Principal’s Message 2025
Dear Student-Athletes,
We started 2025 with renewed excitement fired up by the 2024 National Day Rally announcement of the relocation of Singapore Sports School to Kallang1 as part of the new Home of Team Singapore. Our new secondary one student-athletes may be able to experience the move while they are still studying with us. Our older student-athletes aspire to be there with us when they become part of the national team for their sport.
How can we ensure our dreams can be realized? Constantly ask: “How can I improve?”
Seek feedback; seek help; seek improvement. Ask the coaches, teachers, mentors how I can be better in my sport, my studies, my social-emotional competencies, conduct and behaviour. Adopt a growth mindset. According to Carol Dweck, in a Harvard Business Review2 article, “Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and put more energy into learning.” Hard work and good strategies are applied by the individual. Input from others needs to be sought. So, keep asking, “How can I improve?”
The school will let you know how you are doing in your sport development through explicit reporting in the Sport Profile with clear suggestions how you can make improvements. We will adopt Process-Level Feedback in your academic learning to help you learn better. We will share with you more explicit developmental milestones for your social-emotional learning. And we would like you to keep asking us, “How can I improve?”
Let us start 2025 with a growth mindset. Keep asking questions that will help us in our learning: in sport, in academic areas, and in our character development.
Happy New Year!
Ong Kim Soon
Principal, Singapore Sports School
1Straits Times, 20 August 2024: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/ndr-2024-singapore-sports-school-to-move-to-kallang-new-indoor-stadium-to-seat-18000
2Harvard Business Review, 14 January 2016: https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means
How can I improve?
How can we ensure our dreams can be realized? Constantly ask: “How can I improve?”
Seek feedback; seek help; seek improvement. Ask the coaches, teachers, mentors how I can be better in my sport, my studies, my social-emotional competencies, conduct and behaviour. Adopt a growth mindset. According to Carol Dweck, in a Harvard Business Review2 article, “Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and put more energy into learning.” Hard work and good strategies are applied by the individual. Input from others needs to be sought. So, keep asking, “How can I improve?”
The school will let you know how you are doing in your sport development through explicit reporting in the Sport Profile with clear suggestions how you can make improvements. We will adopt Process-Level Feedback in your academic learning to help you learn better. We will share with you more explicit developmental milestones for your social-emotional learning. And we would like you to keep asking us, “How can I improve?”
Let us start 2025 with a growth mindset. Keep asking questions that will help us in our learning: in sport, in academic areas, and in our character development.
Happy New Year!
Ong Kim Soon
Principal, Singapore Sports School
1Straits Times, 20 August 2024: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/ndr-2024-singapore-sports-school-to-move-to-kallang-new-indoor-stadium-to-seat-18000
2Harvard Business Review, 14 January 2016: https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means
- Principal’s Message 2025
