At 12 Popular Primary Schools, Living 200m Away Will Count the Same as 1.9km in Phase 2C

There are two changes, and they reach different numbers of schools.

The first is broad. From the 2027 exercise, most primary schools will reserve 60 places for Phase 2C instead of 40. That covers 155 of the 182 primary schools; the smaller ones are left out. More places held back for children with no prior link to a school means fewer go to the earlier, connection-based phases.

The second is narrow. At 12 schools where public housing makes up less than 40% of the homes within a 2km radius, the Phase 2C places will be split down the middle. As The Straits Times reported, the 60 reserved places, along with any spots left over from earlier phases, go into two tracks:

• Track one: children living within 2km of the school.
• Track two: children living more than 2km away.

Inside each track, the paper explained in September, there is no further priority by distance. A child 200 metres from the gate and a child 1.9km away are in the same pool.

The 12 schools are ACS (Junior), ACS (Primary), CHIJ (Katong) Primary, Methodist Girls' School (Primary), Nanyang Primary, Ngee Ann Primary, Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary, Raffles Girls' Primary, Singapore Chinese Girls' Primary, St. Margaret's School (Primary), Tanjong Katong Primary and Tao Nan. Almost all sit in Bukit Timah, the Newton and River Valley belt, or Katong and Marine Parade.

Mr Lee's reasoning: when a neighbourhood is mostly one type of housing, giving priority by distance mostly admits more of the same families. A circle drawn around a school in a condo-and-landed district fills with condo-and-landed children.

Not everyone in the chamber was persuaded.

Mountbatten MP Gho Sze Kee asked whether the change might "systematically disadvantage" children who live right next to a two-track school. Her ward's only primary school, Kong Hwa, is routinely oversubscribed. Of the other schools close by, four are on the list: Tanjong Katong Primary, Tao Nan, CHIJ (Katong) Primary and Ngee Ann Primary. Families in her area, she said, were upset. In her view the framework handicaps every child inside the circle, and wrongly assumes the children outside it come from different backgrounds.

Mr Lee's reply had two parts. The larger pool of Phase 2C places is meant to tilt allocation towards families near a school like Kong Hwa. And families within 2km of a two-track school are not losing their place in the queue; in his words, for those living within two kilometres, MOE is "preserving access".

Nominated MP Kenneth Goh raised a different cost: more Phase 2C places means fewer for the groups admitted earlier, such as alumni children. He suggested popular schools simply take more pupils, or open new campuses. Mr Lee said bigger cohorts run into classroom limits, may not improve the social mix anyway, and could drain pupils from nearby schools at a time when cohorts are shrinking.

The stakes are not abstract. The Straits Times reported last month on families who planned their homes around Primary 1.

One property agent bought a $2.46 million condo on Duchess Avenue, within 1km of both Nanyang Primary and Raffles Girls' Primary. Her daughter lost the Nanyang ballot and got into Raffles Girls' through Phase 2C. An IT consultant moved from Bukit Panjang to the King Albert Park area, paying about $1.7 million for a home within 1km of Pei Hwa. Another family paid about $1.8 million for a home in Joo Chiat, roughly 1.1km from CHIJ (Katong) Primary.

Agents told the paper that clients will pay more to be within 1km of their chosen school, and one called it a "1km halo". Others described an exit plan: buy near a popular school, then resell to the next family doing the same thing.

At these 12 schools, the two-track rule takes some of the certainty out of that plan. Within Phase 2C, 1km no longer beats 1.9km. Sociologists quoted in the piece said the scheme adds more of a luck factor and could blunt the formula P1-focused property advice relies on.

So the property questions are simple. Who actually lives inside these circles? And does living within 1km actually cost more?

We counted every standing HDB block and every completed condo within a straight line of 1km and 2km of each school.

Landed houses are not in these counts, so every share here overstates public housing. MOE's own test is public housing under 40% of all homes within 2km.

Three things stand out.

Five of the 12 have no HDB flat within 1km at all: both ACS schools, Methodist Girls', Raffles Girls' and Singapore Chinese Girls'. Under the old rule, the closest Phase 2C band at those schools could only ever be filled by private homes.

Even without landed houses, 11 of the 12 come in under 40%. Tanjong Katong Primary is the only one above, at 41%, and its circle takes in a lot of landed housing in Katong and Siglap that our count leaves out. Adding those houses could only pull that figure down, which fits MOE's list. Singapore Chinese Girls' Primary is the far end: 3%, about 800 HDB flats against nearly 25,000 condo units.

Kong Hwa comes in at 53%, the only school in the table above half. That fits it being left off the list, and it is the heart of Ms Gho's complaint. Her residents live beside a school that stays on the old rules, ringed by four that do not.

If the "1km halo" were a strong, general effect, condos within 1km of these schools should resell for more per square foot than condos 1-2km away. We checked every condo and apartment resale around the 12 schools registered from October 2024 to 28 August 2026.

A sale can be within 1km of one school and 1-2km from another, so it can count under both.

Inside-1km condos were dearer at only five of the 12 schools. The middle of the 12 gaps is -2%, meaning the typical school shows no inside-1km premium at all on this measure. The spread is wide: from -10% at CHIJ (Katong) Primary to +23% at Methodist Girls'.

