Dear Parents, Guardians, Well Wishers, Former and Present Pupils,
As we welcome the Year of the Goat this Lunar New Year, may I take the opportunity to wish one and all a wonderful year of peace, prosperity and good health for 2015.
At the staff retreat last year, the staff crafted and chose the theme, to “Grow with Grace, Lead with Care, Inspire with Love.” This theme will guide us in all our endeavours this year. I invite all parents to also join us in nurturing their children with this guiding theme.
We envision our girls to become unique and talented ladies who are passionate life-long learners, confident woman servant leaders who promote truth, justice, freedom and love and concerned citizens who contribute selflessly to society and are steadfast in duty. With endorsement from MOE, we attained support for our Applied Learning Programme in the Drama and Literary Arts for LifE or the D’LitE programme, in addition to the Learning for Life Programme, for the PROACTIVE Leader in Me Development Programme. With these niche programmes, we aim to nurture our girls to be passionate life-long learners and confident leaders.
The pupils have continued to sustain their Sports and Games achievements in the areas of Badminton, Gymnastics and Bowling. In the area of Performing Arts, our girls have achieved Certificates of Distinction in Chinese and Indian Cultural Dance and a Certificate of Accomplishment for Malay Dance in 2014. Our choir has also achieved a Certificate of Distinction. The Brownies have done the school proud by sustaining a Gold for the Puan Noor Aishah Award.
As Singapore celebrates its 50th Anniversary, the school has contributed efforts in bringing about a Heritage Trail for Serangoon district in conjunction with other trails in a joint effort by the South Cluster of Schools. This will be launched in Term 2 and pupils and staff will actively serve as guides in bringing members of the public in walking through the trail. An e-book will soon be launched by MOE for pupils to reflect on the past and to pen their hopes for the future. We invite parents to interact with your children on what makes us Singaporean, to reflect on our journey together and have conversations with your children on how to contribute to the country in future. In addition, we would like our children to think of 50 ways to show kindness and other acts of goodwill towards others and to record these acts in their journals. It will be wonderful if parents can monitor this with your children.
In the 21st Century, the global environment is continually changing and becoming more uncertain. We need the strong support of parents for cyberwellness education, and to enlighten our children in the safe use of technology. Most important of all, we need to build resilience in our girls and not be daunted by challenges nor failures. We will continue to partner with parents to inculcate strong values for life through our Values@School and Home programme. We also look to partnerships which can enhance ICT engagement and experience for our teachers and pupils. We will continue to build on collaborative partnerships to yield learning opportunities.
The school has developed plans for the new PERI upgrading project by MOE for all primary schools. We have also engaged with community leaders and residents on the details of the project as the school is located in the heart of Serangoon Gardens.Construction may begin towards the end of the year and will continue till 2017. The new block will certainly open more space for greater innovations in teaching and learning. We thank parents and well-wishers for their strong support in fund-raising over the years.
We wish to thank the new Chairpersons for the Parent Support Group for stepping forward to take the lead in supporting the PSG, We welcome, Mr Nasen Xavier Thiagarajan , Chairman of the Dad’s Club and Mrs Carole Leong-Ng , Chairperson for the Mum’s Club for co-ordinating the support and time given by our fellow parents. We also thank our new Chaplain, Mrs Clare Leong for giving her time to support the girls in their spiritual development. We are very grateful to many parents who come forward to contribute towards various programmes in many ways and no words can express the appreciation and gratitude we feel in our hearts for their thoughtfulness and generosity.
We look forward to having more parents and former alumnae returning to support OLGC to enhance the bonds of partnerships in our joint efforts to support our children. I thank all parents and former alumnae who have come back to support the school in one way or another and the IJ Board of Management, led by Sr Deirdre, Supervisor of IJ schools and Ms Vivienne Lim, Chairman of IJ Board for their unstinting support for all our IJ schools.
Thank you once again for your strong support for the school. May God Bless you and your loved ones always.
Mrs Catherine Seah
Principal
“What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God” - Eleanor Powell
