SPC has changed to a new principal and their Chinese textbook has also been changed to more difficult one. This year, the whole school (no matter in what form) has increased their difficulty.
DGJS has also increased their difficulty in test and exam for lower forms. They use different readers for lower forms which did not use the similar readers (much easier ones) as the previous years. Everything is harder each year.
SPCC (heard from SPCC parent) their kids have lot more homework in P2 than P1. So prepare for it.
I guess do not think the honeymoon will be long. May be just P1 now. So, prepare yourself well in Kinder time. The gap for SPK to SPC is huge. Again, from P1 to P2, P2 to P3, P3 to P4...... will be much difficult each year. Especially Chinese... will be the main difficult task for all students in an English Primary School.
At SPK, my girl was in PM SPK class. As far as I know, many of her classmates have many extra activities before school or after. You will not surprise to hear that.
My girl has some extra activities too. We have music and sport at least... so,.. you can imagine.
We did not go outside to learn English as I teach them myself. Except Chinese we have to take lesson outside.
I do not appreciate the culture the SPC/SPK of having a lot of extra classes after school hours. Despite you are not one of them, many do attend academic or non academic classesss.