Visual Art DSA

In response to some parents’ requests (here), I decided to share here my experience about Visual Art DSA for secondary schools with Visual Art DSA and Portfolio preparation.

You can only DSA maximum to 3 schools, so choose the 3 schools carefully by looking at MOE website which school has Visual Art DSA.

Each Secondary School with Art DSA may request for specific things which it is best you refer to their website but generally they have very much common things that they look for and relevant information also can be found on their website too. If after reading the school’s website and you are still unsure, it’s best to call up the school to clarify.

For Art DSA, here are some pointers which I would like to share and things need to know / have,
1. Certificates of participation for Art Competitions (school and outside school) and it’s best if your child ever wins any competition prizes.
2. Certificates of passing some exams / tests, if you go to private schools that teach art that have some kind of “exam”, better if it is well known school.
3. Your child’s artwork collections (colour printed image of it will do), this is to show evidence of passion and also the quality of the art pieces drawn / done.
4. Compile (just the image of the original) the above items in point 1 to 3 nicely in an orderly manner (which we call it Portfolio) in a nice file and submit with the application form downloaded from schools’ website. For non portable art pieces, take a picture and colour print it out for compilation. All in the portfolio is to help your child to gain a place for the interview by the school.
5. Interview of students normally and surely that your child will be given a time slot which your child will need to draw / do an art piece “live” at the school usually with a “question” set by the teacher / interviewer of the school. This can be very stressful if your child has no formal training, unless your child is really very talented.
6. Ah ha, last but not least, you will be surprise school interview parents too besides interviewing students. Maybe to understand how supportive the family is for the child’s art journey. Be prepared yourself and not caught pants down too.

Hope the above helps, best to call up the school to clarify what they are really looking for.

If you get to see those Sec 3 and 4 students’ art pieces in their school’s gallery, you will be surprise of the high standard of the work.

For the certificate exam / test portion, maybe it’s good to start getting private lessons say in P4 to give 2 yrs of formal training with exams / tests to obtain certificates so that your child could have at least taken and pass 2 exams / tests and have some certificates.

As for which private lessons to go, just google for some art schools in Singapore, call them up and ask them.

We started to provide our child with private art lesson and competitions to build portfolio from P4. We look out for 3 schools in P6 prior DSA closing dates (note that different schools have differernt closing dates) which we think will match our child’s academic capability and we applied to the 3 schools, got 3 interviews and 3 offers.