Returning Singaporean students can, from July 10, apply to join local schools
SINGAPORE - Singaporean students who are relocating back to the Republic can from July 10 apply for admission to a secondary school, junior college or Millennia Institute (MI) in the 2026 academic year.
They will sit centralised tests under the School Placement Exercise for Returning Singaporeans (Spers) and receive a list of schools they are eligible for based on their performance, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said in a press statement on July 1.
Those seeking admission to Secondary 1 to 3 in 2026 will have from July 10 to 23 to apply for admission, and will sit their Spers-Sec tests from Sept 1 to 5, which will comprise tests for English and mathematics.
Application for junior colleges and MI will open from July 10 till Oct 17, and the Spers-Sec tests will be held on Nov 6.
Applicants will receive their posting results in December, and join the schools at the start of the school term in 2026.
As Secondary 4 and Pre-University 2 are national examination years, returning Singaporeans generally do not enter the school system at these levels, MOE added.
Those wishing to join a secondary school in Singapore in 2026 but are unable to take the Spers-Sec tests in September can instead take tests in December under the Supplementary Placement Exercise (SPE).
Application for the SPE will open from Nov 4 to 17, and the SPE tests will be held on Dec 3. SPE applicants will receive their school posting results in February 2026 for admission in the same month.
Returning Singaporeans who can return by September 2025 are advised to apply for Spers-Sec instead of SPE, as this would allow them to start school in January 2026 alongside their peers.
Alternatively, students can apply for a place in a primary or secondary school near their homes in Singapore through the Assured School Placement (ASP) service.
Instead of centralised tests, the prospective school may conduct school-based assessments and an interview to determine the appropriate level and class for the child, MOE added.
Those who wish to find out more about the placement exercises can visit https://www.moe.gov.sg/returning-singaporeans
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"It seems quite unlikely our generation can retire early. Also, job prospects are forever questionable," he says, explaining why he sees the lottery as a form of investment hedge. "I buy expecting to lose, but on the very off chance that it pays off, then it is a safety net," he adds. "My personal philosophy is to spend at least $1 per draw. It is minimal, but can be life-changing." The gambler's fallacy Dr Jared Ng, psychiatrist and founder of psychiatric clinic Connections MindHealth, says: "Lotteries tap into people's hopes and aspirations." For just a few dollars, a ticket offers the tantalising prospect of overnight transformation, a low-risk gamble for a potentially life-changing reward, he says. This is linked to a phenomenon known as probability neglect, where the size of the potential reward overshadows the improbability of winning. The emotional appeal of imagining sudden wealth can easily override rational thinking. "In a country like Singapore where living costs are high, and income gaps can feel stark, this hope becomes especially compelling," adds Dr Ng. Another factor is the gambler's fallacy - the mistaken belief that a win is "due" after a string of losses. This leads people to keep buying tickets, thinking their odds are improving. Dr Annabelle Chow, clinical psychologist at Annabelle Psychology, says: "Punters often fail to realise that each lottery ticket has the same odds of winning, regardless of previous outcomes. As a result, they overestimate their chances and underestimate the actual cost of playing." Lotteries also create an illusion of control, where people believe their personal choices - such as selecting certain numbers or rituals, or even placing bets at specific outlets - can influence an entirely random outcome. No such luck. "Toto gives every number and combination an equal chance; there is no pattern or lucky pick," says Dr Chua Tin Chiu, a statistician at the National University of Singapore. "It is like flipping a fair coin. Previous outcomes don't affect the next," Dr Chua explains. "Numbers have no memory. They don't think, 'I haven't come out in a while, maybe today's the day.' That is not how probability works." Meanwhile, some individuals believe lucky numbers are not random but revealed through dreams, temple visits or even rituals like lion dances during Chinese New Year. Lottery buying for these people is guided by signs, says Dr Chow. Then there are the stories: The distant cousin who hit the jackpot, or the colleague's friend who suddenly bought a condominium in cash. Dr Ng says: "Frequent news reports and word-of-mouth tales about people winning life-changing sums make such outcomes feel more common than they really are. 