Primary 1 textbooks and the MOE Approved Textbook List, Primary 1 to Secondary 5

• The school booklist decides. MOE lets each school choose from its list, so two schools can use different books or different extras.
• Find the booklist on the school's website, in the school's letters to new Primary 1 parents, or by asking the school's general office.
• Each school sets its own book sale or collection date before the school year starts in January and tells parents. Buy after you have the booklist, not before.
• Buy at the school bookshop, at a retail bookstore, or from the publisher. MOE's list of publishers gives each one's sales contact.
• Check that a commercial book is approved: approved books carry MOE's stamp of approval on the cover or inside.

MOE's Financial Assistance Scheme (MOE FAS) gives Singapore Citizen pupils in government and government-aided schools free textbooks and school uniforms, a full fee subsidy, meal subsidies and transport help. From the 2026 school year the income limit is a gross household income of S$4,000 or less, or a per capita income of S$1,000 or less. Apply through your child's school. MOE now checks most household incomes through its means-testing system, so most families do not need to send income documents.

Primary 1 Maths, MOE 2021 syllabus: numbers to 100 (counting, place value, comparing, ordering, patterns, first to tenth), addition and subtraction within 100, the ideas of multiplication and division (multiplying within 40, dividing within 20), money (cents up to $1 and dollars up to $100), length in centimetres, time to 5 minutes, 2D shapes and picture graphs.

Primary 1 English, MOE 2020 syllabus: phonemic awareness, phonics and early literacy at the start of Primary 1, letter-sound links and word recognition for handwriting and early spelling, vocabulary building, and reading for accuracy and fluency. The syllabus does not list grammar items year by year.

There are no exams or weighted assessments in Primary 1 and 2. MOE removed them from 2019, and the assessments teachers use do not count towards an overall mark or grade.

MOE does not recommend books to the public. Our view: for most Primary 1 children the school's practice and activity books give enough written work. If your child wants more, pick short practice on the topic the class is doing that week rather than full test papers, since Primary 1 has no exams.

Before school starts, these help more than workbooks: reading a short book together every day, saying letter sounds, holding a pencil properly, counting objects to 20, packing their own school bag, and paying for a snack with coins.

If your child struggles in the first term, tell the form teacher early. The teacher can say what to practise at home and whether the school has extra support for it.

Where the list has one series for a subject, every school using MOE's list picks that series. Where it has more than one, the school booklist says which.

Pick a level and subject, or type a word such as a title. Each row is one title at one level, with the books in it and MOE's list price before GST. Standard and Foundation show the course at Primary 5 and 6.

G1, G2 and G3 are the subject levels under Full Subject-Based Banding. Many secondary titles come as a print textbook, a digitised textbook with 2 to 4 years of access, or a bundle of both. The school booklist says which one to buy.

MOE's notes on the secondary list: standalone Sec 5 books are for students moving from G2 to G3 in their fifth year, and students who bought the first edition of the Upper Secondary Geography textbooks do not need the new edition. Some titles are sold only in retail stores, and some are cheaper only at the school bookshop, as the titles say.

• MOE draws up the list mainly for principals and heads of department choosing books, and updates it in mid-August each year.
• Schools choose the books that suit their students, which is why two schools can use different books for the same subject.
• Lower secondary Literature books are not on the list. Schools choose their own texts.
• A-Level books are not on the list either. Each junior college decides, so check with the school.
• If a listed book cannot be found anywhere, MOE's FAQ says to contact MOE or the publisher.

School textbooks are copyrighted by their publishers. Full textbook PDFs shared on file sites are not the publisher's copies, so we do not link to them. For digital access, many secondary titles come as a licensed digitised textbook or bundle on the list above.

Every student in the national school system can also use the Singapore Student Learning Space (SLS), MOE's online portal with curriculum-aligned resources from primary to pre-university. For extra practice, TSS has free worksheets, word lists and formula sheets, with no sign-up.