residential properties near good schools are therefore driven up by Asian parents’ weighty expectations of their children. 

Where successful parents and bright students go, it also enriches the locality of any neighbourhood. It’s simple economics: purchasing power centres around a particular area, e.g Cluny Court near the aforementioned elite-school cluster, and top merchants follow. As a realtor, the most common question I get from buyers is, ‘what good schools are near this property?’. 

KN: When is the right time to invest/purchase a property for the purposes of relocating and garnering admission to a primary school? 

CL: Generally, it is recommended to purchase a property near your intended school before your child registers for the school. 

However, a concession allows you to register your child for primary school using the address of a yet-to-be-completed property you have purchased. The vacant possession date (which means the date on which you can move in) must be within 2 years of your child’s entry into Primary 1, which usually is before your child turns 7 years old. This is a tad more complicated as it will require certain documents from you such as a Letter of Undertaking warranting that you will move into a said new property, as well as a copy of the original Sales and Purchase Agreement. It is more troublesome, but doable. 

Credit: You may get in touch with Clement, our realtor lead for this article, at +65 9159 2011. 

REA No: R065119B