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📷: ckwongb - 黄志强 [Wiki Commons]
#TIL that National Junior College (NJC) was Singapore’s first junior college!
The idea behind ‘Junior Colleges’ (JCs) found its roots in 1965 -- back then, both secondary and pre-university classes were held in the same location, resulting in space and resource constraints. Creating JCs as separate campuses and institutions would ideally alleviate the pressure on space and resource constraints, and optimise the use of teachers and lab facilities.
Construction on the NJC campus began in 1967 at Linden Drive in Bukit Timah as the first of four JCs planned. It was slated to have thirty classrooms, ten science laboratories, two lecture theatres, and various other facilities catering to 1,200 students. Learning methods were also vastly different. Instead of large class sizes, small tutorial groups consisting of ten students each would also be formed to facilitate closer student-teacher interaction.
Since its opening in 1969, NJC has found itself as a pioneer in the field of Singapore’s pre-university education. For instance, in 1985, it became the first junior college in Singapore to introduce the Art Elective Programme to groom talented arts students while in 1992, it became the first JC to offer German as part of its Language Elective Programme.
Many more JCs and post-secondary school options were set up over the years to cater to a wide range of students of varying academic inclinations, interests, and abilities.
Indeed, NJC can be seen as a pioneer -- a successful experiment to create a robust post-secondary education pathway, arming our next generation of Singaporean with a variety of skills and experiences so that they can together bring our nation forward.
#Singapore #FirstJC #NJC #education #tertiary
P.S. To commemorate NJC’s 55th anniversary, NJC and Eden School students co-hosted a charity funfair, Funtasia 2024, from 10am to 3pm today. If you had the opportunity to attend the fair, we hope you had great fun,and do consider sharing about your experience with everyone in the comments!