Reforming CCA Access in Our Schools

ADJOURNMENT MOTION

The Leader of the House (Ms Indranee Rajah): Mr Speaker, Sir, I move, "That Parliament do now adjourn."

Question proposed.

Reforming CCA Access in Our Schools

Mr Speaker: Mr Kenneth Tiong.

8.42 pm

Mr Kenneth Tiong Boon Kiat (Aljunied): Speaker, I wish to discuss our co-curricular activities (CCA) system. A resident in my ward shared her son's story with me. He started playing tennis when he was seven. His primary school did not offer tennis as a CCA, so his parents arranged training outside – once a week with a private coach, twice a week in a small group programme. Both parents work full-time. For six years, he trained largely on his own. He never had a chance to play alongside peers of his age. His dream all through primary school was simple: to join a secondary school with a strong tennis team and finally be part of one.

He applied through Direct School Admission (DSA) to his dream school. The school took a handful of boys, all top ranked players in their age group. He was not selected for DSA. He did not give up. He worked hard for his Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) and earned his place on merit. Then came the CCA trial for tennis. He made it to the final round but was not selected.

At this school, trials are conducted before students submit their CCA choices. He was advised not to list tennis. The school explained that there was no room, space constraints, grading considerations. So, the boy chose rugby. It is one of the few CCA with vacancies and open to beginners. Rugby trains three times a week. With that and a heavier Secondary 1 workload, he had to give up competitive tennis. He can still hit a ball on weekends, but he cannot train seriously. His mother told me it was heartbreaking to watch her son give up the sport he loves, not because he was not good enough, but because the system would not give him a chance to become good enough.

Mr Speaker, I believe this is a system problem, not a talent problem. Each January, Secondary 1 students submit a ranked list of CCA preferences. For popular CCAs, sports, performing arts, schools conduct trials and auditions. Students who do not pass are asked to remove that CCA from their choices. Some fail multiple trials. They are allocated to whatever remains. This is not unreasonable on its own. Resources are finite, but consider what makes CCA different from everything else in our education system. CCA is compulsory. Students must participate for four to five years. Under LEAPS 2.0, that participation is graded, and those grades translate into bonus points for post-secondary admission.

We have spent the last decade making the rest of our system more open. Midyear exams removed, PSLE T-scores replaced with broader bands, streaming dissolved into subject based banding. Each reform carries the same signal: less sorting, more room. CCA has not received that same attention.

In 2020, the Ministry piloted the removal of CCA selection trials across eight primary schools. The pilot seems a success. Today, about two thirds of primary schools operate without trials. When I asked the Minister about this on 12 February, the reply confirmed the results but did not address secondary schools where LEAPS 2.0 applies and stakes are highest.

There is a model already operating in Singapore – in our international schools. At Singapore American School, students who miss the competitive team are not turned away. They join a developmental programme and continue training. No student is excluded. It is an established system, on Singapore soil, showing that open participation and competitive excellence reinforce each other.

This principle is not foreign to local schools. Hwa Chong's track and field programme – the first school to win all four divisions at the National Schools Championships in a single year – requires no prior experience and welcomes anyone with a passion for the sport. It fields athletes across every event category: sprints, jumps, throws, walks, cross-country, pole vault.

A 2008 report on the National Schools Championships observed that while a rival school matched Hwa Chong in first-place finishes, Hwa Chong's depth across the field – finishers in every event accumulating points – was what secured the divisional title. Broad participation is not the enemy of competitive excellence. At Hwa Chong, it is the competitive strategy.

Internationally, the pattern holds at scale. Durham University fields 16,000 students across 550 teams, 75% of its student body, and it is the top-ranked team sport university in Britain. In the United States (US), eight million high schoolers play athletics; at the college level, over two million play club sport alongside half a million National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) varsity athletes. The base of the pyramid and the peak are not in competition. They are the same structure.

