07 March 2019
The Ministry of Education has decided to abolish streaming in Singapore’s schools.
In particular, the Normal (Technical), Normal (Academic) and Express streams have been eliminated and in their place, there will be full subject-based banding, in which students will study subjects based on their own strengths.
All Secondary 1 students in the 2024 batch will take subjects based on their ability, with subjects such as mathematics taught at three levels — G1, G2 and G3.
When these students reach Secondary 4, they will take a common national examination and graduate with a common secondary school certificate.
Form classes will be reorganised across the board, and a combined secondary education certificate will effectively merge the current Express, N(A) and N(T) streams into a single course.
Schools will be encouraged to use the opportunity to group students in different ways and not according to their abilities, thus allowing for more social mixing.