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I’d rather see my school go co-ed than disappear

As birth cohort sizes shrink, we must accept the reality that single-sex schools might be less viable.

The writer (front row, lying on the floor) with his Montfort classmates in a group photo taken in 2013.

Almost a decade ago, while I was in national service, news broke that my junior college would merge with another.

Shovelling food into my mouth with one hand and typing furiously to my former classmates with the other, I would eventually come to terms with that bombshell – but not in that moment.

The two years in Serangoon Junior College had been some of the most fun I had experienced in my adolescence.

A friend I texted that day summed it up best: “It’s not just the fact the school is closing, but rather how disposable everything we’ve done and contributed to seem to be.

“With a snap of a finger... everything is gone. Our identity (and) culture… just cease to exist.”

After my school merged with Anderson Junior College, it relocated to the latter’s campus, so even visiting old teachers felt foreign. And although it has moved back temporarily while the campus undergoes redevelopment, the school I grew up in no longer feels like the place I once knew.