• I would like to thank Mr Christopher de Souza for making time to grace this occasion, despite his busy schedule. His presence has made this event a much more memorable one for us.

Introduction

• Last year has been an exciting year in our school history. We commemorated the 50 th Anniversary of Dunman High with a series of events. The celebration culminated in an Anniversary Dinner in the Suntec Convention Hall, which was graced by Prime Minister Lee and more than 1,000 guests.

• We are deeply honoured that Prime Minister Lee gave a strong affirmation of the school’s success in character development and holistic education at the dinner. His encouragement has greatly inspired us to seek even further excellence in our mission to develop students to their full potential, to enable them to care, to serve and to lead.

• Apart from the commemoration of our 50 th Anniversary, the school was also kept busy with several other milestone developments. I will share some of these developments with you in this year’s report, and update you on the profile and achievements of our students and staff. This report will cover developments from April last year to March this year.

Upgrading and Rebuilding Programme

• The school is currently undergoing a re-building and upgrading programme. Our teachers had spent much of their time over the last 2 years giving inputs to the design of the new school campus, as they were determined to provide students with a school for the future. Our upgraded Tanjong Rhu campus, at 7 ha in size and costing about $45 million to build, will be twice its previous size and be equipped with many state-of-the-art facilities.

• These facilities include classrooms that are re-designed from the conventional layout to become learning studios that better support interactive learning and innovative pedagogies. The intellectual life in the new school campus will become even more vibrant and stimulating with the setting up of a knowledge hub. This hub will be equipped with special facilities that cannot be found in most schools, such as the Life Sciences Lab, the Nano Science Lab and a mega cyber-library. It will have 7 Lecture Theatres that can allow 2,000 students to attend lectures concurrently.

• The upgraded campus will also feature an Arts Centre that contains a 850-seater concert hall, a Music atrium, and a range of performing arts studios. It will also have a Sports Centre that includes other among standard provisions, a 400m track and field, an air-conditioned multi-purpose hall that accommodates 1,800 students, an Indoor Sports Hall and roof-top tennis courts. These facilities will provide our performing arts and sports groups the necessary support to scale even greater heights in the future

• The demolition and construction works at our Tanjong Rhu campus is proceeding smoothly, despite the recent disruption to the sand and granite supply in the construction industry. We expect to move back to this upgraded campus by the end of next year. When we do so, Dunman High will become one of the largest schools in Singapore, both in terms of enrolment and campus size. We will also become one of the best equipped schools.

• To make way for the upgrading programme, the school has relocated temporarily to the Mount Sinai campus since November last year. This shift took place very smoothly and efficiently. Credit must go to the staff who had to spend much of their free time in planning and coordinating this massive relocation.

Student Profile

• Despite our relocation from the East to the West, Dunman High School remained firmly an institution of choice among the high-ability students in primary schools. The cut-off PSLE aggregate of our secondary 1 intake this year was unaffected by the shift and remained high, at 258. More than 600 talented students applied to join Dunman High through the direct admission process before their PSLE, even though we had set aside only 200 places for this admission exercise. Both indicators reflect the strong popularity of Dunman High among pupils of exceptional abilities. The relocation clearly has not deterred talented students from aspiring to join the school.

• Two years into the implementation of our Integrated Programme, Dunman High School now has a Senior High Section that comprises Year 5 students, aside from the Junior High Section that comprises Year 1 to 4 students. We have a present enrolment of 1,679 students. Among them are 128 Year 5 students who are our pioneer batch of Senior High students.

Staff Profile

• Together with our expanding student enrolment, our staff strength has also been growing correspondingly. Our staff strength now stands at 163, with 103 teaching staff in the Junior High Section, 20 teaching staff in the Senior High Section and 40 non-teaching staff. The ratio of 1 admin staff to every 4 teaching staff is a very favourable ratio among government schools, and it reflects the strong commitment of the school management to off-load our teachers from administrative duties.

• 2 staff had retired since the last Speech day. On behalf of the school community, I would like to express our deep appreciation to Mrs Ho Ah Chai and Mrs Lim Swee Kay for their dedicated service and lasting contributions to Dunman High. Another staff, Mr Tan Tui Gee, would also be retiring at the end of this month, after having served the school for 40 years. We are honoured that Mr Tan has graciously agreed to continue serving Dunman High School after his retirement in the capacity of an Adjunct Teacher.

• A total of 51 teaching staff, or almost one in every 2 teaching staff in the school, was promoted in April this year. 44 of them were promoted within the General Education Officer grade.

• 7 teaching staff were promoted into or within the Senior Education Officer Grade. They include our two Vice-Principals, Mr Low Joo Hong and Mr Ng Boon Kiat, and our Head of IT, Mdm Lim Ying Ying. My heartiest congratulations to these 51 officers for their highly deserving promotions.

