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| Our History |
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True to her nature, Mrs Geake paved the way for the promotion and appointment of local staff to succeed her.
She fully believed in both their capacity and ability to manage and lead the school to success.
Mrs Tan Swee Khin became the first non-English Principal to be appointed.
She vacated the Principal post in 1956 for medical reasons and continued to serve as a senior teacher until her retirement in 1963.
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Following her, the indomitable and unflappable Miss Tan Sock Kern was appointed as the Principal of the Afternoon School and
subsequently as the overall Principal in 1956. She led the School for 26 years before retiring at the end of 1978.
Miss Tan led the school to fiscal strength and built its reputation as a premier school of high standards.
She continued with the drive to improve the facilities.
A 3-storey Secondary School building, the Song Ong Siang Block, fronting Emerald Hill Road was added in 1956.
It housed a hall, science laboratory, domestic science room, a staff room and classrooms.
The syllabus was changed significantly to include Science and Domestic Science in secondary school and Nature Study in primary school.
In 1959, the Government enforced a 6-day school week but this was subsequently changed to a 5 1/2 day school week in 1962.
The School was re-organised into Primary Schools 1 and 2 headed by two newly-appointed head mistresses.
More clubs and societies were formed.
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Until 1967 the school only had Games Days and these were held on the small school field.
This changed with the First Annual Athletic Meet which was held at Farrer Park on 19 May 1967.
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To cope with the steady population growth with the baby boomers, Miss Tan saw to the addition of yet another 3 storey Secondary School Block,
The Lee Kong Chian Block in 1970. It was built on the site previously occupied by a dilapidated one-storey building housing 3 classrooms and a
servant's quarter built during the Japanese Occupation. It was built as the new home for Sec. 3 & 4 classes and Science Laboratories but as
the population grew was occupied by Sec. 4 in the morning session while the Sec.2 classes used it in the afternoon.
The Song Ong Siang Block then served the Sec. 3 and Sec 1 classes similarly.
The old Senior Cambridge School Certificate with its Grade 1, 2 & 3 categorisation of the overall achievement of candidates ended in 1970
with SCGS receiving its best ever set of results for those examinations.
It continued to be equally successful academically by achieving 100% passes in the first General Certificate of Education GCE O-level
examination in Singapore in 1971. The school's reputation as a premier Secondary School flourished with these results.
The new Singapore began to implement more policies in education for nation building and more changes in line with this were introduced
in the mid-1970s. The Government's policy to promote bilingualism was promoted through having some Music and Physical Education classes were
taught in the second language. A new subject "Education for Living" was also taught in the second language. It replaced Civics,
History and Geography.
The beginning of the bilingual policy requiring all children to study their mother tongue as their second language was also implemented then.
This had a profound effect on the school as many Peranakan girls
who up till then would have chosen Malay as their second language were not able to.
In 1974, due then to the low numbers taking Malay, the school was allowed to offer only Chinese as a Second Language.
In 1976, the school marked another academic highlight when Belita Ong was named President's Scholar,
the first SCGS alumnus to receive the honour. She was to be the first of many more to follow.
Miss Tan ended her tenure beginning a new building project - a new Canteen and Multi-Purpose Hall -
which she would hand to her successor to oversee.
She retired in 1978 with SCGS riding a crest of popularity and with a promising future.
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