Singapore’s data team builds app for picking schools

Projects shows how publicly available data can be repackaged to deliver public value.

Singapore has built a tool to help students and parents choose the right schools, the government’s data team announced. The SchoolPicker.sg app provides students with a shortlist of primary or secondary schools which run the co-curricular programmes they are interested in and are close to their homes, it revealed in a blog post. It was built by the team behind the government’s open data portal, data.gov.sg, using data on government schools. All of this data is already publicly available, and this project shows how government data can be used for public value. The country has 182 primary schools and 154 secondary schools. Secondary student schools must choose from over 120 co-curricular activities. Finding a school with the right mix of programmes can be “challenging”, the team wrote. The School Picker asks for information on the student’s school level, address and non-academic interests, displaying the shortlisted schools on a map. For each of these schools, the website shows the full list of programmes they offer, and directions to get there by bus and car.