Most families plan this move around the job. The job is the easy part.
The hard part is that your child’s school place, your spouse’s right to live here, and your own work pass are three separate approvals, run by three different agencies, on three calendars that do not align. Get the order wrong and you arrive in August with a school that has no vacancy until the following January.
Here is the sequence that actually works, running backwards from the date your child starts school.
The calendar is fixed, and it is not negotiable
Singapore’s school year starts in January. Not September. This single fact breaks more European relocation plans than anything else.
If your child is entering the government system, the route is the Admissions Exercise for International Students (AEIS). The 2026 cycle ran to this rhythm:
- Applications: early July
- Tests: early September
- Results: mid-December
- School starts: January
That is a six-month pipeline with no shortcuts. There is no rolling admission, no mid-year entry through AEIS, and no appeal. The Ministry of Education is explicit: “The school posting is final. Requests for a school transfer or the release of test results will not be considered.”
You do not even find out your child’s score. You find out whether they have a place.
There is a second, smaller exercise — S-AEIS — with applications in January and tests in February or March, for entry in April or May of the same year. It covers fewer levels: Primary 2 to 4 and Secondary 1 to 2 only. Treat it as a recovery route, not a plan.
Practical consequence: if you want a January start, your family decision needs to be made by May at the latest. If you are reading this in October, you are planning for the January after next, or you are going international school.
AEIS is competitive in a way the published rules do not convey
MOE does not publish AEIS pass rates. It publishes something more useful, in a parliamentary reply: international students make up less than 5% of enrolment in primary schools, secondary schools and junior colleges.
The admission order is stated plainly by MOE: Singapore citizens first, then permanent residents, then international students against whatever vacancies remain. Your child is not competing against the cohort. They are competing for the residue.
One requirement catches European families repeatedly: primary-level applicants must already hold a Cambridge English Qualifications result before they can even submit. Not after. Before. The specific minimum score is only issued through MOE’s eligibility checker, and the certificate has to be recent.
If your child needs to sit a Cambridge exam first, add three to four months to the front of your timeline.
International school is the parallel path, and it has its own deadline
If AEIS looks unrealistic — or you simply want continuity of curriculum — the international schools admit year-round in principle and are full in practice at the popular year groups.
Current published annual tuition, 2026/27:
| School | Primary | Secondary | Pre-university |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tanglin Trust | S$45,375–47,490 | S$53,535 | S$58,080 |
| UWCSEA | S$44,235–45,909 | S$52,032–52,479 | S$55,092 |
| Australian International School | S$42,420–43,692 | S$50,400 | S$53,148 |
Those are tuition only. The one-off fees are covered in a separate article, and they are not small.
The government route is dramatically cheaper — S$1,035 per month for a non-ASEAN international student in primary, S$2,190 in secondary. That is roughly S$12,400 and S$26,300 a year. But those are 2026 figures, and the published fee schedule ends there. No rates have been announced for 2027 onward.
Your pass comes first, because everything else hangs off it
Here is the dependency most families discover too late.
Your spouse and children do not get their own status. They get a Dependant’s Pass, which exists only because your Employment Pass exists. If your EP is refused, or lapses, their passes go with it.
And the Dependant’s Pass has its own bar: you must earn at least S$6,000 a month in fixed salary to sponsor a spouse and children under 21. Not household income — your salary alone.
The Employment Pass has two gates:
Gate one, salary. The minimum rises with your age, which European founders and senior hires consistently underestimate:
| Your age | Minimum fixed monthly salary |
|---|---|
| 23 or below | S$5,600 |
| 30 | S$7,223 |
| 40 | S$9,541 |
| 45 and above | S$10,700 |
Financial services roles sit roughly 10% higher throughout.
Gate two, COMPASS. Clearing the salary bar only qualifies you to be scored. You then need 40 points across four criteria: your salary against local benchmarks, your qualifications, your nationality’s concentration in the hiring company, and that company’s local-hiring record. Two of those four are about your employer, not you. A strong candidate at a company with a poor diversity profile can fail.
Firms with fewer than 25 professional staff get default points on both company-side criteria — which, counterintuitively, often makes a small company an easier sponsor than a large one.
The deadline nobody has told you about
From 1 January 2027, the Employment Pass minimum rises. The entry-level figure goes from S$5,600 to S$6,000, and the top of the age scale from S$10,700 to S$11,500. Financial services goes to S$6,600–S$12,700.
The increase applies to new applications from 1 January 2027, and to renewals of passes expiring from 1 January 2028.
Read that carefully, because there is a real advantage in it: an application submitted before 31 December 2026 is assessed against the current, lower table, and the initial pass is issued on that basis.
If your move is already decided and your salary sits near the threshold for your age, the difference between applying in December and applying in January is not administrative. It is whether you qualify.
There is a second, quieter risk. From January 2027 the EP minimum for the youngest band equals the Dependant’s Pass threshold exactly — both S$6,000. An entry-level pass holder would sit precisely on the line for sponsoring their family, with nothing to spare. The DP threshold has historically tracked the EP minimum. Nothing has been announced. But if you are planning at the margin, plan with a buffer.
The order to do this in
- Twelve months out. Confirm the salary your EP requires at your age. If a Cambridge English certificate is needed for a primary-age child, start it now.
- Nine months out. Employer submits the EP. MOM’s service standard is a decision or an update within 10 business days, but “an update” is not a decision — budget longer.
- Six to seven months out. AEIS applications open in July. Register. In parallel, apply to two or three international schools as your fallback, and accept that application fees are non-refundable.
- Five months out. AEIS tests, early September.
- Three months out. EP approved, then Dependant’s Passes — three weeks for most cases. Housing search. Leases here run 12 or 24 months with a diplomatic clause.
- One month out. AEIS results, mid-December. School posting is final.
- January. School starts.
The processes that can be run in parallel are the passes and the school applications. The one that cannot be compressed is AEIS, because the test date is the test date.
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