History
The history of the school dates back to 1913, when Rev. William Oldham saw the need for a junior college for ACS. As a result, the Anglo-Chinese College building project and fund-raising initiative was started by Rev. J S Nagle, who started negotiations with the British colonial government about setting up a college to prepare students for British university education. The proposal was turned down by the government, who decided in favour of establishing Raffles College (now the National University of Singapore) to commemorate the centenary of the founding of Singapore.
In 1970 the ACS Board of Governors submitted their recommendations for a junior college to the Singapore government. A 6-hectare site at Rochester Park on a 30-year lease was given for the construction of the college. ACJC thus became the fifth junior college to be established in line with the Ministry of Education's policy on pre-university education, equivalent to a British Sixth-form college, welcoming 968 students in Pre-U 1 and Pre-U 2, on 3 January 1977. To start with, it was an all-male institution. Its main complex was equipped with three lecture theatres, a library, the Tan Chin Tuan Auditorium and eight laboratories. The Shaw Sports Complex housed a 400-metre bitumen track, tennis, volleyball, basketball and sepak takraw courts.
Since then, more facilities have been added to the college, with an extension to the original block, and a refurbishment in the 1980s.
The first principal of ACJC in 1977 was Mr Chee Keng Lim. He had previously been principal of ACS (secondary school). Mr Chee carried over to the new Junior College the long-standing ACS "family tradition" of corporal punishment, using caning to discipline misbehaving male students. However, ACJC practice was to deliver the strokes privately in the principal's room, whereas canings at ACS were administered in front of the student body. In one case in 1987, seven ACJC students were caned for stealing audio equipment from the college. This form of punishment is no longer used in ACJC.
Read more about this topic: Anglo-Chinese Junior College
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