It was only a couple of years after dropping out of Primary 1 that Presslee Chng fully understood that his life was different. Every weekday morning, all the kids in his neighbourhood were lugging their backpacks to school, dressed in their uniforms – but he had absolutely nowhere to be. Back then, his family got by on his dad's odd jobs, said Mr Chng, now aged 25. They would pack up what little they owned into boxes "every half a year to a year" because they didn't own a home and couldn't afford to keep up the rent in their various rental flats. The unravelling of his nascent school life came in 2008 when the family was evicted from their flat. Mr Chng had just started Primary 1 at Anderson Primary School, but in the scramble of leaving, all his school uniforms and books were locked in their old flat.At a cafe in The Star Vista mall, the wiry young man recounted his childhood to me with the practised ease of someone who has told the story many times before. His parents, he said, sat him and his older two siblings down and explained that they would be pulling all three children out of school "temporarily".
Most of Mr Chng's memories of that time are hazy – but he does remember his mother looking sad and his typically rambunctious brother and sister being subdued for a while. Initially, seven-year-old Presslee didn't fully appreciate how serious things were. He was just happy to stay home from school. "It doesn't sound good now (but) as a kid back then I didn't like school," he confessed sheepishly.Mr Chng didn't know it then, but he would never get the chance to wear his primary school uniform again. He went on to spend nine long years out of the school system, missing many of the milestones a Singaporean child would mark in their academic journey, including the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE).
