Female education in colonial Singapore, 1822–1862: the first girls’ schools revisited

Abstract A few years after Singapore was founded, Lady Sophia Raffles sponsored a school for girls started by the wife of a London Missionary Society (LMS) missionary. This and several other early attempts at female education by missionary women linked to LMS or the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) were largely forgotten by historians. Then there were girls’ schools operated by the Protestant Society for Promoting Female Education in the East (SPFEE) in Britian; the secular Singapore Institution founded by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles; and the Catholic Convent of Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) linked to Sœurs de l’Enfant Jésus-Nicolas Barré (EJNB) in France, followed by others. As there were many pioneering schools and some better-known ones tend to overshadow others, recent studies often contain inconsistent information as to which were the earliest schools, when they started, and who and which organisations were involved. This article uses primary sources from several archives to reconstruct the stories of the first Western-style girls’ schools on the island to hopefully clarify matters and close some knowledge gaps for readers interested in the history of female education in the early decades of colonial Singapore.