History
The school was the third high school founded in Saigon by the French colonialists, after the Collège Chasseloup-Laubat (now Le Quy Don High School) and Collège de Jeunes Filles Indigènes (now Nguyen Thi Minh Khai High School). In 1925, Architect Hebrard de Villeneuve was commissioned to design a school in Chợ Quán.
On 28 November 1927, a temporary branch of Collège Chasseloup-Laubat, called Collège de Cochinchine, was founded in Chợ Quán for native students. The branch was under the management of the Board at Collège Chasseloup-Laubat.
The construction of the school was completed in 1928. On 11 August 1928, the interim Governor-General of French Indochina, René Robert, signed Decree no. 3116 to establish a native French secondary school (Lycée), combining Collège de Cochinchine and about 200 pupils from Collège Chasseloup Laubat. The Governor Blanchard de la Brosse named the school Lycée Petrus Trương Vĩnh Ký, for the Vietnamese Catholic who served the French colonial government. The school was known as Petrus Ký High School for almost a half-century.
In 1941, the school was temporarily relocated to the Pedagogical College of Saigon due to the war. It resumed its regular teaching activities in the same year, at its own establishment. In 1945, the school was temporarily closed after evacuating to Tan Dinh district. It re-opened in April 1946 in a seminary on Lucien Mossard street. It returned to Chợ Quán in 1947.
In 1961, it became a secondary school in the Southern Vietnamese educational system. In 1976, the school was renamed after a former general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Lê Hồng Phong, and became a high school. In 1990, it was made a high school for the gifted students. Its current name is Lê Hồng Phong High School for the Gifted. Unlike most other high schools in Vietnam, the school admits its students by entrance examinations.
Read more about this topic: Le Hong Phong High School
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