How P1 Balloting Works in Singapore: Reserved Places, Priority Order and the Draw

In the 2025 exercise, 84 of 179 primary schools were oversubscribed, and all but 4 of those oversubscribed schools ran a ballot. So balloting is not an exotic outcome — at a popular school it is the normal way places are allocated.

1 · Places are held back before anything starts

At the beginning of the exercise, every school sets aside 60 places: 20 for Phase 2B and 40 for Phase 2C. This is what stops a school with a large sibling and alumni base from being effectively closed to outsiders.

2 · Leftovers are split at the end of Phase 2A

When Phase 2A closes, whatever places remain are divided: one-third to Phase 2B and two-thirds to Phase 2C, on top of the reserved places.

3 · Applicants are ranked, not shuffled

If a phase is oversubscribed, MOE works down this ladder and admits everyone in a band before considering the next:

Citizenship outranks distance completely. A Singapore Citizen living 3 km away is admitted ahead of a Permanent Resident living 300 m away.

4 · The draw runs in one band only

Suppose a school has 30 places left in Phase 2C and receives 12 applications from Citizens within 1 km, 25 from Citizens in the 1–2 km band, and 40 from Citizens beyond 2 km. All 12 of the first group are admitted. That leaves 18 places for the 25 applicants in the 1–2 km band — so the ballot runs there, among those 25, for those 18 places. Nobody beyond 2 km is considered at all, and no ballot is run for them.

This is the detail that makes distance so decisive. You are not in a lottery with everyone who applied; you are in a lottery with the people in your band, and only if your band happens to be the one that straddles the cut-off.

Reading the live numbers during the exercise

MOE updates vacancies and balloting status per school through each phase, and publishes the full past-year data afterwards. Two things are worth reading from the history: whether a school balloted at all, and — more usefully — which band the ballot reached. A school that balloted within 1 km is a different proposition from one that balloted in the 1–2 km band.

What does not affect the ballot

• When during the registration window you registered.
• How many volunteer hours you completed beyond the 40-hour threshold.
• Whether you were unsuccessful in an earlier phase.
• Any preference order — you register at exactly one school per phase.