Built to provide educational opportunities for children from low-income families, Da Qiao Primary School officially opened on 11 January 1936 at their first site on North Bridge Road.
The school originally opened as Tai Keou School (公立大侨学校). Da “大”refers to Da Bu “大埔” in Guangdong Province, China, where the school’s founder, Mr Qiu Lin Rong, originated from, and Qiao “侨” refers to the various Chinese immigrants in Singapore at the time.
Alongside the Members of the Char Yong Association who served as the Board of Directors, Mr Qiu served as the school’s first Principal.
Having experienced two relocations after the Japanese Occupation, the school finally settled down in the residential estate of Ang Mo Kio. It was established in 1981 as a government school and renamed Da Qiao Primary School—the pinyin romanization of Tai Keou—to honour the founder and his past contributions.
Primary School began operations at 10 Ang Mo Kio Street 54 in 1982 with 38 classes and a pupil enrolment of 1,200. It was officially declared open in July 1983 by Mr Hwang Soo Jin, Deputy Speaker and Member of Parliament for Jalan Kayu.
The campus was a three-storey reinforced concrete modern building with an internal open-to-sky courtyard in the centre. Single-pitched roofs with articulated angles formed a dynamic roof profile. The industrial red brick walls on the exterior and the horizontal structural columns were painted with the school’s corporate colours—yellow and blue.
Mergers and Relocations
PRIME, or Programme for Rebuilding and Improving Existing Schools, is a school rebuilding programme by the Ministry of Education. As part of this programme, Da Qiao Primary School relocated once again in 1999, this time to 8 Ang Mo Kio Street 54. A year later, they merged with Chong Boon Primary School and officially reopened again in 2002. The merged schools kept Da Qiao Primary School’s name.
The site at 10 Ang Mo Kio Street 54 was subsequently taken over by APSN Chaoyang School in November 2017. The school provides programs and services that cater to the needs of children aged 7 to 12 with mild intellectual disability.
In 2019, Da Qiao Primary School underwent merger once again, this time with Jing Shan Primary School. It relocated to 5 Ang Mo Kio Street 52, and the school kept Jing Shan Primary School’s name. As of 2020, the only representation of the school is a student care centre, Da Qiao Primary Student Care Centre, named after the original occupants of the site. While its affiliation with Da Qiao Primary School is unclear, the student care centre continues Da Qiao Primary School’s legacy of providing educational opportunities to the community.
Buildings and sites featured on Roots.SG are part of our efforts to raise awareness of our heritage; a listing on Roots.SG does not imply any form of preservation or conservation status, unless it is mentioned in the article. The information in this article is valid as of June 2020 and is not intended to be an exhaustive history of the site/building.
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