Results at 11am, the S1 option portal opens within the hour, six school choices due within a week, and posting results before Christmas. The full sequence.
By Marcus Toh · 2026-04-23
The 2025 cycle is the reliable template. Results were released at 11am on 25 November, collected at school with parents welcome, and the Secondary 1 option window opened at 11.30am the same day, running to 4.30pm on 1 December. Families submit six school choices through the online S1 Portal at MOE's S1 posting site, and only one parent needs to log in and submit. Posting results followed on 18 or 19 December.
For 2026, MOE lists results as tentatively 24 to 25 November, per the exam dates page, so the same rhythm should repeat almost to the day. The strategy inside those six choices, how order matters and what happens at a tie, is its own guide, here, and reading cut off points honestly is here.
Results day is a parenting exam wearing an academic costume, and the mark scheme is simple: your child will remember your face before they remember their score. I have seen children beam over a score their parents then grieved in front of them, and I have seen parents turn a disappointing number into a calm plan by lunchtime, and those two children walked into secondary school as different people.
So decide your first sentence in advance, for every scenario, and make it about the child and not the number. Then let the process carry you: the shortlist was built weeks ago, the six choices go in without drama, and the posting system does its work by mid December. The score routes your child to a school, your reaction routes how they feel about themselves, and only one of those is still in your control at 11am.
No. The window from results day to the deadline is a single exercise, and submissions are processed together after it closes, so a family that takes the weekend to think submits on equal footing with one that rushed on day one. Use the days.
Yes, and MOE's own guidance points families to include schools with less stringent cut off points among the six, because an incomplete or top heavy list is what pushes a posting further from home than any of the six chosen schools.
The following January: for the 2027 intake, Secondary 1 begins with the school year in early January 2027, full calendar here, which leaves a genuine December for rest between posting and the first bell.