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"After 45 nights of drinking, he got up to shower and slipped in the bathroom," Mr Ding recalls. "He fractured his spine and became paralysed from the neck down. At the hospital, scans also revealed he had stage 3 brain cancer." Although insurance covered most of his medical bills, Mr Teo quickly lost the rest of his winnings. He gambled away over $100,000 at the casino and later fell for a scam that cost him another $130,000. The remaining funds soon vanished. To make ends meet, he became a Grab driver. Mr Ding later shared the story on Facebook. Through a mutual friend, he and Mr Teo reconnected and exchanged messages. Not long after, Mr Ding learnt that the Grab driver had died because his cancer had returned. More than five years on, Mr Teo's story still haunts him. "Easy come, easy go. Unplanned money leads to unplanned expenses. There is nothing wrong with spending for happiness, but without an objective or plan, it's easy to lose it all," he says. In other countries, stories of the so-called "lottery curse" are all too common - where sudden wealth fuels reckless spending on vices like drugs, gambling and lavish lifestyles, eventually leading to ruin. Briton Callie Rogers was just 16 when she won £1.8 million in the National Lottery back in 2003. In an August 2025 interview with UK tabloid The Mirror, she described how she quickly spent it all on parties, drugs and cosmetic surgery. Now 38, she touched on the darker side of sudden wealth, revealing that the pressure of her win pushed her into depression. At one point, she even tried to take her own life. "It just became too much to cope with," she said. "Not knowing who genuinely liked me any more was hard - and the stress of all that money made it worse." Care for Winners In 2010, Singapore Pools launched the Winners Wealth Management programme, a voluntary programme designed to help lottery winners who have received more than $1 million learn how to manage their new-found wealth. In 2016, the programme was relaunched as Care for Winners. In collaboration with MoneySense, Singapore's national financial education programme, winners are offered practical financial planning tips, such as keeping news of the win within a trusted circle, settling outstanding debts and making sound investment decisions. "We realised that coming into sudden wealth can be overwhelming, and people often need some help navigating what to do next," says Mr Chin Sau Ho, senior director of community partnerships and communications at Singapore Pools. Citing cautionary tales from overseas, he notes that many big winners eventually find themselves worse off than before their windfall. "That is exactly what we are trying to help winners in Singapore avoid. You have already beaten the odds to receive this large windfall. We want you to be a winner for life, by equipping you with the tools to manage your money wisely," he says, adding that most lottery winners are open to enrolling in the programme. While dramatic stories of sudden wealth gone wrong often make headlines and serve as cautionary tales, the lottery winners interviewed by The Sunday Times appear to be more level-headed about their unexpected windfall. How a million dollars changed his life Mr Leong describes the sudden wealth in his early 20s as "a stepping stone for you to do whatever you want". It changed the course of his life, although the journey started on a muted note. During the Chinese New Year holidays, the Singapore Pools office was closed, so he had to wait three days to collect his $1 million winnings. "Honestly, I kept questioning whether it was real. I worried about losing the ticket or getting into an accident," he recalls. When the office reopened, he went to the main branch with his girlfriend and her father, expecting a long and complicated process. He was surprised when all he had to do was take a queue number before he was handed a cheque. After cashing the cheque, he gave half the winnings to his girlfriend (now wife). Both gave part of the money to their parents. The son of a taxi driver and an office administrator, Mr Leong says he did not know how to manage the money. "But I was clear on one thing: I wasn't going to 'flex' or change my lifestyle. Char Siu Lang founder Ivan Leong showing his winning Toto ticket. ST PHOTO: BRIAN TEO "I don't know much about luxury brands. I don't know anything about Chanel or Louis Vuitton," says Mr Leong, who splurged only on a $500 Tissot watch he had been eyeing. After working at his first job for a year, he decided to resign. "I was pretty relaxed at that time. With that kind of money, my girlfriend and I took a short break from work, did some travelling and just enjoyed life," he says. They then successfully applied for a Build-To-Order flat together, and paid for most of the mortgage in cash. Now 36, married and a father to a two-year-old, he says the real jackpot was the freedom to explore various careers without stress. He worked in a start-up as an operation manager and sold insurance for a few years. In 2017, a friend took the foodie and enthusiastic home cook to a hawker stall for char siew rice. It sparked the idea of starting his own char siew stall. As it turned out, his friend knew the hawker who mentioned he was looking to hire a helper. The pay was modest, at just over $1,000 a month, but Mr Leong did not hesitate. To him, becoming a hawker's assistant was a hands-on apprenticeship in the art of roasting and the realities of running a hawker business. Two years later, he struck out on his own, launching Char Siu Lang in Bukit Merah. That first stall eventually closed, but he runs two other outlets in Ang Mo Kio and Woodlands today. Many are surprised that despite winning the lottery, Mr Leong still chooses the sweaty, backbreaking grind of hawker life. "If I were you, I would retire," people often tell him. Others pitch unsolicited advice, urging him to invest in cryptocurrencies or financial portfolios. But Mr Leong prefers to play it safe, sticking with tried-and-tested options like property and fixed deposits. He believes everything happens for a reason, and that buying a lottery ticket was "buying a hope". A 10-year