In February 2026, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong delivered a sobering reality check to Parliament: the nation's total fertility rate (TFR) had plunged to a historic low of 0.87 in 2025.
This unprecedented decline, which saw only 27,500 resident births—the lowest in recorded history—presents what Gan termed an "existential challenge". If unaddressed, Singapore's citizen population will begin shrinking by the early 2040s. While the government has rolled out numerous financial incentives, expanded parental leave, and subsidized childcare, these measures have proven insufficient.
The root of the problem runs deeper than economics; it is fundamentally tied to the intense pressure cooker of Singapore’s education system.
A growing consensus among sociologists, parent advocacy groups, and economists suggests that the highly competitive nature of Singaporean schooling is a primary deterrent to having children.
For many young couples, the prospect of parenthood is overshadowed by the looming dread of navigating an educational "arms race".
To reverse this demographic decline, Singapore must undertake structural educational reforms aimed at making parenthood a joyful journey rather than an overwhelming sacrifice.
The High-Stakes Hurdle: Reimagining the PSLE
At the heart of this educational anxiety is the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). Unlike most developed nations where high-stakes sorting occurs in late adolescence, Singapore subjects its 12-year-olds to a definitive national exam that dictates their secondary school trajectory and, by extension, their perceived future success.
This early sorting mechanism creates intense pressure that cascades down to the early primary and even preschool years, forcing parents into a hyper-competitive mindset.
Advocacy groups like EveryChild.SG argue that the PSLE essentially transforms childhood into a forced competitive game that many would-be parents simply refuse to play. To alleviate this, a radical shift is proposed: making the PSLE optional and establishing "through-train" models.
By linking primary and secondary schools, 80-90% of students could progress seamlessly without facing a high-stakes exam at age 12. This model, common in other high-performing education systems, would allow children to learn at their own pace, significantly reducing the "do-or-die" pressure that currently dominates the upper primary years.
Instead of a single, high-stakes exam, experts suggest implementing regular, low-stakes, computerized assessments—such as MAP testing—to track student progress and guide subject-based banding.
This approach would maintain academic standards without the intense anxiety associated with a definitive national examination.
Dismantling the "Arms Race" in Admissions
The stress of the education system begins long before the PSLE. The current primary school admission framework, which often privileges alumni connections and parent volunteers, contributes to social stratification and intense competition for spots in perceived "elite" schools.
Parents find themselves optimizing their toddlers' educational paths years in advance, engaging in what researchers describe as a "zero-sum mindset" where one child's gain is perceived as another's loss.
To create a fairer and less stressful system, proposals include centralizing and automating primary school admissions.
This would involve allocating students based on a computerized system designed to reflect the national demographic profile in each school, taking parent choices into account but removing the advantages of alumni status or volunteer hours. Dismantling this early-stage "arms race" is crucial for reducing the initial anxieties that deter couples from starting families.
Decoupling Education from "Care Labour"
Sociological research highlights a profound shift in how education is managed at home. The current system relies heavily on parents—predominantly mothers—to perform significant "care labor". This invisible load includes managing daily homework, arranging tuition, and navigating the complexities of the curriculum. In 2023 alone, Singaporean families spent $1.8 billion on private tuition, underscoring the immense financial and temporal investments required to keep children competitive.
This burden disproportionately affects women, who often feel compelled to transition to part-time work or take unpaid leave during their child's PSLE year. Consequently, the perceived cost of having children—in terms of parental time, energy, and career sacrifice—skyrockets. Reforms must aim to make schools more self-sufficient in delivering the curriculum, reducing the expectation that parents must supplement formal education with extensive home tutoring or paid tuition. By lessening this care labor, the prospect of parenthood becomes more manageable and appealing, particularly for women seeking equitable partnerships at home.
Broadening the Definition of Success
Singapore’s education system is a victim of its own success. As Dr. Poh Lin Tan notes in her research for the IMF, the nation's system heavily rewards extreme human capital investment, leading parents to concentrate their resources on one or two children to ensure their competitive edge. This "quantity-quality trade-off" means that the institutional emphasis on early life achievements increases the returns from investing heavily in a child's human capital, making each child more expensive to raise.
To counter this, the education system must actively broaden the definition of success. The intense focus on academic grades and rote learning is increasingly misaligned with the needs of the future economy and detrimental to student well-being. Updating the primary school syllabus to prioritize analytical thinking, creativity, and collaboration over memorization and stack-ranking is essential.
Furthermore, strengthening vocational, technical, and arts pathways so they are viewed as equally prestigious alternatives to the traditional academic route would reduce the bottleneck pressure of national exams. If the education system and the broader economy offer a "broad playing field" rather than a steeply hierarchical one, parents may feel less compelled to maximize every aspect of a single child's academic potential. This shift in societal rewards could fundamentally alter the cost-benefit analysis of having larger families.
Conclusion
While the Singapore government has initiated some educational reforms—such as implementing a new PSLE scoring system and scrapping mid-year exams—the core design of the system still fuels immense stress. Financial incentives and pro-family policies, while necessary, cannot alone solve the fertility crisis if the underlying psyche of parenting remains fraught with anxiety.
A comprehensive, structural overhaul of the education system is urgently needed. By reducing the high-stakes nature of examinations, reforming admissions, lessening the burden of parental care labor, and fundamentally altering the societal rewards for academic achievement, Singapore can alleviate parental stress. Only by making parenthood a joyful and manageable endeavor, rather than an overwhelming sacrifice, can Singapore secure a sustainable demographic future.
* This article was contributed by a reader of The Star. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own
References
[1] Channel News Asia. (2026, February 26). Singapore's fertility rate drops to historic low of 0.87 as country faces 'existential challenge': DPM Gan. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/total-fertility-rate-tfr-2025-record-low-citizen-population-5954306
[2] The Straits Times. (n.d.). Inside Singapore’s education ‘arms race’: Stress, inequality and the push for change. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/inside-singapores-education-arms-race-stress-inequality-and-the-push-for-change
[3] EveryChild.SG. (n.d.). Raising Fertility Rates - Bring Back the Joy of Parenting. https://everychild.sg/raising-fertility-rates-bring-back-the-joy-of-parenting/
[4] Vignehsa, K. (2024, March 1). Commentary: To raise fertility rates, Singapore needs to make parenthood seem less like the ultimate sacrifice. Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/ips/publications/details/commentary-to-raise-fertility-rates-singapore-needs-to-make-parenthood-seem-less-like-the-ultimate-sacrifice
[5] Tan, P. L. (2020, March). Lessons from Singapore on Raising Fertility Rates. IMF Finance & Development. https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2020/03/lessons-from-singapore-on-raising-fertility-rates-tan
