The parent volunteer scheme has quietly lost 4 more schools. Fairfield Methodist School (Primary) and Mee Toh School stopped taking parent volunteers in 2026, and Hong Wen School and Rosyth School did the same in 2025.
Around one-third of Singapore’s 182 primary schools still run the scheme. Below is the list of schools that still offer it, what each one actually asks of you, and the part most coverage skips: what a shrinking parent volunteer scheme does to the value of an address.
4 schools in 2 years. Fairfield Methodist (Primary) in Dover and Mee Toh in Punggol dropped the scheme in 2026. Hong Wen in Bendemeer and Rosyth in Serangoon North dropped it in 2025.
Fairfield Methodist and Rosyth both pointed parents to the strength of their parent support groups instead. The other 2 did not give a public reason.
The Phase 2B results for 2026 are the interesting part, because they show these schools were not fighting off demand.
| School | Applied | Seats | Outcome |
| Fairfield Methodist (Primary) | 27 | 20 | Every citizen within 2km accepted |
| Hong Wen | 32 | 30 | Every citizen within 2km accepted |
| Mee Toh | 41 | 59 | Everyone accepted |
| Rosyth | 18 | 21 | Everyone accepted |
2 of the 4 had more seats than applicants and took every child who applied. At the other 2, every Singapore citizen living within 2km got a place. The ballot only reached families further out than that.
So Phase 2B at these schools was not competitive, and proximity was barely doing any work in it.
That changes how you read the withdrawals. This was not demand management, and it was not a response to parents gaming a contested phase. These schools simply decided they did not need the volunteers.
MOE also said it is reviewing P1 registration to widen access and encourage social mixing, and that the number of schools offering the scheme has been broadly stable. Read those 2 statements together and the direction of travel is fairly clear.
You volunteer at the school before your child registers, typically a minimum of 40 hours, doing things like helping at school events, traffic duty or library work. In return you may register in Phase 2B.
2 things parents routinely get wrong. First, it is not a guarantee. Phase 2B still ballots when it is oversubscribed, as Fairfield Methodist’s 27-for-20 shows. Second, you are not alone in that phase: Phase 2B also holds children of active community leaders and of parents with church or clan association ties.
Look at what schools actually ask and the 40-hour figure is only a floor. Nanyang asks for 80 hours plus a CV and an interview. Raffles Girls’ Primary asks 60 hours and an interview. St. Hilda’s wants a weekly commitment across 2 years. Northland asks 70. The real cost is higher than the headline, and the application windows open a full year or more before registration.
If the mechanics of the phases are new to you, start with how P1 registration really works and our complete guide to the registration exercise.
These are the popular schools that still run a genuine parent volunteer route, after removing the 4 just dropped and the 4 clan-route schools explained in the next section.
Requirements are as we last recorded them and schools change them without much notice, so confirm with the school before you commit a year of Saturdays.
| School | Area | What it takes |
| Anderson Primary | Ang Mo Kio | 40 hours, apply Feb to May |
| CHIJ Our Lady of Good Counsel | Serangoon | 40 hours |
| CHIJ Primary (Toa Payoh) | Toa Payoh | Via the Central Parents Council |
| CHIJ St. Nicholas Girls’ | Ang Mo Kio | 40 hours, plus 20 more after a place, apply by Dec |
| Chongfu School | Yishun | 80 hours, apply Sep to Oct (clan route also available) |
| Frontier Primary | Jurong West | 40 hours, apply Jan to Apr |
| Gongshang Primary | Tampines | 40 hours |
| Henry Park Primary | Bukit Timah | 40 hours, apply in Nov |
| Holy Innocents’ Primary | Hougang | 40 hours |
| Methodist Girls’ (Primary) | Bukit Timah | 40 hours, apply in Apr |
| Nan Hua Primary | Clementi | 40 hours, interview required, apply in Mar |
| Nanyang Primary | Bukit Timah | 80 hours, CV and interview required |
| Northland Primary | Yishun | 70 hours, apply in Mar |
| Pasir Ris Primary | Pasir Ris | 40 hours |
| Pei Hwa Presbyterian | Bukit Timah | 40 hours |
| Poi Ching School | Tampines | 40 hours |
| Raffles Girls’ Primary | Bukit Timah | 60 hours, interview required, apply in Dec |
| Red Swastika School | Bedok | 40 hours |
| Riverside Primary | Woodlands | 40 hours |
| Rulang Primary | Jurong West | Contact the school directly |
| Singapore Chinese Girls’ Primary | Novena | 40 hours |
| Springdale Primary | Sengkang | 40 hours |
| St. Hilda’s Primary | Tampines | Weekly across 2 years, apply by Aug |
| Teck Ghee Primary | Ang Mo Kio | 40 hours, apply by Apr |
One pattern is hard to miss: 5 of them sit in Bukit Timah alone – Henry Park, Methodist Girls’, Nanyang, Pei Hwa Presbyterian and Raffles Girls’ Primary. The scheme concentrates where demand already is.
