National Education

As part of holistic education, NE focuses on developing Identity, Relationships and Choices in the context of Singapore. NE aims to nurture in our students a sense of Belonging, a sense of Hope and a sense of Reality with the hope that these three senses culminate in a Will To Act towards the betterment of Singapore and Singaporeans.

Each class selects two SG ambassadors who work together with SG ambassadors from other classes to raise awareness of issues about Singapore for their schoolmates. In recent years, they have played the extra role of hosting international students as well as worked to ensure that all students who are not Singaporean are made to feel welcome and included in Northland Secondary School.

Total Defence Day 

The Total Defence (TD) programme in NSS uses the experiential learning approach to develop competent citizenship in our students. Through learning journeys, our students will understand Singapore’s constraints in the building years of a young nation and take pride in Singapore’s achievements. The learning journeys are intentionally designed to progressively cover the five pillars of TD across different cohorts of students. Upon completion of their secondary education in NSS, our students would have gained an understanding of TD as a framework for all-round responses to threats and challenges.

This year, Total Defence was made more real as our school-wide response to the COVID-19 threat showed students what it really means to play our part to contribute to psychological and civil defence.

International Friendship Day

At NSS, the commemoration of International Friendship Day (IFD) provides opportunities for students to develop a global outlook, specifically in the context of learning about ASEAN and Singapore’s place in this regional association. Our Northstars will thus gain a deeper appreciation of regional cooperation between Singapore and neighbouring countries and learn the value of maintaining good relations with our regional neighbours and, as an extension, this will enable them to relate well with people of different cultures.

Racial Harmony Day

Through customised class-based CCE lessons and experiences, our Northstars gain a deeper understanding of the customs and traditions of different races and religions. They learn how to embrace diversity by exploring their racial identities as well as understanding stories that surround the racial identities of the people around them. Building relationships in this way contributes towards building an inclusive society. A popular highlight of our school’s celebrations is “Cultural Bites” where a variety of local delights are sold in our school canteen.

National Day

Each year our students come together to commemorate the day we gained independence from Malaysia in 1965. Our celebrations include discussions surrounding the circumstances that led to our independence and the important decisions we had to make in those initial years. The Singapore story thus presents itself as an important context for our students to explore our school values of Respect, Responsibility and Resilience.

Total Defence Day (2019)

Northland Secondary School commemorated Total Defence Week by having a suite of activities to impress on Northstars that Singapore is worth defending, and we ourselves must defend Singapore. During the Learning Journeys, our Secondary 1 students learned more about emergency preparedness and our Secondary 2 students learned to appreciate Singapore as a Global Financial Hub. Our Secondary 3s went Singapore Discovery Centre and learned more about military defence and the Secondary 4s appreciated the importance of keeping the social fabric strong. On Total Defence Day, our Northstars practised Civil Defence by going through a fire drill and also appreciated what they have by experiencing wartime food, food rationing and trying combat rations.