History of Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School

Origins of the School and Its Unique Heritage

Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School started in 1963. The school was named after the late Encik Ahmad Ibrahim, the former Minister for Health and Labour, who was also the Assemblyman for Sembawang.

The school was initially located in Upper Thomson and shifted to the current Yishun Campus in 1985. Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School started out as an integrated school which offered two mediums of instruction; that means, there were classes that taught subjects in the Chinese language and there were also classes that used English language. Malay language was soon also introduced. In 1987, in line with national education policy, the school adopted English as the medium of instruction. The last batch of Chinese-educated students graduated in 1986.

A very significant fact about the school’s history is that Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School was set up as an integrated school, because a primary aim of the school when it was first set up was to bring students of different language streams together to study under one roof. The school was positioned with the key role of helping to promote racial cohesion in the early nation-building years.

Today, Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School continues to draw diverse groups of students. Culturally, we have a very diverse student profile, and you can rightly say that Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School is a microcosm, a very good reflection of the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society Singapore is. Into the 21st century, Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School continues to play its role as an institution that integrates students of different languages and cultural backgrounds.

Another unique feature of the school is that we have visually impaired students in the school. This has a long history too. In 1967 Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School was the first pilot school for Open Education Programme for the blind, whereby the visually impaired students were integrated into the main stream. Today, we continue to have visually impaired students studying together in the same class as all the other students.