We mapped that cluster in top primary schools in Bukit Timah, and the wider picture sits in our list of the most popular primary schools.
One honest caveat. MOE puts the national figure at about one-third of 182 schools, so roughly 60. The list above covers the popular and oversubscribed ones, not every school in Singapore. If a school is not here it does not mean it has no scheme, only that we have not checked it.
Not sure which schools your address actually reaches? Ask Kelvin on WhatsApp.
This did not start in 2025. Ngee Ann Primary dropped the scheme in 2020. The Straits Times also found at least 6 more without it: Bukit Timah Primary, CHIJ (Katong) Primary, St. Margaret’s (Primary), Maris Stella High (Primary), Opera Estate Primary and Queenstown Primary.
Back in 2014, 4 schools under the Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan ended their parent volunteer route: Tao Nan, Ai Tong, Nan Chiau and Kong Hwa. What remains at those schools is a clan association route, which needs 2 years of Hokkien Huay Kuan membership and about 80 hours, not a school parent volunteer scheme.
Here is the part that matters for anyone choosing where to live.
P1 registration has a small number of levers. Alumni ties work in Phase 2A. Parent volunteering, community leadership and church or clan ties work in Phase 2B.
Everyone else meets in Phase 2C, where distance from home to school decides who gets balloted first.
Every time a school removes the parent volunteer route, it removes the one lever a family can earn through effort rather than through birth, faith or a property purchase.
What is left leans harder on the 2 things money and lineage already control.
We are property agents, so read this as the uncomfortable admission it is: a shrinking parent volunteer scheme makes addresses inside the 1km ring more valuable, not less.
| School that dropped PV | 1km Condos | Units |
| Fairfield Methodist, Dover | 8 projects | 2,992 |
| Rosyth, Serangoon | 18 projects | 3,734 |
| Mee Toh, Punggol | 9 projects | 4,566 |
| Hong Wen, Bendemeer | 124 projects | 9,955 |
Those are the condominiums recorded within 1km of each school. They exclude HDB blocks, which in Punggol and Bendemeer carry far more households than the condos do.
And the pressure does not stop at the school that dropped the scheme. A parent who would have volunteered still wants a place somewhere, so they move down their list to the schools nearby.
The 1km rings that tighten are not only the affected school’s, but those of the schools around it.
You don’t have to buy a home just for the parent volunteer scheme. 4 schools have withdrawn it in 2 years, MOE is reviewing the whole framework, and a scheme can end between the year you start volunteering and the year you register.
Volunteer if the school is genuinely your first choice and you would be happy doing it anyway. Just do not let it be the whole plan.
Have a second and third option before you need them. Most parents anchor on 1 school and work backwards from it. The families who come through this comfortably are the ones who already know their next 2 choices when Phase 2B opens, because that is the point where options start closing.
Phase 2B is worth understanding and worth using. It is not worth betting a home purchase on.
Understand your school options. A school that has never balloted in Phase 2C is a very different proposition from one that ballots every year, and as the 2026 results above show, a school can look contested in the headlines while quietly accepting everyone.
Our Phase 2B and Phase 2C difficulty rankings set out which schools are genuinely contested and which are comfortable.
Distance is the durable lever. It is the one that has survived every review so far. If a school genuinely matters to your family, the honest advice is to look at what sits inside its 1km ring and what that costs, rather than to bank on a volunteering route that may not exist in 3 years.
And check the school’s own website before you plan around any of this. The Ministry of Education sets the phases, but each school decides its own scheme, and they do not always announce a change loudly.
Fairfield Methodist School (Primary) and Mee Toh School stopped in 2026. Hong Wen School and Rosyth School stopped in 2025.
MOE says about one-third of the 182 primary schools, so roughly 60. The list above covers the more popular ones, with what each currently asks for.
Usually a minimum of 40 hours, but several schools ask for much more. Nanyang asks 80 hours with a CV and interview, Northland 70, Raffles Girls’ Primary 60 with an interview, and St. Hilda’s wants a weekly commitment across 2 years.
No. It gets you into Phase 2B, which ballots when there are more applicants than places. In 2026, Fairfield Methodist had 27 applicants for 20 seats and Hong Wen had 32 for 30, though in both cases the ballot only affected families living outside 2km.
No. Those 2, along with Nan Chiau and Kong Hwa, ended their parent volunteer route in 2014. What remains is a Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan clan route requiring 2 years of membership and around 80 hours.
Probably, at the margin. Removing a volunteering route leaves alumni ties, clan and church ties, and distance. Distance is the lever most families can act on, and acting on it means buying or renting inside the 1km ring.
Weighing a move around a school catchment?
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