Adjournment Motion: Beyond the Trial: Reforming CCA Access in Our Schools (3rd March 2026)
Mr Speaker, I wish to discuss our Co-Curricular Activity system.
A resident in my ward shared her son’s story with me. He started playing tennis when he was seven. His primary school did not offer tennis as a CCA, so his parents arranged training outside — once a week with a private coach, twice a week in a small group programme. Both parents work full-time. For six years, he trained largely on his own. He never had the chance to play alongside peers his age. His dream, all through primary school, was simple: to join a secondary school with a strong tennis team, and finally be part of one.
He applied through DSA to his dream school. The school took a handful of boys — all top-ranked players in their age group. He was not selected for DSA. He did not give up. He worked hard for his PSLE, and earned his place on merit.
Then came the CCA trial for tennis. He made it to the final round — but was not selected. At this school, trials are conducted before students submit their CCA choices. He was advised not to list tennis. The school explained that there was no room — space constraints, grading considerations.
So the boy chose rugby. It was one of the few CCAs with vacancies and open to beginners. Rugby trains three times a week. With that and a heavier Secondary 1 workload, he had to give up competitive tennis. He can still hit a ball on weekends. But he cannot train seriously.
His mother told me: it was heartbreaking to watch her son give up the sport he loves. Not because he was not good enough — but because the system would not give him the chance to become good enough.
Mr Speaker, I believe this is a system problem, not a talent problem.
I.
Each January, Secondary One students submit a ranked list of CCA preferences. For popular CCAs — sports, performing arts — schools conduct trials or auditions. Students who do not pass are asked to remove that CCA from their choices. Some fail multiple trials. They are allocated to whatever remains.
This is not unreasonable on its own. Resources are finite. But consider what makes CCA different from everything else in our education system. CCA is compulsory. Students must participate for four to five years. Under LEAPS 2.0, that participation is graded — and those grades translate into bonus points for post-secondary admission.
We have spent the last decade making the rest of our system more open. Mid-year exams removed. PSLE T-scores replaced with broader bands. Streaming dissolved into Subject-Based Banding. Each reform carries the same signal: less sorting, more room. CCA has not received that same attention.
II.
In 2020, the Ministry piloted the removal of CCA selection trials across eight primary schools. The pilot seems a success. Today, about two-thirds of primary schools operate without trials. When I asked the Minister about this on 12 February, the reply confirmed these results — but did not address secondary schools, where LEAPS 2.0 applies and stakes are highest.
There is a model already operating in Singapore — in our international schools. At Singapore American School, students who miss the competitive team are not turned away — they join a developmental programme and continue training. No student is excluded. It is an established system, on Singapore soil, showing that open participation and competitive excellence reinforce each other.
This principle is not foreign to local schools. Hwa Chong’s track and field programme — the first school to win all four divisions at the National Schools Championships in a single year — requires no prior experience and welcomes anyone with a passion for the sport. It fields athletes across every event category: sprints, jumps, throws, walks, cross-country, pole vault. A 2008 report on the National Schools Championships observed that while a rival school matched Hwa Chong in first-place finishes, Hwa Chong’s depth across the field — finishers in every event accumulating points — was what secured the divisional title. Broad participation is not the enemy of competitive excellence. At Hwa Chong, it is the competitive strategy.
Internationally, the pattern holds at scale. Durham University fields 16,000 students across 550 teams — 75% of its student body — and is the top-ranked team sport university in Britain. In the US, 8 million high schoolers play athletics; at college level, over 2 million play club sport alongside half a million NCAA varsity athletes. The base of the pyramid and the peak are not in competition. They are the same structure.
Norway’s sports federation has codified this. Its Children’s Rights in Sport provisions, adopted in 1987, guarantee every child the right to choose which sport they wish to participate in. Selection determines competitive squads — but no child is excluded. That system, in a country of 5.6 million people — our size — has produced 445 Winter Olympic medals, more than any nation on earth.
III.
I want to turn to Direct School Admission, because DSA and CCA are entangled.
DSA now covers 141 of 148 secondary schools. Sports is the single largest talent category. When a tennis CCA has 20 spots and half are reserved for DSA students, the remaining places must absorb the entire non-DSA cohort — through trials and leftover places. That boy in my ward trained for six years and earned his school place on merit. But the system had already given away half the seats before he arrived.
