Brother Michael Broughton, Area Director of the De La Salle Brothers
Members of the SJI International Leadership Council,
Old boys, friends and staff of SJI

1. At the SJIOBA dinner marking the 154th SJI Founder’s Day on 7 Apr this year, I had the pleasure of announcing a number of initiatives to strengthen SJI’s position as a leading Catholic school in Singapore. One of these initiatives is the proposal to establish an international school, called SJI International, catering to students from Singapore and the region.

2. Since then, the plan for SJI International has been firmed up and preparatory works are now in full swing. The proposal for the new school has been submitted to MOE for approval. The interim Governing Board has made two key leadership appointments – Bro Michael Broughton as Brother President and Andrew Bennett as Principal. Andrew is a former Head of United World College in Singapore. He has considerable experience in the field of international education, including the International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma programme. He is also very familiar with the needs of education in Singapore and Southeast Asia. He will work closely with Brother Michael who, as Brother President, will help make sure that the new school is imbued with the De La Salle ethos.

3. The positive response that old SJI boys are giving to the proposed school is heartwarming. We are excited if not pleasantly surprised by this bold initiative. Some have written in to volunteer their support. And a group of them led by Philip Yeo are showing this support in a very tangible way by coming together to form a Leadership Council, with a commitment to back SJI International and raise funds to build the new school. Together, they have pledged more than $700,000 and are inviting others to join them so as to meet the target of $1 million.

4. As Philip Yeo has mentioned, in supporting SJI International, the old boys are driven by not only their desire to rally around our alma mater, but also by a desire to improve the range of education available to our young. If we achieve our objective, the new SJI International will be another institution of excellence helping to bring out the best in the boys and girls who enroll in it.

5. Establishing SJI International side by side with SJI in a mutually reinforcing way without cannibalizing each other’s strengths – that is easier said than done. Why do we need to do this at all?

6. The reason is that SJI has built up a strong tradition of excellence, and should build on this, do even more and break new ground. As a privately-funded school, SJI International will be freer to experiment and implement new initiatives faster. It will adopt a different curriculum working towards the IB and offer its own model of a through-train education from secondary school to junior college. SJI International will also have up to 50% of foreign students not counting Permanent Residents. The larger presence of foreign students in SJI International will create a more cosmopolitan and diverse learning environment which will benefit SJI as well.

7. SJI International’s principal handicap will be financial. While it will not receive public funding, we hope that EDB (Economic Development Board) will incentivize SJI International the way it incentivizes other high-quality private schools.

8. We want SJI International to have values and traditions similar to SJI. There are many De La Salle schools in the world which are private institutions. SJI International will not be the first. Indeed, SJI International like SJI and the other De La Salle schools in Singapore will be able to call upon all the resources of the De La Salle international network.

9. We can’t be sure how precisely SJI and SJI International will relate to each other in the coming years. We know it should be a fraternal relationship and a complementary relationship, linked by a shared mission and a common set of values, although the finances will have to be clearly separated.

10. What we are doing here is in keeping with the Government’s plans for the education sector as a whole. The public education system in Singapore has served us well since Singapore became independent. It has succeeded in equipping a younger generation of Singaporeans for the needs of a modern economy. By any international measure, our students have done very well in the main. However, as our society becomes more sophisticated, as our economy becomes more globalised and complex, we need to give more free play to private education initiatives which complement and supplement the public education sector. In our efforts to make Singapore a regional education hub, the private sector must play a major role.

11. This duality in Singapore education will thus be reflected in SJI and SJI International. It is an exciting experiment. There are risks of course but nothing worth doing is without risk.

12. The key to the success of SJI International is our ability to attract good students from the region. With the rapid growth of the middle classes in Asia, many of the bright students who join SJI International will come from families who can pay full fees, including Singaporean families. However, we should also try to bring in many students from less well-off families. The more we are able to provide scholarships to them, the more will we be able to attract the best students on a needs-blind basis, both Singaporean and non-Singaporean. It will take us many years to achieve this ideal but it should always be our objective.

13. To help graduating SJI students who are interested in pursuing the IB Diploma at SJI International, the Leadership Council will be offering 50 scholarships for a start. We hope to be able to help non-SJI students as well once we have raised enough money.

14. Together with the implementation of the Josephian Programme in SJI and the proposed conversion of St Michael’s School into SJI Junior, the establishment of SJI International will help grow an SJI family of schools dedicated to the provision of a solid, values-centered, broad-based, internationally-oriented Catholic education for students from Singapore and the region. We are aiming high. Not only do we see the SJI cluster of schools making an even greater contribution to education in Singapore, we hope they will become among the best Catholic schools in the world. If we work hard and in the right spirit, we will succeed as our school motto ‘Ora et Labora’ instructs us.

15. It is now my pleasant duty to launch the SJI International Leadership Council.

Back