10 June 2016

Females and non-Malays are more likely to gain entry into elite junior colleges (JCs), and this is especially true for students who come from wealthy neighbourhoods.

This finding was announced as part of a study undertaken by National University of Singapore (NUS) sociologist Vincent Chua and University of Melbourne economist Swee Eik Leong. The study sought discover and explain persistent gender and ethnic disparities in the profiles of students who enrol in Singapore’s JCs.

Data was collected from over 5,000 classrooms in six JCs over 40 years — from 1971 to 2010.

“Overall, we find that females are more likely to enter elite schools located in wealthy neighbourhoods because these neighbourhoods tend to be more centrally located,” the researchers stated in the study, which was presented on Friday, May 27, at an international sociological conference hosted by the Centre for Family and Population Research at NUS.

The findings suggest that policymakers could adopt a “cross-cutting” strategy by locating elite schools in less wealthy neighbourhoods and vice versa. Government’s initiatives to help disadvantaged families could also help narrow ethnic inequalities.