Education Minister Ong Ye Kung announced that the mid-year holidays will start 5 May 2020. This follows the earlier announcement that the Circuit Breaker period will be extended by another four weeks till 1 June 2020.
In a Facebook post, Minister Ong acknowledged that teachers, students and parents have been making considerable efforts to make the current home-based learning arrangements work. However, he also shared that it cannot be a “prolonged substitute for school.”
Mid-Year Holidays Start on 5 May
Therefore, he announced that the Ministry of Education will be bringing forward the four-week mid-year holidays to start from Tuesday, 5 May 2020. It will then cover the entire circuit breaker period.
As a result, Term 3 would start in 2 June 2020. Hopefully, this would allow students and teachers to resume classes and lessons, with some level of normalcy. However, this is dependent on the national COVID-19 situation at that point in time.
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The adjustments to the mid-year holidays apply to all MOE Kindergartens, primary, secondary and Pre-University students, including students from Special Education (SPED) schools.
Term 3: 7 weeks, 1-week break, 6 weeks
However, as this would mean that Term 3 would be very long, it would then be broken up into two parts. There will be seven weeks of school, followed by a one-week break from 20 to 26 July 2020, and then a further six weeks to complete Term 3.
As a result of the reduced curriculum time, Minster Ong also announced that certain topics for the national examinations would be non-examinable, even though they will still be taught. Known as Common Last Topics (CLT), these include pie charts and volume for PSLE Maths and “Interactions within the Environment” for PSLE Science.
READ: See the Updated School Term & Holiday Dates 2020
Read Minister Ong’s full Facebook post below.
READ: Updated School Term & Holiday Dates 2020
Get Little Day Out’s Updated 2020 Calendar