Norway's sports federation has codified this. Its Children's Rights in Sport provisions, adopted in 1987, guarantee every child the right to choose whichever sport they choose to participate in. Selection determines competitive squads, but no child is excluded. That system, in a country of 5.6 million people, our size, has produced 445 Winter Olympic medals, more than any country on earth.

I also want to turn to DSA, because DSA and CCA are entangled. DSA now covers 141 of 148 secondary schools. Sports is the largest talent category. When a tennis CCA has 20 spots and half are reserved for DSA students, the remaining places must absorb the entire non-DSA cohort – through trials and leftover places. That boy in my ward trained for six years and earned his school place on merit. But the system had already given away half the seats before he arrived.

The question is straightforward: who has access to the preparation that DSA awards? Competitive sport at age 12 requires years of coaching, tournament entry fees and parents with the time and means to support it. In 2024, a basketball coach was investigated by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau for allegedly charging parents $30,000 to $50,000 per child to secure DSA placements. That is not an isolated bad actor – it is a market responding to a system where the stakes are high and the pathways narrow.

Does early selection identify future talent? Sports science is settling on this question and it is not a close call. In December 2025, a study was published in major journal Science, synthesising the developmental histories of over 34,000 top-level performers – Olympic athletes, Nobel laureates, elite chess players, classical music composers – and had a central finding: young standouts and adult world-class performers are largely different people.

Approximately 90% are different individuals. Early specialisation produces early results. But adult world-class performance is predicted by the opposite pattern: limited early discipline-specific practice, extensive multi-disciplinary engagement and gradual initial progress. World-class athletes averaged involvement in two other sports over nine years during childhood.

A companion meta-analysis supported it: the predictors of junior elite success were the precise opposite of the predictors of senior world-class success. Many talent promotion programmes select youths based on current performance, which is often a result of biological maturation – early puberty, relative age effect – being born earlier in the selection year and early specialisation – high volumes of sport-specific practice at a young age. These advantages typically diminish or reverse by adulthood.

It further recommended that since current performance is a poor predictor of future potential, selection should consider "side-entry" athletes and prioritise those with sustainable development patterns, such as moderate main-sport practice combined with other sports. Also, that programme success should be measured not by junior medals, but by how many athletes transition to senior international excellence.

This matters because our CCA system – trials at age 12, a four-year lock-in, LEAPS points tied to competitive results – is structurally an early-selection model. It may produce results in the National School Games. But a system optimised for junior results, by the best available science, is not selecting for true adult world-class performers.

I would like to highlight Singapore's National Youth Sports Institute (NYSI). NYSI's Junior Sports Academy exposes Primary 4 to 5 students to four different sports over two years. NYSI's Head of Sport Science has stated publicly that broad-based sporting experience produces equal or better outcomes through cross-transfer of skills. NYSI even hosted a dialogue with one of the principal authors of that 2025 Science study, Prof Arne Gullich, in 2019, to discuss these principles.

So, the gap is not between what we know and what we do not know. It is between what our institutions endorse and what our CCA system requires. Let us close the gap between rhetoric and reality.

Sir, I propose reform in three areas. First, open every door within the school. Extend the primary school pilot to secondary schools. Let trials determine who makes the competitive squad, not who gets to participate. Every student should be able to join at least one of their top CCA choices. Where a CCA conducts selection trials, these trials should sort students into a competitive squad and a developmental programme – not into participants and the excluded.

Students in the developmental tier train on fundamentals, fitness and game understanding, with the opportunity to trial for the competitive squad each year. This is not a radical idea. It is how Singapore American School and Hwa Chong already do it.

Schools should also survey incoming Secondary 1 students on their CCA preferences and publish the aggregate results. If 60 students want badminton and a school caps it at 20, that gap should be visible. Where demand consistently exceeds supply, schools should adjust. Some may move quickly, splitting sessions or expanding squads within the year. Others may take two to three years to reallocate resources from persistently under-subscribed CCAs. Either pace is fine. What matters is having a credible adjustment mechanism.

