News this week included: Pritam Singh facing disciplinary proceedings from the Law Society; Jay Ish’haq Rajoo, a popular commentator, charged for alleged false statements in his TikTok videos; Singaporeans repatriated from the Middle East on RSAF jets; Johor residents deal with noise, dust, and water shortages as swathes of land make way for data centres; a Singaporean woman’s 13 failed BTO attempts spark debate about fairness in the housing ballot system; Shein’s boss praises Chinese roots, after having moved its HQ to Singapore, and having encountered opposition to listing in New York and London, sparking renewed debate about “Singapore-washing”; following the death of a 13-year-old boy in Kallang River, ST offers a guide to safe fishing in Singapore; the man behind the Quran-stepping video may be mentally unwell, and is likely the same person convicted for similar acts.
Below are the issues we explore in depth.
Society: ‘No girls allowed’ no more
Montfort Junior School (MJS) is admitting girls in 2028 and registration for the first cohort opens in 2027. Its secondary school will also become co-educational, by 2034 or earlier. Singapore’s falling birth rate and the subsequent decline in school enrollment are possible reasons for the shift. Since 2021, MJS has been undersubscribed. In its latest registration exercise, it only had 48 applicants, out of 150 vacancies.
Discussions about whether to go co-ed were initiated in 2019. Town hall attendees raised concerns about its implications on discipline standards, uniforms and toilet arrangements, and how the schools would manage alumni concerns. For generations, Montfort institutions have been part of Singapore’s landscape of all-boys schools, which alumni often recall with a mix of nostalgia and bravado. A father of an upper secondary boy said: “[M]y expectation of an all-boys school and its boy-centric education with exposure to ruggedness was something I hoped for my son to experience, as I did in my schooling years.”
That sentiment captures the enduring romance of the all-boys school. Former students often describe them as environments that forged a certain kind of masculinity: tough-love teachers, relentless physical training, and the camaraderie of shared ordeals, particularly in Singapore’s elite independent schools, where character-building is frequently articulated through athleticism. Sports, especially its competitive quality, functions not merely as recreation but as a way to perform, refine, and reward particular forms of masculinity. The archetypes are familiar: Olympian, inventor, engineer, or self-sacrificing hero. Boys are encouraged to take on diverse masculinities that fit their talents. The common attribute is to shape tenacious boys befitting the role of a cosmopolitan leader.
Studies show that male-only settings (as opposed to mixed-sex ones) tend to accentuate traditional masculine attitudes and behaviours. Changing the sex composition of schools can widen the range of gender expressions that feel socially permissible. But mixing male and female pupils does not automatically dissolve the structures that reproduce gender norms. Many sports-related co-curricular activities, even in co-ed schools, are not only sex-segregated but also sex-specific. Basketball, soccer, rugby, for the boys. Netball and volleyball for the girls. Then, there are the “gender neutral” racket sports and traditional martial arts.
Opinions on whether to send children to single-sex or co-ed schools tend to revolve around the same set of claims. Co-ed advocates assert that classrooms allow children to cultivate socialisation skills across gender lines, mimicking the real-world. Those in favour of single-sex schools often believe that separating boys and girls is beneficial for their learning—boys are mischievous, girls are shy, and together they distract each other.
The trouble is that when discussions hinge on supposed biological differences between boys and girls, they can drift into gender-essentialist assumptions that obscure more consequential factors affecting learning: classroom size, teacher training, or the absence of comprehensive sexual education. More significantly, many single-sex schools occupy particular social niches within Singapore’s educational geography. Some are clustered in neighbourhoods where class privilege and alumni networks are especially pronounced. In contrast, co-ed schools in heartland areas tend to expose students to people from more diverse socioeconomic and racial backgrounds.
If the conversation around Montfort’s transition to a co-education system focuses solely on one’s sex, it risks missing a broader issue. What matters is not just the mix of boys and girls, but the diversity of social networks formed in schools—how race and class intersect with gender. Friendships across different backgrounds shape how students perceive people from differing backgrounds and help to prevent them from growing up in social bubbles.
