SINGAPORE — Two special education schools for children with mild intellectual disabilities will move to a new site from 2025, where they will share a campus with more facilities. 

The two schools are Chaoyang School in Ang Mo Kio, which enrols primary school pupils between the ages of seven and 12, and Tanglin School in the Redhill area which takes in secondary school students aged 13 to 16. 

Both are government-funded Sped schools run by the Association for Persons with Special Needs.

Minister of State for Education Sun Xueling, who announced this during a visit to Chaoyang School on Thursday (Nov 5), said that the move will provide more convenience for students. 

“There will also be more opportunities for interaction and mutual learning,” she said, adding that this the first time two special education schools will share a campus.  

The new campus will also help to expand the capacity of both schools, thereby providing more places to children with mild intellectual disabilities living in the northeastern and central areas, said Ms Sun.

Currently, Chaoyang School can take in 320 students while Tanglin School has places for 260. 

The expanded facilities will increase this to 400 and 350 respectively. 

IMPROVED FACILITIES

The new campus will have improved facilities, such as dedicated vocational training facilities, as well as more rooms for physical education and aesthetics activities. 

Tanglin School principal Liza Ow said there are plans to build up a supermarket environment within the new campus so that students enrolled in vocational programmes can simulate interacting with customers and merchandise.

This helps to better prepare the students for the skills they need when they enter the workplace, she added.

Tanglin School has four vocational tracks — food and beverage, retail operations, horticulture and hospitality. 

Though vocational facilities exist in the current campus, Mrs Ow said they are usually small and not as tailored as the teachers have to make do with whatever space is available.

EASIER TRANSITION

Besides the expanded facilities, the Ministry of Education said in a statement on Thursday that the new co-located campus will also help pupils transition from primary to secondary education more easily.  

Currently, 95 per cent of pupils who attend Chaoyang School move to Tanglin School when they graduate. 

Private tutor Chua Shan Shan, whose 11-year-old son is currently studying at Chaoyang School, said she was “overjoyed” when she heard about the new campus. 

The 38-year-old was fretting about how to teach her son, who has autism, how to travel independently from their home in Hougang to the Tanglin School campus in Bukit Merah. 

“For children with autism, the change of environment actually causes a lot of anxiety,” said Ms Chua. 

“So given that both schools will now be side by side, it will seem like one environment to him and there will be much less anxiety in the transition.”