arely two months after taking over the
helm from Mr Bennett Shaw, the first V.I. Headmaster, Major
Richard Sidney showed that he was every bit an innovative
Headmaster by initiating two great traditions that have
stood the test of time. One was the establishing of a
school magazine called The V.I. Echo which was later
renamed The Victorian.
The other was the creation of the Board of
Prefects. On Friday, 6 April 1923, the first V.I. Prefects -
nineteen in all - were invested at a short but impressive ceremony
that commenced at 3 p.m. at the school
assembly hall at the old High Street premises. The place had been
specially decorated and the platform was alive with green ferns.
Almost the entire school occupied the body of the hall while the
staff occupied seats on the platform. The Headmaster, accompanied
by the Chairman of the School trustees, Mr. E.W.N. Wyatt, and the
wives of two teachers, Mrs. Ambler and Mrs. Redfearn, ascended
the platform.
Mr. Sidney first spoke on the importance of
the School Prefects. He gave details of the origin of the word
and showed how in ancient Rome the office of the Prefect was
an honourable one. He instanced the fact that nearly all English
public schools had their after school hours run by Prefects who
were chosen for their prowess in scholarship or in athletics.
They had several responsible duties to discharge. Of course, they
enjoyed some privileges as well but each prefect had to earn the
esteem and respect of his comrades, as well as the confidence of
the teachers.
The force of example is an article of
faith among all who believe in education. Mr. Sidney elaborated
on this virtue of the prefectorial system in his own words:
"The very young boys who see the elderly
Prefects doing their job well - and they have done their job
well — will gradually want to become Prefects themselves. I
consider that the Prefect system is one of the things that
is going to make the V.I. a real public school on the best
model."
Some of the first Prefects - the House
Captains - had been elected by the boys themselves while the
others had been nominated by the Headmaster. The Prefects were
invited to take their places in the front row. Mr. Wyatt, in
his address, emphasized the prime importance of character, which
he considered to be even more important than prowess in games or
studies. The ceremony ended with the customary singing of God
Save the King.
The Prefects system was, of course, already
well established in all the famous public schools of England.
In Malaya, the V.I. was not the first school to appoint a Board
of Prefects but it was certainly among the first to do so. One
can cite a number of idealistic as well as practical reasons
for having Prefects in a school. A group of boys, singled out
on the basis of achievement in sports and studies, will
naturally stand out as good examples or models for the rest
of the school. The Prefects, in turn, help to maintain discipline
and order in the school environment. The educational psychologist
of today would describe them as 'role models' for the student body
and cite the benefits of hero worship, peer group influence
and the aspiration towards excellence.
Others have cited character building as
the chief aim of the Prefects system as well as the development
of leadership qualities and maturity through carrying out
duties in a responsible manner. Richard Sidney on that red
letter day did remind his first Prefects that no Prefect who
lacked the respect of his colleagues or the confidence of
his masters would be of much use. He was confident that,
in due course, the system he inaugurated would do the V.I.
proud. After all, the British teachers at the V.I. were
themselves products of public schools and, doubtless, were
familiar with Prefects’ traditions. Deference to rank and
hierarchy and belief in honour and duty are deeply entrenched
in any good school system. Richard Sidney, an ex-major in the
British Army, would have understood that.
So seriously did Mr Sidney regard his
brainchild that, two months after the first Prefects were
installed, he drafted a charter - the Prefects' Charter -
to spell out the purpose and duties, as well as some privileges,
of the V.I. Prefects. The preamble just about sums up the
striving for excellence that was, and still is, expected of
all V.I. prefects:
"On the Bearing of the Prefects will depend the Tone of
the Whole School."
This Charter has served as a good model
for the Prefects Board of many other schools in this country
as well. It has been revised several times but the spirit of
Sidney's words is always there. He regarded Prefects as being
in loco parentis as far as the boys were concerned.
Here are some selections from the list of duties and
privileges in the V.I. Prefects' Charter of June 1923:
The Malay Mail of 7 April 1923
carried a full report of the installation of V.I. prefects,
with the heading, Important Innovation at Victoria
Institution. It commented:
In all public
schools of importance in England, the Prefects play an
important and necessary part. The system has been introduced
with success to countries in the East which have adopted
Western education and which aim at a standard equal to that
of English public schools in education, athletics and general
tone. Mr. Sidney is, therefore, trying an experiment which
should be of far-reaching importance not only to the V.I.
but to all the schools in the country.
The paper also published the names of
the newly appointed School Captain and Prefects. The first
School Captain of the V.I. was Othman bin Mohamed, the
Company Sergeant Major of the V.I. Cadet Corps and Captain of
Steve Harper House. The others were:
Wong Koon Yoon, the Editor of V.I.
Echo;
Pala Singh, the School Cricket Captain and Treacher House Captain;
Choong Wan Chan, King's Scout, Assistant Scout Master, Sergeant Bugler,
Loke Yew House secretary;
Leong Ah Tee, 1922 Treacher Scholar and Hepponstall House Captain;
Sapuran Singh, 1922 Nugent Walsh Scholar;
Hashim bin Omar, Rodger House Captain;
Loh Pak Soon, Secretary of the V.I. Literary Union;
Ang Kim San, Davidson House Captain;
Selvadurai, Nugent-Walsh House Captain;
Mohamed Tamby, School Football Captain;
Claude Marcus, Loke Yew House Captain;
Moey Lian Thoon;
and Lee Yew Chong.
The first junior prefects were Loke Ah Meng
(Thamboosamy House Captain), Sulong bin Mohamed Ali (Scout Patrol
Leader), Kwok Ah Keng (Scout Patrol Leader), S. Tambirajah
and Abdul Aziz.