survey on older Singaporeans, which included their lottery habits, explored how unexpected winnings affect how people spend their money. The researchers tracked spending patterns across more than 30 categories, comparing splurges on long-lasting goods like furniture and electronics with day-to-day purchases, and weighing public, showy spending against private indulgences. "One myth is that if you win a big lottery prize, you are going to spend it in a way that is very conspicuous and irrational," says economics professor Kim Seonghoon of Singapore Management University, who led the study released in 2024. But the truth is quite the opposite, he adds. Most lottery winners continue to live life pretty much like how they did before they struck gold. For every $1 of lottery prize, consumption spending increases by 50 cents within the first year of winning. Instead of spending on luxury cars or homes, lottery winners here spent most of their money on non-durables like food and household goods. In a separate 2021 study, Associate Professor Kim discovered that every $10,000 boost in income from a lottery win led to a small but meaningful and measurable increase in self-reported health. He cites a famous Swedish study published in 2020 which showed that lottery winners' long-term health did not improve there despite a big jump in income. However, in Singapore, he continues, lottery winners reported feeling healthier, at least in the short term, after their windfall. "It does not necessarily reduce objective health markers like cancer incidence or stroke incidences, but lottery winners might have better peace of mind, better life satisfaction via higher income," he says. "As far as my empirical analysis suggests, I don't see an adverse impact of winning a lottery prize from Singapore," Prof Kim says with a laugh. Society also wins Since its inception, Singapore Pools has operated as a not-for-profit organisation. In 2024, it reported a record turnover of $12.2 billion. "Many people tend to see Singapore Pools only in terms of our products and services," says Mr Chin. "But what they may not realise is that if we didn't exist, much of that gambling activity would move to illegal platforms, and the $12 billion in revenue would leave our economy and flow overseas." He adds that by operating legally, Singapore Pools ensures that the money stays within the country, ultimately benefiting Singaporean society and its people. For every dollar placed as a bet, the organisation pays a 22 cent betting duty to the Government. According to its 2024 annual report, 70 per cent of Singapore Pools' revenue is spent on prize payouts, 22 per cent on gambling duties and taxes, and 3 per cent is earmarked for operational costs. Around 5 per cent of the gambling revenue is channelled back to the Tote Board, a statutory board under the Ministry of Finance that oversees Singapore Pools and functions as a broad-based grant-making organisation. Especially during the early nation-building years after independence, these profits helped to fund the building of major landmarks in Singapore. Between 1968 and 1976, $14.5 million of lottery revenue went towards the construction of the former National Stadium. It also helped to fund the building of the Indoor Stadium (1988), Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay (1996), and Gardens by the Bay. The Tote Board gives, on average, $500 million a year to support programmes that uplift vulnerable groups, champion community well-being and encourage social cohesion. These include programmes in the areas of healthy living, community care, sports and arts. Reflecting on Singapore Pools' pragmatic approach to gambling, Mr Chin notes: "Some people see gambling purely as a vice, and may not understand our role. But they don't realise that good can still come from it." On an individual level, some winners also believe in paying it forward. One of them is Madam Tan (not her real name), who has won four times in the past year alone. The biggest prize was $17,800 for a $30 4-D bet made in December 2024. Her other winnings ranged from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. Despite these windfalls, the 67-year-old says her lifestyle has not changed much. She still has never taken a flight out of Singapore. Instead, Madam Tan, who is self-employed and married with adult children, spends her winnings supporting a cat welfare organisation she has been volunteering with for the past 20 years. "These animals are so pitiful, and if we don't help them, no one will," she says, adding that the shelter she volunteers at needs around $5,000 a month to cover rent, food and medical expenses for the animals. She credits her good luck to good karma, and also a little divine help. At least once a week, she visits the Chinatown Erawan Shrine, which is in a religious goods store in People's Park Centre. Thai dancers at the Chinatown Erawan Shrine on Feb 26. ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG "I always bet on the numbers on my identity card," says Madam Tan, who has spent about $40 on Toto or 4-D bets each week for the past two decades, betting on a set of numbers up to three times. If there are no wins, she moves on to a new set. If she ever wins a big jackpot, she hopes to use the money to buy a property and turn it into an animal shelter. "I always say, this is money that drops from the sky, so I must use it for good," she says. If you are experiencing gambling problems and need counselling or wish to apply for a gambling exclusion, please contact the NCPG Helpline or webchat service at
