SINGAPORE - From 2025, a special education school for children with hearing loss and a mainstream school – both founded by the Canossian Sisters in the 1940s and 1950s – will be combined.
Canossian School and Canossa Catholic Primary School (CCPS) will operate under one CCPS banner, the Canossa Mission Singapore (CMS) said on Jan 26.
All current Canossian School pupils will become pupils of CCPS, where they will continue to receive support.
The Ministry of Education has endorsed this proposal and decision, the CMS said in a statement. CMS is a company limited by guarantee, set up to oversee the works of the Canossian Daughters of Charity.
With the restructuring, CCPS will be a mainstream primary school that is designated to support pupils with moderate to significant hearing loss who are able to go through the national primary curriculum and use the oral approach.
This approach means that pupils will use hearing devices to help them listen to their surroundings and learn spoken language.
Hearing pupils will still form the majority of each cohort at CCPS – about 120 per cohort.
Pupils with hearing loss will be admitted to the designated mainstream school programme in CCPS separately, and not through the Primary 1 Registration Exercise.
In a statement, CMS said that pupils from Canossian School have been learning together with their hearing peers at CCPS since 1999, as both schools are located in Sallim Road in MacPherson.
“Over the years, opportunities for students in both schools to interact have increased, and these have benefited both Canossian School and CCPS, with Canossian School students developing in confidence and integrating well in the community, and CCPS students growing in empathy to embrace their Canossian School peers who are differently abled,” it said.
Dr Gerard Ee, chairman of Canossian School’s board of management, said: “The two schools have consciously been building a culture of inclusivity among the children and the staff, making it a natural environment today. Children embrace one another without noticing the differences. This makes for a kinder, more embracing society, which must always start with the young.”
The Canossian Village in Sallim Road also houses a pre-school and runs early intervention for pre-schoolers with hearing loss, along with after-school care, social work, counselling and therapy support.
The statement on Jan 26 said that CCPS will continue to build on the work of Canossian School and provide learning support and services like audiology and relevant therapy to support pupils with hearing loss.
CCPS will also offer more opportunities for social interaction, with a wider range of co-curricular activities and school programmes.
Madam Noorashikin Ahamed, whose 10-year-old daughter Qiara Adreanna Muhammad Herwan attends Canossian School, said she welcomes the move to bring both schools together, although she has some concerns about new subjects that her daughter would have to take in 2025.
The 33-year-old housewife said: “Canossian School is a special education school, so they don’t offer subjects like mother tongue. When it merges to become a mainstream primary school next year, my daughter will be in Primary 4. I do not know how she will cope if she has to learn Malay then.”
Despite that, Madam Noorashikin is confident that her daughter, who has moderate hearing loss, will be taken care of and be able to socialise well with her new hearing classmates.
