During the orientation programme in Sec 1; the principal promised us and our parents that Victoria School (VS) would never be a mixed school. That same principal has turned his back on 129 years of tradition in order to move the school up the ranking system into a higher band of little significance to what makes up a real education.

Like the MOE, we realize that education is more than the achievement of grades, or the number of people getting into the VIP (Victoria Integrated Programme). Victoria School has provided all its boys, with the development of robust character and a love for the school that very few schools can rival. I soar with pride whenever the roar of the “bumblebee” T-shirts at important events can be heard. This sense of camaraderie and belonging to the school can only be found in a single-sex school. And even then, some do not have it. We are even part of Singapore’s history, with the old Victoria School campus at Syed Alwi Road immortalized on the back of every two dollar bill.

It is not as simple as the principal puts it as “raising the quality” of the intake. There are other schools that take in a lower “quality” of students, and yet, are able to produce better students. Then again, there are affiliated schools that take in a significantly lower intake from its primary schools, and yet are able to deliver exceptional results. As Mr. Maran the discipline master used to say, “A school is only as good as its students”, it’s not about the gender of the student. It never is. It’s what we make of it and how far we want to push it on.

A school is more than a place of learning. It was a home to the thousands of Victorians that spent their 4 years there. It still is. Don’t throw what took so long to build, away on a mere ranking system that doesn’t even contribute to real education.

Victoria, Thy Sons Are We.
______________________________________________

VICTORIA SCHOOL

Nil sine labore.
We felt but did not grasp
That truth, until the years.
The changing age confirmed severely:
Nothing without labour,
Nothing is for free.

You grew us well,
Mother of our youth,
Gave grave to toughness,
Tuned mind and feeling.
Our teachers scolded out of love.
We loved them with the fevour
That only mischief has.

We learnt quarrelled laughed,
Little enemies, great friends
In classroom lab assembly
Below the arches of the Hall.
Upon the tower built by Amin
Bock Hai and their scouting gang.

We shared ourselves, so
Found ourselves: Henry Aziz Boey
Soon Khiang Beng Keng Peter Poh
Guan Noordin Eric Heng Goe
Dhanabalan Teo Yong Chua Seng,
Among the intricacies of calculus,
Adverbial phrase, The Rover,
There was the steadying of the eye
As a though struck deep with beauty,
Or growing symmetry, sudden revelation
We did not feel the day go by

The faces appear each year
Along the corridors to labour, love,
Learn, They too will know
That here our better youth was spent,
That what we are was seeded then.

We do not return to you, mother,
Because we never really left.

Professor Edwin Thumboo
VS 1948 - 1953