Sekolah Tuanku Abdul Rahman - History

History

The school started on January 13, 1957, with the admission of 200 of these children into Form One. In March, another 160 joined the school to join the Remove Class. A year in what was called “Remove Class” was deemed necessary for every intake of students at the start. The purpose was to equip the students with sufficient command of English language that would enable them to commence their secondary education with English as the medium of instruction. Hence around 60-70% of the time in Remove Class was devoted to the teaching and learning of English Language. The Remove Class ceased to exist when Bahasa Malaysia was made the sole medium of instruction in secondary schools in the country in the early 1970s.

Teaching was done by a group of 15 teachers led by En Hamdan b Sheikh Tahir (Allahyarham Tun Hamdan b Sheikh Tahir) as the first principal. Classes were conducted following the standard curriculum offered in the English medium secondary schools of the day. Associations such as the English and Malay Literary and Debating societies were set up A Boy Scout group, a Red Cross Society and a St. John Ambulance Association group were also formed. The lack of a school hall did not deter the boys from staging a school play for the town folks using another school hall at ACS Ipoh. The absence of a school field of their own did not prevent the boys from playing soccer, hockey and rugby two days a week on “borrowed” ground at the Anderson School new field. The tradition of having Annual School Sports Day was also started in the first year when on 12 July 1957, using the Anderson School field, the school held its first School Sports Day.