It turns out your parents were right about staying in school and going to university, at least that is the case for applicants for Singapore residency. Data from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA), Singapore’s government agency in charge of granting Singapore Permanent Residency (SPR) and Citizenship (SC), shows that for 4 out of 5 people that are granted PR and citizenship have had education beyond secondary school level.

Education Profile of SCs and PRs granted in 2022

Is the ICA approving people to become citizen or PR because they spent more time learning beyond secondary school or is the pool of applicants already consist of 4 times more people with education beyond secondary shooling? We suspect it could be a combination of the two and, honestly, we will never really know unless the ICA shares more detailed breakdown of applicant profiles over the past decade. However, we do think that education is an important component in your profile because studies have shown more educated people tend to have higher incomes and higher incomes along with more education tends to lead to higher wealth.

People who are more educated also tend to have better job opportunities with lower rates of unemployment.

Unemployment declines as education increases

More importantly, we have seen the government recognise the importance of education through the introduction of the Complementarity Assessment Framework (COMPASS[i]) points system on 1 September 2023, where the level of education and the ranking of the school can give you up to 20 points out of 40 needed to get an Employment Pass (EP). Having an EP is one pathway to get a PR. While COMPASS is not directly used to evaluate PR or citizenship applications, we do think some elements of it, such as the level of education, continue to play a significant factor in the application process.

What can you do if you think you score poorly for education?

Fortunately, education is not the only determining factor for your Singapore PR or citizenship application. There are a multitude of other factors that also determine the success of your application. Come speak to E&H Immigration Consultancy if you need help with your application and please leave a comment if you have had issues with your application due to a weak education profile.

[i] COMPASS has 6 criteria, where each criterion can earn up to 20 points, comprising the applicant’s: salary, qualifications, skills, company employee diversity, company strategic economic priorities (see https://www.mom.gov.sg/passes-and-permits/employment-pass/eligibility).