And because CCA choices at 13 years old are often made under constraint – a student allocated their third or fourth preference or a student who discovers a genuine passion through a developmental tier – I propose that students be allowed to change CCAs at the end of Secondary 1 or end of Secondary 2 without penalty under LEAPS. This ensures that commitment is meaningful.

Second, open doors beyond the school. We need systematic cross-school access. The Strategic Partnership CCA (SP-CCA) programme today serves 232 students from 86 schools across four sports. I welcome the expansion. But a programme of this scale serving 232 out of roughly 40,000 Secondary 1 students each year is a proof of concept.

I propose three concrete steps.

One, to double SP-CCA from four sports to eight sports within two years.

Two, publish a sport-by-sport availability map, showing which sports are offered at which schools, so that gaps are visible and planning is data-driven.

Three, publish a five-year SP-CCA expansion roadmap with clear targets and invite schools to form voluntary geographic clusters of four to six schools, pooling CCA offerings, so students can cross-attend.

If tennis is only available at 30 schools, it should be an SP-CCA candidate. The boy in my ward, the one who trained for six years, would have had a path. This also creates natural opportunities for the kind of social mixing across school types that the hon Member David Hoe has spoken about.

We should also recognise sport pursued outside school. SportSG already runs ActiveSG Academies and Clubs – affordable, structured programmes in football, basketball, tennis, athletics and other sports, designed for children and youths. Could students participating in a structured external programme – ActiveSG, a National Sports Association, or a registered academy – be eligible for CCA recognition, subject to verification by the school? And at primary level, could we double or triple the Junior Sports Academy intake – this fully MOE-funded, non-competitive, multi-sport programme – given demand already exceeds supply?

Third, build the infrastructure to keep these doors open. If we ask schools to offer a developmental tier alongside competition, we need people to run it. Today, every coach on a school field must hold full National Registry of Coaches (NROC) membership. Since July 2024, provisional membership has been discontinued. A new coach must now complete SG-Coach Theory, a sport-specific Technical Level 1 course, Foundational Sport Science and Standard First Aid certification.

These are appropriate standards for competitive coaching. But we should consider whether a lighter certification pathway, suited to teaching fundamentals rather than competitive technique, might widen the coaching pool. Parent volunteers, older club players, retired coaches, polytechnic and ITE sport graduates who complete coaching practicals but cannot coach in schools without full certification, even full-time National Servicemen (NSFs) with sporting backgrounds could contribute meaningfully at the developmental level if the credentialing framework made room for them.

Norway's 9,500 sports clubs are almost entirely volunteer-run. Three-quarters of all coaches are unpaid volunteers operating under a tiered credentialing system. A country our size sustains developmental coaching across every sport because its framework makes room for volunteers, not only professionals.

CoachSG's own framework already includes an Exploration stage with a Community Coach programme. I propose that CoachSG create a new NROC tier – an Assistant Coach or Recreational Coach credential, completable in eight to 16 hours at nominal cost, covering maybe Safe Sport, first-aid, values-based coaching and inclusive session design. Holders could lead developmental CCA sessions under periodic supervision by fully certified coaches.

Two further changes are needed to align the system's incentives with its stated developmental purpose.

Review the LEAPS 2.0 Achievement domain. When bonus points depend on competition results and school representation, schools have a structural incentive to limit CCA places to students who boost competitive outcomes. Replacing competition-based indicators with measures of growth, effort and consistency would realign LEAPS to its developmental purpose.

And require MOE to collect and publish socioeconomic data on DSA applications and outcomes – household income quartile, participation in paid preparatory programmes. When my hon colleague Ms Eileen Chong asked for this data, the Minister said that MOE does not collect it. I would respectfully suggest that this is a question worth answering. If DSA in sports systematically advantages families who can afford years of private coaching, then it is not a merit pathway. It is a wealth pathway with a merit label.

It is a core concern of the Workers' Party that wealth does not compound unfairness or widen social gaps through our education system – points eloquently elaborated over the years by my hon colleagues Mr Gerald Giam and Assoc Prof Jamus Lim.

