From secondary school to university, this issue illustrates the educational background of Singapore’s 34 ministers (as of 2021) in eight charts and figures.

In this issue:


How elite are the elite institutions of Singapore?

Which three junior colleges produced the majority of Singapore's ministers?

What is the most commonly studied degree subject among ministers — and what is the most uncommon?

How prevalent is an overseas education among ministers? And how many went to Oxbridge?

The Elite Institutions of Singapore






Source on secondary school types: 2020 Secondary School Posting Booklet(which includes information on 143 secondary schools, but excludes schools for which S1 posting is not a part of the admissions process, i.e. Singapore Sports School).

While Independent and Special Assistance Programme (SAP) schools form a small minority of the secondary schools which exist in Singapore, a majority of ministers (23 out of 34) were educated in SAP or Independent schools.

Note that schools can be categorised under multiple categories (autonomous and SAP, independent and SAP).

SAP schools have a distinct focus on bilingual education in English and Mandarin Chinese. As recently as 2019, the importance of SAP schools was again emphasised by then-Minister of Education Ong Ye Kung, who pointed to the growing importance of China and the Chinese language. However, criticism has been levelled at the programme for being ethnically-exclusive and elitist in nature, considering Singapore's large non-Chinese minority.
Independent schools "have the flexibility to set their own fees and develop their academic and non-academic programmes". For Singapore Citizens, the school fees amount to $300-$600/month, while the monthly school fee for government (including autonomous) schools amounts to $25-$43/month (with an additional fee for autonomous schools).
Based on 2020 Primary School Leaving Exams (PSLE) admission cut-off points, 6 out of 11 SAP schools were in the 20 options with the highest cut-off points. Meanwhile, all 8 independent schools were among the 20 options with the highest cut-off points.

Note: The most recent iterations of each minister's schools are used in this article.

These elite institutions are not only more exclusive, they are also concentrated geographically: all Independent schools and all but two SAP schools (Nan Hua and Nan Chiau) are located in Central and South Singapore. A similar pattern can be seen in the schools attended by ministers.
Why does location matter? A study of 40 years of junior college yearbooks from 6 junior colleges indicated that a neighbourhood’s characteristics could potentially explain why some groups are under-represented in Singapore’s top junior colleges:
"We found that ethnicity and gender matter in different ways. For female students, attending an elite junior college in a wealthy neighborhood is associated with wealthy neighborhoods having a disproportionate number of elite girls’ secondary schools that feed enrollment into the junior colleges. By contrast, for Malays, not attending an elite junior college in a wealthy neighborhood has more to do with Malays being underrepresented in wealthy neighborhoods." (Chua, Swee & Wellman, 2019)

Most Ministers attend one of three Junior Colleges