On 13 Nov, a 42-year-old woman was sentenced to one week of jail for lying about her home address to secure her daughter’s spot in a competitive primary school.
The woman had used the address of a HDB flat she owned but was renting out in the enrollment application.
It was the stated in court that, at the time, she and her eight-year-old daughter mostly lived at another address belonging to her partner.
The woman, the name of the school, and other identifying details have not been disclosed under a gag order to protect the identity of the daughter who is a minor.
During the 2023 Primary 1 registration exercise, the woman enrolled her daughter in the school through priority admission.
As the woman’s HDB flat was within a 1km radius from the school, she used its address in the application.
Source: Trung Tran on Unsplash. Image for illustration purposes only.
However, she would later send an email to the school requesting to change her address to her partner’s.
When the school informed her that she would have to transfer her child to another school as the new address was outside the 1km radius for priority admission, the woman said she would remain at her flat — even though she was not residing there.
A school administrator then flagged her case.
The school began sending staff for house visits to her declared address, only to find her tenants.
Through the real estate agents representing her tenants, she asked them to state that she and her daughter stayed in the flat.
The woman also requested for them to close all windows to hide the occupants in the flat.
In October 2024, she was told her daughter would be transferred to another school.
During a meeting with the principal and vice-principal, the woman said she would terminate the lease her flat was under.
Between August 2024 and October 2024, she lied at least five times to continue her daughter’s enrolment at the school.
To further this deception, she misreported her change of address to a registration officer.
She pleaded guilty to giving false information in September 2025.
The woman was unrepresented in court as she said she could not afford a lawyer.
A S$10,000 fine was originally suggested for giving false information to public servants, to which the woman said that the amount was too high for a single mother of two children.
District Judge Sharmila Sripathy-Shanaz decided on one week of jail time, noting the woman’s “selfish motives”.
Her “great persistence and dishonesty” also showed a disregard for the law, said the judge.
The judge called the jail time an “unavoidable consequence” of her criminal conduct, and should serve as a clear deterrence to others.
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Featured image adapted from Honeykids Asia and MustShareNews.