What’s different from when I went to a collegiate school

When North London Collegiate School (NLCS) opened in Singapore in 2020, it caught my attention, as a very, very long time ago, I went to a girls’ collegiate school – in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. So, when the opportunity came up to tour the Singapore campus, I thought it would be interesting to see how it might compare with my old school.

I was also keen to find out more about some of the education buzzwords that I read about so often in our pages, and how things have changed even in the 10 or so years since my own children graduated. The original North London Collegiate School in the UK, which opened back in 1850, is well known. It was recently voted the Sunday Times Independent Secondary School of the Year for 2026. There are sister schools in Dubai, Japan, Vietnam and Jeju in South Korea, as well as the one here on Depot Road.

When my girls were coming through school in Singapore, everything was shifting to laptops. I wasn’t very happy about it, as I feel that writing enables the brain to register and remember what’s written much better than typing on a keyboard. So, I was glad to hear during my visit that NLCS (Singapore) is moving back to handwriting for many of its subjects and year groups. Screens will obviously still be used where they’re needed – but the general trend is away from them.

Enrichment & Sport

Outside lessons, the contrast with my old school was even sharper. There are more than 100 enrichment activities to choose from each week. At my school, music was a choice of two instruments: recorder or piano. At NLCS (Singapore), students can try just about any instrument to see if they have a flair for it, and some go on to perform at the Esplanade and play with professional orchestras.

Sport is much the same. Billy Molloy, the Director of Sport, made me wish I were back at school just for the sport! The range runs from football, swimming and tennis to activities linked to sports science, and there’s real support for students competing regionally through FOBISIA (the Federation of British International Schools in Asia).

What impressed me most, though, was how many initiatives the students drive themselves. I met two who’d set up a leadership society and linked it with other schools in Singapore. How’s that for student-led learning?

Wellbeing & Support

Another big difference I noticed was how much thought goes into wellbeing and decision-making. In my chats with the team, the message was clear: they’re educating students for a happy life. The academic focus is always there – this much is clear from the results of the Class of 2026, who achieved an average IB score of 38.4, with four students scoring the maximum 45, and 56 percent being awarded the Bilingual Diploma.

However, this is only part of the picture. As the team put it, academic excellence and wellbeing should never be competing priorities. They even have a name for it: Everyone Matters. Every student should be known, valued and supported as an individual. I don’t think we ever looked at anything like this at my school. The girls who did well were praised, and the rest of us were more or less forgotten.

Much of this comes under the philosophy of Positive Education. I’ll admit I was a little sceptical at first, but it isn’t simply about telling students to “think positively”. It uses the science of wellbeing and positive psychology to help young people study well and cope when things get hard, at school and beyond. Children who need extra help get it too, with a focus on coping strategies, and it’s all done so subtly. Nobody is pulled out of class the way we used to be. The same kind of support carries through to languages, including English.

Campus & Community

NLCS (Singapore) is laid out across a purpose-built 300,000-square-foot campus, with everything from music rooms to biology labs, a six-lane 50-metre pool and a range of indoor sports halls. The preschool is within the same building but separate, with both indoor and outdoor playgrounds. And it isn’t standing still. The sports facilities are being upgraded this year, classrooms are getting new, flexible furniture, and the younger children are getting their own Computer Science lab for coding and robotics!

For all that, it still feels like a community school. It’s large enough to have all the facilities, yet still small enough to keep things personal. As I walked through the corridors and met the different heads and representatives, I was impressed to see the staff greeting children by name and vice versa. The age groups mix and help each other, too. Senior students read to the preschoolers, which I loved. Parents aren’t forgotten either. New families are paired with buddies, and a new Parents’ Guild is being set up to help them find their feet, with community events and plenty of ways to get involved.

Walking back out onto Depot Road, I couldn’t help wondering if my old collegiate had moved on. But I was also just happy to see the opportunities and potential on offer for these students in Singapore.

North London Collegiate School (Singapore) is at 130 Depot Road.
6989 3000 | nlcssingapore.sg

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