The question is straightforward: who has access to the preparation that DSA rewards? Competitive sport at age twelve requires years of coaching, tournament entry fees, and parents with the time and means to support it. In 2024, a basketball coach was investigated by CPIB for allegedly charging parents $30,000 to $50,000 per child to secure DSA placements. That is not an isolated bad actor — it is a market responding to a system where the stakes are high and the pathways narrow.
IV.
Does early selection identify future talent? Sports science is settling on this question — and it is not a close call.
In December 2025, a study was published in major journal Science, synthesising the developmental histories of over 34,000 top-level performers: Olympic medallists, Nobel laureates, elite chess players, classical music composers. Their central finding: young standouts and adult world-class performers are largely different people — approximately 90% are different individuals. Early specialisation produces early results. But adult world-class performance is predicted by the opposite pattern: limited early discipline-specific practice, extensive multidisciplinary engagement, and gradual initial progress. World-class athletes averaged involvement in two other sports over nine years during childhood.
A companion meta-analysis supported it: the predictors of junior elite success were the precise opposite of the predictors of senior world-class success. Many talent promotion programs select youth based on current performance, which is often a result of: Biological Maturation: early puberty; Relative Age Effect: being born earlier in the selection year; and Early Specialization: high volumes of sport-specific practice at a young age. These advantages typically diminish or reverse by adulthood.
It further recommended that since current performance is a poor predictor of future potential. Selection should consider “side-entry” athletes and prioritize those with sustainable development patterns (such as moderate main-sport practice combined with other sports). Also, that program success should be measured not by junior medals, but by how many athletes transition to senior international excellence.
This matters because our CCA system — trials at age twelve, a four-year lock-in, LEAPS points tied to competitive results — is structurally an early-selection model. It may produce results in the National School Games. But a system optimised for junior results, by the best available science, is not selecting for true adult world-class performers.
I would like to highlight Singapore’s National Youth Sports Institute. NYSI’s Junior Sports Academy exposes Primary 4 to 5 students to four different sports over two years. NYSI’s Head of Sport Science has stated publicly that broad-based sporting experience produces equal or better outcomes through cross-transfer of skills. NYSI even hosted a dialogue with one of the principal authors of that 2025 Science study, Professor Arne Gullich in 2019 to discuss these principles.
So the gap is not between what we know and what we do not know. It is between what our own institutions endorse and what our CCA system requires. Let us close the gap between rhetoric and reality.
V.
Sir, I propose reform in three areas.
First, open every door within the school. Extend the primary school pilot to secondary schools. Let trials determine who makes the competitive squad — not who gets to participate. Every student should be able to join at least one of their top CCA choices. Where a CCA conducts selection trials, those trials should sort students into a competitive squad and a developmental programme — not into participants and the excluded. Students in the developmental tier train on fundamentals, fitness, and game understanding, with the opportunity to trial for the competitive squad each year. This is not a radical idea. It is how Singapore American School already operates on our own soil. It is how Hwa Chong’s track and field programme built the depth that won them all four divisions. And it is what sports science tells us produces better senior-level athletes.
Schools should also survey incoming Secondary One students on their CCA preferences — and publish the aggregate results. If sixty students want badminton and a school caps it at twenty, that gap should be visible. Where demand consistently exceeds supply, schools should adjust. Some may move quickly — splitting sessions, or expanding squads within the year. Others may take two to three years to reallocate resources from persistently under-subscribed CCAs. Either pace is fine. What matters is having a credible adjustment mechanism.
And because CCA choices at thirteen are often made under constraint — a student allocated their third or fourth preference, or a student who discovers a genuine passion through the developmental tier — I propose that students be allowed to change CCAs at the end of Sec One and end of Sec Two without penalty under LEAPS. This ensures commitment is meaningful.
Second, open doors beyond the school. We need systematic cross-school access. The Strategic Partnership CCA programme today serves 232 students from 86 schools across four sports. I welcome the expansion. But a programme serving 232 out of roughly 40,000 Sec One students each year is a proof of concept.