Student Achievements

• Last year, only about 250 of our Sec 4 students sat for the O-level examinations. The remaining 130 students were in the Integrated Programme and were exempted from the O-level exams. These 250 students did Dunman High proud by achieving the 2 nd best O-level performance in the school’s history. Their achievement was particularly impressive, considering that they had out-performed most of the pervious batches without enjoying the full strength of the cohort.

• About 8 out of every 10 students attained at least 5 distinctions last year. Their average L1B5 was 9.1 and their mean subject grade was 2.0, which means that on average, our students’ grade in every subject was an A2. All of them were eligible for admission to the A-level programme.

• Their achievement marks a beautiful closure to our chapter on full O-level preparation. From this year onward, with most of our students already in the Integrated Programme, there would only be one class of students who would sit for the O-level examinations.

• Such sterling O-level results are a sign of things to come when our Dunman High students sit for their A-level examinations next year. From my interaction with our first batch of Senior High students, I could sense very strongly their determination to excel and their motivation to bring the school to greater glory. I am confident that when they sit for their A-level examination next year, they will again do the school proud.

• Our students are equally outstanding in their co-curricular pursuits. At the Singapore Youth Festival Competitions this year, our performing arts groups won an impressive 5 Gold medals, 3 Silver medals and 1 Broze medal, with the Chinese Orchestra and String Ensemble winning the prestigious Gold with Honours award.

• Our uniformed groups also did very well. Girl Guides and St. Johns Ambulance Brigade won the Gold awards in their best unit competitions. The National Police Cadets Corps and Scouts won the Silver and Bronze awards respectively.

• Our athletes and sportsmen also did well in many of the national and zonal competitions. 6 sports teams won top 4 placing in the National Schools Championship. Another 6 teams won top 4 placings at the East Zone Schools Championship.

• Detailed achievements of our students in such co-curricula areas can be found in your speech day booklet. Such all-round excellence of our students has become a hallmark of the educational experience in Dunman High.

Integrated Programme

• Our Integrated Programme, which is now into its third year of implementation, has gained much interests and attention among educators, both locally and overseas. Established schools from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India and Malaysia have visited Dunman High to learn how we have re-designed our curriculum and adopted more creative teaching and assessment approaches. Local schools like Chung Cheng High (Main), Anglican High and Xinmin Secondary have also visited the school to learn about our programmes and innovation. To avoid stretching ourselves too thin, we even had to turn down some of these requests, such as those from schools in South Korea and South Africa.

• The school has also entered into strategic partnership with several renowned overseas schools, to provide opportunities for our students to experience exchange and immersion programmes with their overseas counterparts. These partners include top schools in Nanjing, Haimen, Hong Kong, Thailand, Australia and the United States.

• In line with our vision to help students develop global perspectives and provide them with more authentic learning experiences, the school had organised a series of overseas learning journeys for our students. Over the course of the year, our students had travelled to countries such as the United States, New Zealand, Australia, China, Thailand and Korea, where their learning could be better contextualised and brought to life.

• For example, in the humanities trip to New Zealand , students could study volcanic landform by the edge of a volcanic crater and understand Maori’s culture by interacting with them. Such learning cannot be acquired just from textbooks.

• The success of our Integrated Programme hinges on the quality and passion of our teaching staff. Their talent in designing challenging curriculum and adopting innovative teaching approaches is greatly sought after by many institutions. Last year, more than 1 in 3 teachers in Dunman High were asked to share their expertise at cluster, national or international level.

• We are already seeing the early fruits of our Integrated Programme. The programme is designed to provide a seamless 6-year education with a curriculum that is more learner-centred and inter-disciplinary in nature. It aims to engage our students in richer and more vibrant learning experiences, and enthuse them to learn with greater passion. When we interact with our students from the Integrated Programme, we can sense clearly such changes taking place. They now ask deeper and more fundamental questions when we engage them in dialogue. They are more prepared to challenge assumptions and defend their point of view. They are also more confident, independent and passionate. This is the outcome of being exposed to a programme that offers a more stimulating, imaginative and holistic learning experience.

Our appreciation

• We are grateful that the Ministry has been highly supportive of our Integrated Programme and the upgrading programme. However, with additional funding, we could provide our students with facilities and enrichment that are beyond the standard provisions. We are therefore very grateful that our School Advisory Committee, led by Mr Sam Goi, has helped the school to raise a total donation of $1 million last year for our school building programme.

• Equally vital is the full support that we have always received from the Alumni and the Parents Support Group. It is with their strong support that my staff and I could take on the challenges of developing Dunman High into a top pre-university institution without having to worry about finding enough resources. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to all these stakeholders.

• In closing, I would like to say a few words in Chinese, in keeping with the tradition of a SAP school.

• 我在此祝贺所有领奖的同学们。祝福你们未来在学业上和课外活动里，再创佳绩。希望你们紧记德明的教诲，立身以诚信，处事以勇忠，将来好好地为国家和社会做出一番贡献。这就不枉德明老师们默默地把一生的心血奉献给了教育。谢谢大家！