What type of external classes do you send your child to, and at what age do you start? Also, how much do you budget for these classes?

My answer is very similar to Kah Hwee's. My top 3 choices:

1) swimming - water confidence is important

2) marital arts - learning self-defence is important. also, given today's technological advanced era, children are far too addicted to their digital devices and lack the chance to hone their psychomotor skills. barring sports, marital arts is a good way to help them keep fit, develop themselves physically and not be so afraid of pain haha

3) phonics - i have friends who speak English to their children but the latter struggle with decoding and reading. so, phonics doesn't come intuitively to every child. i don't mind reading to my child but i don't fancy teaching him phonics because it's sooo dry, haha

again, i have friends whose children pick up coding and video-making on their own through YouTube because they are interested in them. so, i feel if my boy is interested in these areas, he will go and learn them on his own. otherwise, it is just not very optimised utilisation of my hard-earned cash. haha

I’ve not reach that stage of life but from a practical point of view, the following classes would be useful. But the key thing is to actually excel at one of them.

1. Sports - swimming / tennis / badminton

These sports can be done individually and when you excel at it, it’s a golden ticket to any school of your choice via DSA as they’re always in demand, especially the top schools.

2. Music

Piano is only useful if you are good enough to win something at at least national level because not many schools have piano ensemble and many people can play the piano. Similarly for violin. In this aspect, brass and woodwind instrument are better. Nonetheless, I’ve heard that learning music trains the brain so you might want to consider sending your kid for it anyway.

3. Dance

Ballet and contemporary dance are common for DSA. Know “interesting” forms of dance like hip hop are not considered as “know how to dance” in the eyes of the schools.

4. Coding

Digital World is the way forward, enough said.

Personal opinion is to start as early as you can, as kids absorb knowledge and skills really fast and he/she resists one particular class, there‘s still time to try out other classes till you find one that he/she enjoys. Also, CCAs start as young as P3; if your kid has several years of experience prior to that, the chance of entering the school team is much higher. I was scouted into the school team before CCAs was made available for my year because of my experience. Being in the school team and winning medals look fancier as track records!