Speaker, let me return to that family. That resident also has a younger daughter, at a different school. Her primary school runs recreational sports CCAs. No trials. The girl had never held a badminton racket in her life, but she signed up for badminton because she was curious. She was allocated her first choice. She is learning. She is happy and she belongs.

Two children in the same family. Two completely different experiences. The difference is not talent or effort. It is whether the school opens the door or closes it. That 13-year-old boy did everything he could. He trained for six years. He earned his place in a secondary school that was strong in tennis. He showed up for the trial. And the system told him: there is no room. He is now in his prime developmental years and he is playing a sport he did not choose, while the sport he loves slips further away with each passing term.

His mother told me: "I will always wonder whether, if the school had been more open, my son might have improved and eventually earned a place on the team. It is something we will never have the chance to find out." We have an opportunity to make a system that is genuinely open, to extend to CCAs the same generosity of spirit that has guided every other recent reform of our schools. Sir, I so move.

Mr Speaker: Senior Minister of State David Neo.

8.57 pm

The Senior Minister of State for Education (Mr David Neo): Mr Speaker, I thank Mr Kenneth Tiong for highlighting the importance of access to CCAs in our schools and its role in social mixing, which I spoke about this morning. Other Members, like Mr Shawn Huang, Ms Mariam Jaafar, Mr Melvin Yong, Miss Rachel Ong and Mr Gerald Giam have also made similar calls in the past.

Sir, education in Singapore has always been about more than just grades and academic performance. In 1966, during our early years of nation-building, then-Minister for Education Mr Ong Pang Boon identified extra-curricular activities (ECAs) as a means to inculcate moral values and a sense of national identity and pride among our youths. By the way, if you recognise the term "ECA", like me, you are probably of a certain vintage.

But that aspiration has remained unchanged. We want to nurture our students holistically into people who are intellectually curious, morally grounded, physically active and socially responsible. In 1999, we reflected these aspirations and we increased its importance by renaming ECAs as CCAs. It was a simple change of a letter, but it sent a deeper message that CCAs are not "extras" or add-ons, but they are an integral part of our holistic education. Education must go beyond academics and the confines of the classroom to also foster character, teamwork and resilience.

In this regard, CCAs provide authentic settings where students build character and apply values learned in the classroom – teamwork, resilience, empathy and leadership. Many of us here will recall our own school experiences or hear stories about this: friendships forged through a uniformed group, perseverance tested on the sports field or creativity sparked in a performing arts ensemble.

A few years ago, the hockey boys from St Hilda's Secondary School trained hard for their first post-pandemic National Schools Game competition and they won their opening match. But hours later, they would receive crushing news. Their coach had just passed away sadly from a heart attack. The school and alumni rallied around them. Their CCA teachers, Glenn and Caleb, would check in on them every day. Team Captain Nabeel would continually remind them of their coach's belief: "Never stop fighting till the final whistle is blown". Alumni would take time off work and school to coach and train the boys.

One of the alumni, Kishon, said "The team needs support now, more than ever. They are family to me. How can I abandon them in a time of need?". The team would go on to complete their games. As a tribute to their coach, the whole team wore T-shirts under their jerseys that read "For you, Coach Kader".

Why do I tell this story? I tell this story because CCA is important to us and to our students. It enhances their confidence, teamwork skills, communication abilities and a sense of school belonging. Studies have shown this and these are consistent with global studies.

But these outcomes are only possible because our principals, teachers, parents and students heeded our call in 1999 and made CCAs an integral part of our education. I also want to take this moment to thank our educators, parents and Members for their strong support for CCAs so that we can achieve holistic education outcomes for our students.

Mr Speaker, our CCA policies have also evolved in tandem with the broader vision of education. In earlier decades, CCAs placed more emphasis on discipline and school identity. Over time, they have also become platforms for nurturing leadership and civic engagement.

To encourage students' continued participation in a broad and diverse range of non-academic activities, a CCA grading scheme, LEAPS, which the Member mentioned was introduced in 2003. The introduction of LEAPS 2.0 in 2014 also marked another step forward. It was a deliberate step to focus more on quality over quantity and to reduce the excessive competition to 'chase' down to the last point. This reflected the feedback from parents, educators and students who felt that the previous framework had been overly competitive, including some of the other things that the Member has mentioned.