That does not prove proximity has no value. What it shows is that location swamps it. The 1-2km ring around a Katong school reaches newer condos along the East Coast; the ring around a Bukit Timah school reaches different streets, ages and tenures. A raw price comparison cannot separate the school from everything else about the street. But it does mean the "1km halo" is a street-by-street effect, not a reliable price premium you can assume when buying.

Three practical shifts, for these 12 schools only.

Inside 2km, distance stops mattering in Phase 2C. Under today's rule, a citizen within 1km goes ahead of one 1-2km away when a phase is oversubscribed. In the within-2km track, they are equal. The premium for being very close, where it exists, no longer buys an edge in this phase.

The pool you compete in gets bigger. Tanjong Katong Primary has about 1,800 HDB flats within 1km but over 21,000 within 2km, before counting the condos and houses. Every child in that wider circle now draws from the same within-2km track.

Living farther away is no longer a write-off. Half the reserved places now go to children beyond 2km, citizens who until now came last among citizens in Phase 2C at oversubscribed schools. A family priced out of Bukit Timah or Katong now has a reserved path in.

What does not change, as announced: this is a Phase 2C rule. In the earlier, connection-based phases, MOE's usual home-school distance bands still decide who goes first when a ballot is needed. And at the other 170 primary schools, Phase 2C works as before, with more places at most of them.

Our view: don't expect a cliff.

First, demand for these schools rests on decades of reputation, and one agent told The Straits Times he does not expect it to vanish because a rule changed. Second, as the price table shows, there was no consistent 1km premium to unwind in the first place. Third, families buy homes for many reasons at once, and agents said most of their P1 clients were planning to move anyway.

If the rule nudges anything, it is probably the shape of demand within the circle. A condo 1.6km from Nanyang Primary now has the same Phase 2C standing as one on the next street. Some families who would have stretched for the closest possible unit may settle for a larger or cheaper home farther out but still inside 2km. That is a gentle relative shift, not a fall.

And the families most affected may be those who already bought within 1km for Phase 2C alone, with no alumni or volunteer link. Their head start in that phase has shrunk. Whether that shows up in resale prices is something we will only see once families have been through the 2027 exercise.

A few suggestions, not advice.

• Check whether your school is one of the 12. If it is, inside 2km is one zone for Phase 2C. Paying more to move from 1.8km to 0.5km buys nothing in that phase.
• Work out which phases you really qualify for. Sibling, alumni and volunteer routes come before Phase 2C. With 20 more places held back for 2C at most schools, the earlier phases get tighter.
• Buy a home that works without the school. One agent in the ST report put it well: don't buy a school and forget to buy a home. P1 is one year; the mortgage is decades. If the school plan fails, the flat still has to fit the family and resell well.
• Consider renting if the school is the only reason to move. One parent in the report signed a two-year lease near her chosen school rather than buy, to keep the option of changing course.
• Don't pay for a "1km halo" you can't see in the data. Compare prices street by street. At seven of these 12 schools, condos within 1km resold for less per square foot than those just outside it (at one, by just $2).

Some limits, stated plainly.

Our distances are straight lines between map points. MOE measures home-school distance with its own method, so a home near the 1km or 2km line could land on the other side officially. Use MOE's own tools for your address.

Landed homes are missing from our stock counts. That makes every HDB share in our table higher than the truth. It is why we say "under 40% even before landed homes", not "exactly X%".

The price gaps are not a school premium. The two rings differ in street, district, age, tenure and unit size. A within-1km median below the 1-2km median does not mean being near the school lowers prices; it means other factors are bigger.

The 15% is MOE's figure. We have no data on who enrols where. It counts successful Phase 2C applicants from public housing at these 12 schools.

Nothing has been tested yet. The two tracks apply from the 2027 exercise. How heavily each track is subscribed, and whether families change where they buy, will only show up afterwards. Mr Lee said as much: whether the changes work depends on parents' choices.

Two kinds of numbers, kept apart.

From the reporting: the policy details, the 12 schools, the 40% test, the 15% figure, and what Mr Lee, Ms Gho and Mr Goh said all come from The Straits Times on 7 October 2026. The family stories, prices paid and agents' comments come from its 26 September 2026 report. The count of 155 of 182 schools comes from coverage of MOE's 10 September announcement.

PropKaki's own data:

• HDB flats are the dwelling units in every standing residential HDB block, from HDB's property information data.
• Condo units are the total units of every completed condo and apartment project in our directory. Executive condominiums are included; landed houses are not.
• Resale prices are URA private resale caveats for condominiums and apartments, registered from 8 October 2024 to 28 August 2026. A median is shown only where a school has at least 10 sales on each side of the 1km line; all 12 qualified.
• Distances are straight-line from each block or project's map point to the school's map point.

The news:

• The Straits Times: P1 registration: 15% of Phase 2C students at 12 popular primary schools live in public housing, 7 October 2026.
• The Straits Times: 'Should we move houses?': Property agents step in as parents plan for Primary 1, 26 September 2026.

The data:

• PropKaki analysis of HDB block data, our condo project directory, and URA private resale caveats to 28 August 2026.

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by The Straits Times. The policy details, quotes and family stories belong to that reporting; the housing and price analysis, the framing and the opinions are ours.

It is opinion and general information, not education, property or financial advice. For your child's registration, rely on MOE's official P1 information.

Published 8 October 2026.