Kluang High School (Malay: Sekolah Tinggi Kluang) is a public secondary school in Kluang, Johor, Malaysia. It is situated opposite Kluang Police Station, near the Kluang District Education Office and is less than two kilometres away from the town centre.
An all-boys primary school at inception, it is now a co-educational secondary school with hostel facilities.
School Name
Founded as Government English School (colloquially known as G.E.S.), Kluang, it was renamed Secondary English School (colloquially known as S.E.S.) in 1958.
The inaugural Form Six commenced in 1978 and the school name was changed - to assume its current name - on 3 March 1980.
The Beginning
The then Johore state government published a request for tender for the construction of GES in December 1937. Construction of the two-storeyed concrete building with multiple classrooms, an assembly hall, tuck shop and gardeners' quarters started in 1938. Reports on the construction cost ranged from $83,000 (Straits dollar) to $170,000.
History
The school commenced on 15 January 1939 with twenty students in two classes in the Volunteer Drill Hall – construction of the new building was still in progress - at Jalan Hospital. Headed by Mr Koe Ewe Teik and assisted by Inche Daud bin Mohamed Amin, the intention was to pioneer a system of admitting 10-year-old boys who have already studied a few years in vernacular schools, to be promoted to Standard III or IV - according to each boy's ability - after two years.
Subsequently, the main building was officially opened by Tunku Temenggong Ahmad on 15 May 1939.
1940s
The number of classes doubled to four by the year 1941.
The students and staff were housed in three attap sheds at Jalan Ibrahim for a period of nine months - until June 1946 - for the British Military Administration (Malaya) requisitioned the GES building after the British re-occupation of Malaya. Upon relocating back to the school building, extra-curricular activities in the form of games were organised for students - in parallel with the resurgence in sports participation in Kluang - and a Wolf Cub Pack was established in 1947.
Eighty boys and girls who were likely to pass at least Standard III in Malay primary schools were prepared for admission to the new Special Malay Class (SMC) for 1949. Entrance to SMC was by way of a competitive examination. Following the accomplishment of this two-year programme (SMC 1 & SMC 2) of mainstream English education, they joined the other students for the final year of primary school: Standard VI. The last SMC intake was in January 1962.
GES expanded its student cohort by creating a secondary section. Mr. C. D. Westwood was appointed headmaster on 1 May 1949 and at the end of the year, the first batch of fourteen students sat for the Senior Cambridge Examinations. One of the school regulations imposed a student curfew, which stipulated that students are not to be sighted in the town centre after 8:00 PM on a school day.
1950s
The Malay language was incorporated into the Standards III, IV and V curricula in 1950. Further, General Science was introduced in 1951.
A block of six new classrooms of timber construction - costing approximately $28,000 (Malayan dollar) - was added to the primary section in 1952. In the ensuing years, students and teachers referred to it as the 'wooden block'. The addition of this block effectively defined the fourth side of two quadrangles, one on either side of the school hall. In the late 1970s, the hall was partitioned into multiple classrooms using makeshift walls, and the quadrangles were utilised as the venue for school assemblies.
Mr. Ng Ah Ow was appointed headmaster in 1954. To broaden the extra-curricular activities, a Red Cross Link was started with 24 members that year, and in 1955 the Cadet Corps with a platoon of 30 was begun. Mr. C. R. Krishnan was the first cadet master. Cadet training was conducted by a duly qualified officer in the staff, with advice from officers of the Engineering Training Centre, British Garrison and later from the 6th Royal Malay Regiment. The British Garrison men, with their bulldozer, also helped to level the new sports field.
New science laboratories were officially opened by the State Secretary, Che’ Abdul Rahman bin Musa in 1956.
The Kluang Primary Boys' School (later renamed Tengku Mahmud School) and Kluang Primary English School were formed in August 1957. The latter school, hitherto the primary section of GES, continued to use the GES wooden block until 1962 when a part of it moved to the Tengku Mahmud School building.