‘Felt left out’: ex-students’ videos on Singapore’s elite schools spark debate

In an online clip, user Erica Lee recounts her time in an elite primary school and how her classmates’ families travelled several times a year for the holidays, had chauffeurs to ferry them to and from school, and threw extravagant birthday parties with balloon sculptors and bouncy castles.

Lee says in the video, which has been shared over 6,000 times and has about 200 comments as of Wednesday: “[I] grew up in a privileged environment as a kid and thought that all these were normal things that every Singaporean did.”

She also revealed how her classmates lived in private condominiums or landed houses and were in disbelief when a textbook stated that most Singaporeans lived in high-rise public housing.

Following Lee’s post, other Singaporeans also shared similar experiences, sparking an online discourse on the culture in elite schools.

Experts told This Week in Asia that such schools risked exacerbating social segregation, and while Singapore had implemented policies to encourage social mixing among students, society still viewed these schools as an irreplaceable marker of a successful educational pathway.

In her video, Lee says she only knew of one classmate who lived in a public flat.