Is Your New Launch Within A Popular Primary School Now? 122 New Projects Updated With The New Home-School Distance Changes

One of the biggest concerns among home buyers is school proximity. Even if you don’t have children yourself, it’s well known that schools are part of the “secret sauce”, when it comes to future appreciation. Now that the Ministry of Education (MOE) has announced changes to the home-school distance (HSD), some condos may be much closer in enrolment range; and some rare few are further. Here’s what you need to know:

What’s the relevance of school proximity?

When enrolling children in a school, those who live within one kilometre have a better chance of success. To oversimplify a little: 

First priority of placement goes to children who already have an older sibling, in the same school. If, after this, the school is oversubscribed, then those living within one kilometre will have a greater chance of success.

After this, those living within two kilometers have priority; but the odds of getting in are quite slim at that point.  

As such, parents angling for a particular school often pick their property based on this proximity. Likewise, property investors, looking for resale gains, often prefer developments near high-demand schools. 

Besides this, living near the school means children waste less time travelling back and forth, can sleep in a little longer, run back desperately to get any homework they forgot during recess, etc. 

How is the distance to the school calculated?

This is where the home-school distance comes in. You can use OneMap to check the “official”, recognised distance from a property to the school. 

There has, however, been a significant change to the distances of late. The old system of measurement worked by calculating the distance from a development, to a given point (usually the centre) of a school. 

This is now being changed, so that the measured distance is from the School Land Boundary (SLB), to the home. The shortest distance from the SLB to the home will be used. 

In most cases, this means schools will be closer for home buyers. However, these three schools will actually be further, as their original reference point was outside their SLB:

• Cedar Primary School
• Maris Stella High School
• Marymount Convent School 

MOE has said that the previous distance will still apply for these schools, for the 2022 school registration; but this is a one-off event. The affected addresses for these schools can be found here. 

New launch projects and the primary schools within 1KM

This table showcases the latest new launches that have registered a sale transaction, as well as their respective postal codes. You can sort or search by postal code to see the primary schools within 1KM.

Note that for the schools above, we have used postal codes for the purposes of the HSD. Some new launch condos may not be reflected, in the event there are no transactions, as their postal codes would not appear for us to determine distance.

What about primary schools by ranking?

We understand that a project near a popular school is a selling point, and so we decided to showcase primary schools by ranking and map out the respective new launches that are within 1km of it:

As popularity is subjective, we decided to follow the rankings done by schlah.com.

Note that within the same development, some blocks are in range while others aren’t

In terms of the HSD, we note that some developments have blocks within a one-kilometre range, whereas other blocks are not. For example:

In Treasure at Tampines, postal codes like 528458 to 528466 are within a one-kilometre radius to Junyuan Primary School, whereas postal code 528457 is not. 

For The Woodleigh Residences, postal codes 367804 to 367806 are within range of St. Andrews Junior School, whereas most others are not. 

So because this is done by postal code, it will mean that some blocks are close enough to be in the enrolment range, whilst others are not. 

This does mean that it could perhaps lead to premium pricing for the stacks in question. It could also represent an issue for postal codes like 266075 to 266076 in Leedon Green, for which there are no schools within a one-kilometre distance (the rest of Leedon Green is mostly within one-kilometre of Nanyang Primary School).

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For those interested in the full details, here are the new launches with primary school discrepancies within the development itself:

Do note that developments without any differences in primary school proximities are not included in the table above.

It’s a good time to recheck your shortlisted properties

Some condos will now become more attractive, thanks to schools being (on paper) closer. 

Fourth Avenue Residences is a good example: it was previously just outside the priority distance for Raffles Girls School, at about 1.1 kilometres. However, our recent check shows that Raffles Girls School is now considered within the one-kilometre mark. The Jovell, which previously only had East Spring Primary in range, is now also within one-kilometre White Sands Primary.

Of all the new launches, Sengkang Grand Residences currently has the greatest number of schools within priority distance: eight schools, including the popular Nan Chiau Primary.

Treasure at Tampines and Kopar at Newton come next, with five schools in priority distance.

For families who want to be near specific schools, we’d suggest do you a quick recheck of development distances now. If you left out any properties that were just out of range, they may be back in the picture now.

Which new launches still don’t have schools within one-kilometre?

The following new launches haven’t benefitted from revised distances. They have no schools in priority distance:

• The Reef at King’s Dock
• Normanton Park
• Some blocks at Kent Ridge Hill Residences
• Midtown Modern
• Midtown Bay
• The M
• Park Nova
• Boulevard 88
• 3 Cuscaden
• Cuscaden Reserve
• 19 Nassim
• Some blocks at Leedon Green
• Hyll on Holland
• One Holland Village Residences
• Van Holland
• Mooi Residences
• Royal Green
• Meyer Mansion
• One Meyer
• Kandis Residence 
• The Essence

Don’t forget to consider real distances, not just distances on paper 

Some overlooked aspects are the number of busy roads your children have to cross, or whether your block is deep in and just entails a longer walk. Sometimes, distances on paper don’t match the reality; online routes may include unnecessary diversions, or ignore the distance to a safe crossing.

Short of visiting yourself, we suggest you use Google Street View to manually check the route. 

In the meantime, follow us on Stacked, so we can update you as the situation develops. You can also visit Stacked Homes for the most in-depth reviews of new and resale homes, in the Singapore private property market.