This paper explores the fairness of meritocracy concerning admission to secondary schools based on the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) in Singapore. The Ministry of Education has consistently adopted the ideology of meritocracy as so to select talented students, stimulate effort, and optimize the allocation of rewards. The PSLE results can largely determine students’ educational tracks and even career orientation in Singapore. The paper shows how the principle of meritocracy works and how the government uses meritocratic belief in the education system. The paper argues that meritocracy has posed a threat to equality in admission to secondary schools in Singapore. The findings indicate that the meritocratic policy does not recognize both the importance of family SES and the gap between elite schools and neighbourhood schools in the Singapore education system. Students with wealthy and well-educated parents and students in elite schools are more likely to acquire better educational attainment, since they tend to gain more cultural capital from family and social capital from school. The principle of meritocracy fails to allocate opportunities fairly to students and can lead to inequality in education and exacerbate educational stratification.

There are prominent gaps in educational opportunities and academic outcomes in the Australian education system. The government has made efforts to narrow the gaps and increase the proportion of Australians with higher education qualifications. However, disadvantaged students still lack access to educational opportunities and resources, and are underrepresented in university populations. This essay explores the influential factors that can affect young people's academic and transition outcomes, which involve students' socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, engagement in extra-curricular activities and geographical locations. This essay also mainly draws on Bourdieu's theory on social and cultural capital to explain the associations between those factors and students' transitions to university in Australia.