Othman bin Mohamed, the first School
Captain, held that position until 1924, when he was succeeded
by Leong Ah Tee. Othman was born on 5th January, 1905, in
Klang and joined the V.I. around 1916 or 1917, under the
headmastership of Mr. B. E. Shaw. Othman was active in
everything, from the Cadet Corps to the VIMADS (Victoria
Institution Musical and Dramatic Society). He was the House
Captain of the now-defunct Steve Harper House and the monitor
of the boarding school in Kampong Baru.
After leaving the V.I., Othman showed
that Richard Sidney had made a correct choice of School
Captain by chalking up a stellar record of public service
in Malaya. Joining the Malay Administrative Service in 1925,
he served variously as an Assistant Senior Administrator, a
magistrate, and an Assistant District Officer before he
became Postal Officer of the Singapore General Post Office.
After five years he returned to Malaya and, in 1934, he was
promoted to the Malayan Civil Service on his return from a
visit to Britain accompanying the Sultans of Selangor and
Perak. He served as District Officer of Kuala Langat and
Ulu Langat until the outbreak of war. During the Japanese
Occupation, he was forced to administer Japanese law in court.
After the war, Othman became the State
Secretary of Negri Sembilan and was a member of the Negri
Sembilan State Council. In 1949, he became the Selangor State
Secretary. He was appointed Menteri Besar of Selangor in
March, 1953, and as a member of the Legislative Council at the
same time. In 1954, he was sent to Britain as High Commissioner
for the Federation of Malaya and Singapore. In July of the same
year, he was recalled and appointed Permanent Secretary of the
Ministry of External Affairs. Unfortunately, he suffered a
breakdown in health and had to retire from the Malayan Civil
Service. However, in 1958, Othman was appointed by the Yang
di-Pertuan Agong as a member of the Public Services Commission
and served as the acting Deputy Chairman until his retirement.
As School Captain, Othman would certainly
have attended, in 1923, the first of Richard Sidney's V.I.
Prefects' Annual Dinners - yet another brainchild of this
irrepressible Headmaster. This formal affair was held yearly
at Sidney’s bungalow on the banks of the Klang River within
the school premises. Prominent European and Asian residents
of Kuala Lumpur would also be invited along and Sidney arranged
the seating in such a way that every Prefect had a guest on
either side of him. Two scouts on duty would play gramophone
records to provide dinner music while white-coated waiters
hovered in the corridors of Sidney’s spacious quarters. Toasts
were drunk at the end of the dinner with the boys taking
either water or port wine or hijau, as they called
crème de menthe. Some of the Prefects were even
expected to make brief after-dinner speeches. Such was a Prefect's
life in the early years. During his term as Headmaster, Sidney
was able to organize four of these special dinners for the V.I.
Prefects. One of the benefits, as noted in his book In British
Malaya Today, was that
...Europeans
had a chance of mingling freely with pleasant Asiatic boys,
who in turn learned that Europeans were, after all, quite
harmless human beings and ready to be very friendly...
Over the decades the V.I. Prefects’
Board was, almost by definition, composed of the lion’s share
of high achievers, leaders, scholars and sportsmen of the school
who went on to make their mark in Malaya and beyond its shores.
With the outbreak of the Pacific War, this assembly line
abruptly ground to halt. It would be almost four years later,
with the surrender of the Japanese, that the Prefects would be
among the first institutions to be resurrected, and for a good
reason.
At the V.I.’s temporary Batu Road School
premises, Mr Vallipuram, then the acting Headmaster, found
that the war had done something to the V.I. boys. With the School
reconstituted from prewar V.I. boys as well as new, overaged
ex-primary school boys, he was facing unheard-of discipline
problems. Because of the enforced "holiday" of nearly four
years, there had been difficulties in enforcing discipline
and in inculcating good conduct in some of the V.I. boys. Most
were overaged, young adults, thoroughly street smart and had
taken up smoking and other undesirable activities So, in early
1946, he took the bold step of appointing a caretaker board of
nineteen Prefects. This number was in excess of the normal
prewar number of twelve but was felt necessary until the V.I.
recovered from the dislocations of the Occupation!
Chan Fu Ho and Fong Chu Chai were appointed
School Captain and School Vice-Captain respectively. However,
both left early in March, 1946, and, in their places, Yap Kon
Puck became School Captain while N. G. Oorloff was elected
School Vice-Captain. Their official investiture was put off
until the V.I. boys returned to their home on Petaling Hill.
It eventually took place at the school assembly held on
September 9, 1946, when Mr. Ng Seo Buck, who took over briefly
on Mr. Vallipuram’s retirement, invested twelve prefects with
their badges of office. This reversion to the prewar number
marked the School’s return to normalcy.
Mr Buck’s permanent successor, Mr F.
Daniel - another innovative Headmaster - introduced compulsory
classroom cleaning for which a challenge shield was awarded
to the Cleanest Classroom of the Week. It naturally
fell upon the Prefects to be the judges of this contest.
Duty Prefects on their daily rounds would award marks as they
went from classroom to classroom to inspect the brasswork and
general cleanliness. At the end of the week the marks would
be totalled by the Secretary of the Prefects Board and the
winning class announced by the Headmaster at the Monday morning
assembly. Daniel also introduced the famous/infamous Detention
Class (again administered by his dependable Prefects) and
worked immediately on a revision of the Prefects’ Charter
which incorporated these new responsibilities along with others.
Daniel's new Charter was published on October 1, 1946:
The V.I. Web Page