P1 registration: Why did the parent volunteer scheme become an arms race?

**Jason Tan** (0:02)
This is a podcast by The Straits Times.

**Lianne Chia** (0:17)
Would you volunteer your time and effort to get your child into a primary school of your choice? For many parents, it's a no-brainer, even if it involves a huge commitment. Under the P1 registration system, parents who complete at least 40 hours of volunteer work for a school can get priority for admissions. It sounds pretty straightforward, but from what we're hearing on the ground, it's anything but. Parents are lining up to even put up their hands to volunteer in choice schools. Far from being traffic wardens, parents now submit CVs or propose curriculums to schools to be considered for skills-based volunteering. Others even ballot just to get a place to be a volunteer. And at the end of it, priority for admission doesn't guarantee your child could actually get a spot in the school.
Hi, I'm Lianne Chia, Assistant Opinion Editor at The Straits Times, and a mother of a child about to enter Primary 1 next year.
To unpack the role of volunteering on the P1 registration scheme in this episode of In Your Opinion, I'm joined by a keen observer of Singapore's education system, Associate Professor Jason Tan from the National Institute of Education. Welcome to the show.

**Jason Tan** (1:23)
Thank you, Lianne.

**Lianne Chia** (1:24)
Okay, so maybe let's start with understanding the historical context behind this volunteer scheme. Why did the government actually introduce it?

**Jason Tan** (1:32)
I think a big part of the reason probably has to do with the government's push sometime in the late 1990s to encourage greater parental engagement with their children's education. And this particular priority that's awarded to parent volunteers is clearly a sort of incentive to get parents to think seriously about helping the school that they intend to register their child in.

**Lianne Chia** (2:04)
Why was there even a need to push parents to do this?

**Jason Tan** (2:08)
Well, I think that if you look at the entire Primary 1 registration system, a lot of the criteria have to do with incentives that reward not the individual children for the most part, but instead their parents and what their parents can bring to the table when it comes to Primary 1 registration.
In addition to parent volunteering, we also have other sorts of incentives such as being an alumnus of the school, having a parent who's working in the school, being affiliated with the relevant clan association or religious body and so on. And of course, the Primary 1 registration system, if you think about it, is really quite a distinctive one because I think it's the only registration system that brings into play so much of what the parents are all about instead of the individual child. And that makes this particular registration system stand out in contrast with say the secondary school registration system or the polytechnic registration system.

**Lianne Chia** (3:26)
Is the idea of getting parents more involved in their children's life maybe one of the reasons why the government actually put that incentive in, in a way?

**Jason Tan** (3:36)
That was probably a strong motivator because I think that a lot of the criteria, if you think about them more deeply, are reflective of underlying values. They're not just there out of nowhere.
So the existence of all the different phases and also the prioritization of the various criteria within a hierarchy are reflective therefore of underlying values. What the Ministry of Education thinks is more important.

**Lianne Chia** (4:07)
So there is a benefit, right, to seeing getting parents involved long term in the children's life?

**Jason Tan** (4:14)
The research literature internationally certainly seems to support that assertion.

**Lianne Chia** (4:19)
The volunteering scheme. I think it was the late 90s, right, you mentioned that it actually started out with this goal of getting parents to be more involved. So what do you think, Jason? Do you think this has actually achieved its purpose?

**Jason Tan** (4:31)
If you think about the scheme and how it's evolved, it's quite interesting because the Ministry of Education allows each primary school autonomy when it comes to the question of parent volunteering. For example, whether the school wants in the first place to accept any parent volunteers. Secondly, how many volunteers it wishes to accept. Thirdly, what areas of volunteer work the school wishes to deploy the parents in. Fourthly, the duration, I guess, and the frequency of the volunteer work. And of course, admission is not guaranteed at all.
Another thing for us to consider would be the reality that parents are not obliged to continue volunteering even after their child has secured admission to that particular primary school. So there's lots of questions that we might ask about. For instance, what is the meaning of voluntary work? Is it purely for altruistic reasons to benefit the wider school community?