I propose three concrete steps. One: double SP-CCA from four sports to eight within two years. Two: publish a sport-by-sport availability map — showing which sports are offered at which schools — so that gaps are visible and planning is data-driven. Three: publish a five-year SP-CCA expansion roadmap with clear targets, and invite schools to form voluntary geographic clusters of four to six schools, pooling CCA offerings so students can cross-attend.
If tennis is available at only thirty schools, it should be an SP-CCA candidate. The boy in my ward — the one who trained for six years — would have had a path. This also creates natural opportunities for the kind of social mixing across school types that hon. member David Hoe has spoken about.
We should also recognise sport pursued outside school. SportSG already runs ActiveSG Academies and Clubs — affordable, structured programmes in football, basketball, tennis, athletics, and other sports, designed for children and youth. Could students participating in a structured external programme — ActiveSG, a National Sports Association, or a registered academy — be eligible for CCA recognition, subject to verification by the school?
And at primary level, could we double or triple Junior Sports Academy intake — this fully MOE-funded, non-competitive, multi-sport program— given demand already exceeds supply?
Third, build the infrastructure to keep these doors open. If we ask schools to offer a developmental tier alongside competition, we need people to run it. Today, every coach on a school field must hold full National Registry of Coaches membership. Since July 2024, provisional membership has been discontinued. A new coach must now complete SG-Coach Theory, a sport-specific Technical Level 1 course, Foundational Sport Science, and Standard First Aid certification. These are appropriate standards for competitive coaching. But we should consider whether a lighter certification pathway — suited to teaching fundamentals rather than competitive technique — might widen the coaching pool. Parent volunteers, older club players, retired coaches, polytechnic and ITE sport graduates who complete coaching practicals but cannot coach in schools without full certification, even NSFs with sporting backgrounds could contribute meaningfully at the developmental level if the credentialing framework made room for them.
Norway’s 9,500 sports clubs are almost entirely volunteer-run — three-quarters of all coaches are unpaid volunteers operating under a tiered credentialing system. A country our size sustains developmental-level coaching across every sport because its framework makes room for volunteers, not only professionals.
CoachSG’s own framework already includes an Exploration stage with a Community Coach programme. I propose CoachSG create a new NROC tier — an Assistant Coach or Recreational Coach credential — completable in eight to sixteen hours at nominal cost, covering Safe Sport, first aid, values-based coaching, and inclusive session design. Holders could lead developmental CCA sessions under periodic supervision by fully certified coaches.
Two further changes are needed to align the system’s incentives with its stated developmental purpose.
Review the LEAPS 2.0 Achievement domain. When bonus points depend on competition results and school representation, schools have a structural incentive to limit CCA places to students who boost competitive outcomes. Replacing competition-based indicators with measures of growth, effort, and consistency would realign LEAPS with its developmental purpose.
And require MOE to collect and publish socioeconomic data on DSA applications and outcomes — household income quartile, participation in paid preparatory programmes. When my hon. colleague Eileen Chong asked for this data, the Minister said MOE does not collect it. I would respectfully suggest that this is a question worth answering. If DSA in sport systematically advantages families who can afford years of private coaching, then it is not a merit pathway — it is a wealth pathway with a merit label.
It is a core concern of the Workers’ Party that wealth does not compound unfairness or widen social gaps through our education system - points eloquently elaborated over the years by my hon. colleagues Gerald Giam and Jamus Lim.
VI.
Mr Speaker, let me return to that family.
That resident also has a younger daughter, at a different school. Her primary school runs recreational sports CCAs. No trials. The girl had never held a badminton racket in her life. She signed up for badminton because she was curious. She was allocated her first choice. She is learning. She is happy and she belongs.
Two children in the same family. Two completely different experiences. The difference is not talent or effort. It is whether the school opens the door or closes it.
That thirteen-year-old boy did everything he could. He trained for six years. He earned his place in a secondary school that was strong in tennis. He showed up for the trial. And the system told him: there is no room. He is now in his prime physical developmental years — and he is playing a sport he didn’t choose, while the sport he loves slips further away with each passing term.
His mother told me: (quote) I will always wonder whether, if the school had been more open, my son might have improved and eventually earned a place on the team. It is something we will never have the chance to find out. (end quote)
We have an opportunity to make a system that is genuinely open — to extend to CCAs the same generosity of spirit that has guided every other recent reform in our schools.
Sir, I so move.