Nevertheless, Mr Speaker, we acknowledge the CCA landscape is not perfect and challenges remain, something that many Members of Parliament have raised over the years, including the ones that the Member has just mentioned.

Let me assure the House that we will continue to review and to improve. On access, and selecting one's favourite CCAs, we are working to further widen access for students to a greater diversity of CCAs.

I had a very serious conversation with the Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth about widening this access, but in case you are in doubt, that is also me. But that is the benefit of having multiple portfolios. We can bring together the strengths of different Ministries to work better for Singapore and Singaporeans.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY), in particular Sport Singapore and the National Arts Council, are working together to share facilities and provide professional coaching across schools.

Members may also be aware of the Strategic Partnership-CCA (SP-CCA), the Member mentioned it as well, which enables secondary school students to pursue activities beyond what their individual schools offer. There is also the multi-school CCA, which is another ground up initiative where schools come together to offer CCAs to students that they could not otherwise have done.

I thank the Member for agreeing that we can expand these CCAs to more students and more schools so that students can get to choose and participate in their first choice CCA. I will further expand on these efforts, so that students, regardless of school size, have access to quality and diverse CCA experiences. I will announce more details at the MCCY’s Committee of Supply (COS) debates later.

I am also glad that the Member agrees with Assoc Prof Kenneth Goh and my discussion this morning about the need to account for potential over early selection, and our improvements and the shifts in DSA. We will continue to ensure that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are supported. Our schools, as the Member has pointed out, already bear the cost of running CCAs, including fees for instructors and equipment.

Minister Desmond Lee, in his COS speech this morning, has said that students from lower-income families can tap on the MOE Opportunity Fund for learning experiences and any additional CCA expenses. We will continue to do what we need to do to make sure that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are not deprived of CCA participation because of financial reasons.

CCAs are a part of a much larger educational experience that develops our students to their fullest potential. MOE also provides a range of avenues such as the art, music, and physical education curriculum and various Applied Learning Programmes and Learning for Life Programmes. Of note also, is the Junior Sports Academy programmme for primary school students to discover their sporting strengths and interests, something that the Member has also spoken about. And yes, we will explore how to increase access to the Junior Sports Academy programme as well.

The Member also spoke about availability of coaches, and as I am sure he will know, during our debate earlier this year about the Singapore Sports Council (Amendment) Bill that National Registry of Coaches (NROC) certification is required for the safety of our student. And it is something that is very welcome by Singaporeans. I think you will have to continue to require that our coaches do possess NROC certification.

While we have done much, we will continue to improve. Looking ahead, we will work across ministries, both MOE and MCCY, to continue to strengthen the role that CCAs play in nurturing the holistic development of our students. And as part of this, strengthening access to CCAs for students is a key priority, including allowing more of them their first choice and strengthening access for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

As our Prime Minister has said in his Budget Speech, "Every Singaporean, regardless of where they start in life, should have a fair chance to pursue their aspirations and realize their full potential." I believe this is no different in terms of gaining access to CCA.

Mr Speaker, I thank the Member once again for his very many suggestions. It is not possible for me to reply to every single one, but I also want to thank him for recognising the importance of CCAs in our schools.

CCAs are very much an integral part of our Singapore's education system and one that endeavours to develop every Singaporean into confident citizens. They give our students space to discover their passion and to contribute to their communities, and to develop into confident persons and concerned citizens.

As our society evolves, so must our approach to holistic education. MOE remains committed to working closely with teachers, parents and partners across Government and the community to ensure that students continue to be able to access CCAs and that CCAs continue to nurture both the heart and mind so that we continue to shape a generation that is not just ready for work, but for life.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved, "That Parliament do now adjourn."

Mr Speaker: Happy Chap Goh Meh! Order, order.

Adjourned accordingly at 9.07 pm.