Well, for the uninitiated, the process can be tiring. For transfer from private to national school, there are some procedures to follow.
Below is a chronology of things one has to do :-
(1) Decide the school of your choice. Better to have two options.
(2) Find out which District Education Office (Pejabat Pelajaran Daerah) that the school you have decided on falls under. How to find this out? Either do your own internet search or call up the school you have decided and ask.
(3) Get the Borang ASBS from the PPD. How to get the Borang? Either you call the PPD and ask if there is an online version available for you to print out or go physically to the PPD office and collect the hard copy. Make a few copies yourself.
(4) Fill up the form (in 3 copies), sometimes even 4, depends on the PPD. You can't photostat the first form that you fill up to submit in 3 copies instead you have to fill up all 3 forms, one by one.
(5) Attach copies of the required documents to the form - birth cert/IC of your child, parents' IC, parents marriage cert, child's leaving cert, UPSR result slip (if applying for Form 1).
(6) Get the head of the private school (principal) to sign and stamp the Borang ASBS (all 3 copies).
Note : Request for the leaving cert early so that it is prepared it in time for your submission. For entry into Form 1 national school, you need to submit within 2/3 days after the release of the UPSR result.
(7) Submit to PPD. If you have chosen one of the cluster schools or top 20 schools, the submission has to go to Jabatan Pelajaran Wilayah Persekutuan in Jalan Duta, KL.
However, be prepared for the following :-
(1) You may not get the school that you want. Usually the school that is nearest to your house is given. In some cases, you may not get the school that is nearest to your house as they will tell you the school is full.
(2) For some reason, if you have chosen a cluster or one of the top 20 schools, Jabatan Pelajaran Wilayah Persekutuan Jalan Duta, KL may refuse to even accept your submission. If your child got all As in his/her major exams, you may stand a chance.
(3) You have to follow-up with the respective PPDs on the status of application and may even have to go to PPD again to collect the approval letter. They may ask you to come and collect personally.
(4) You may be left in a lurch, meaning what do you do if you don't get the school that you want. Do you accept what they have offered? PPD will advise you to register your child first in their selected school, then appeal. They will tell you that there may be vacant seats once the students leave for MRSM boarding school in the first quarter of the year. Do you want to take the risk? What if your appeal does not go through?
What lessons did I learn?
(1) That getting all As does not mean you get to choose the school.
(2) That after doing extensive research on national schools, you may know more about the school than PPD staff.
(3) That PPD can turn away your application just because you are a private school applicant. I don't know why. I think they should be glad to accept us as we have saved them money by bearing the expenses of our children's education.
(4) That priority is given to national school applicants. Somehow, the question of 'why did you send your child to a private school' always hangs in the air.
(5) That if you want to enrol in the top 20 schools, your child has to have some niche area of excellence such as a band master, chess, ICT, English, sprinter, ping pong, debater etc.
(6) That some fully govt-controlled schools may be reserved for the top elite group (such as politicians) and civil servants children. This is just my guess.
