Friday 27 March 2015

Admission to Secondary Schools

We will be doing a series of articles to explore the options for LH and other SJKC in Petaling Perdana Districe  standard 6 school leavers .  We will start with the destination where 80% + of the SJKC  school leavers will end up-SMK Sekolah Menegah Kebangasaan and most will be within the Pusat Pendidikkan Daerah (PPD) Petaling Perdana-district . As usual we will start with a FAQ (we will be writing in the first person as if the students were asking the questions ) -

1.     1. Do I have a choice ? Can I pick my favourite SMK?
Unfortunately NO-you do NOT have a choice –you will be “sent” to a school within the PPD district where LH is the feeder school . The schools within the Subang zone are SMK Utama ,USJ 4, USJ8, USJ12, USJ13, USJ17 and the most likely designated schools are SMK Utama and SMK USJ 4
While you are still in LH , you may (this is yet to be confirmed ) be given a form to complete and select your preferred school out of a list of up 3 schools HOWEVER you may not even end up in one of the 3 schools .

       2 . If you do not get your favourite choice , what can you do ?
            You will be notified of your designated school before the start of the term . The first thing and the most crucial action you must take is to report to the designated school even if you have no intention of going there or you have decided to go to a private  or independent school. The fact that you have reported allows you to re-enroll back to the national schooling system at a later time. Failing to report will deny you the opportunity to join  the national school system in future.
3.I want to apply for a transfer .

Your designated school will have a list of schools which you can apply for transfer  . These are called in zone schools . The list will also show schools with additional admission criteria –Sekolah Kawalan (for eg Catholic , must have a minimum of 5As , etc ) . The application for transfer will be processed by your designated school . You may be asked to supply additional information to improve your chances of selection such as sports  and  extra curricular activities during  your primary school years. You can only pick 1 school .

You may also apply for a school out-side your zone but the chances of admission to that school (if it is a popular school) will be low because you do not come from a feeder school .

4.      What are the considerations for Transfer –
Assuming that your transfer has been correctly processed (which cannot be automatically assumed !!) , you application will be based on your address, presence of sibling in that school and OTHER  unspecified admission criteria of your target school. The admission  criteria for some schools apart from academic can also include quotas for (race or  gender) preference for sports etc

5.      If I do not get admitted to your preferred choice , can I appeal? Yes, normally you are given one right of appeal.
6.      After the appeal , If I still do not get into my preferred school , what can I do ? Sorry , you cannot  do anything for the time being and must wait for the next transfer window which is normally the start of the next academic year .

                          Next topics
            Independent and Private Schools
            Life in SMK, Independent and Private Schools .

We invite Ex LH students and parents to contribute articles (can be in English , BM and Chinese) sharing their learning experiences in secondary schools and how their primary years in LH have helped (or hindered as the case may be ) their journey towards higher education .

1 comment:

Tuckster said...

This is great information. I was wondering what the process is for the move from Primary to Secondary. Information is pretty lacking in this aspect. And your piece here is just timely and informative. Thank you. You are doing good work!