1. How was the investiture different from ours?

How did you feel when you were

there? Is there anything that you liked about their investiture?
On Monday, 11th April 2016, we attended Gan Eng Seng Schools Student Leader
Appointment Ceremony, the equivalent of our student leader investiture. The theme that
they had this year was Defying Gravity. It symbolises that student leaders possess the
ability to conquer all obstacles to attain their goals, just like how gravity is overcome in
outer space. If we can defy something so strong, such as gravity, nothing can stop us
from pursuing our goals.
Gan Eng Sengs Student Leader Appointment Ceremony was much more formal than
ours, especially for the change over of UG CCAs. The CCALs would march on stage,
salute, and pass over something significant to their CCA, such as a staff for Boys
Brigade. They have about 16 CCAs in total and a small flag with the name of the CCA
and the school crest is presented to every CCAs new chairpersons by the former
chairpersons. An interesting part was that the CCA leaders wore their cca attire, and
that added vibrancy to the otherwise extremely formal ceremony. As for the student
leader executive committee, they removed their badges and passed them to the
incoming batch of student leaders. This is quite different from our system, as the
incoming batch of student leaders typically get new badges and the outgoing batch get
to keep their badges. The audience size was also rather small as compared to ours
where we would include the whole school.
The student leaders were very warm and welcoming, which made us feel extremely
comfortable. They were very relaxed when talking to us, which made us feel at ease
when conversing with them. The student leaders were rather direct and went straight to
the point, asking us about our student leader system in RGS. This was a bit of a shock
to us, as usually when hosting visitors to our school, we tend to ask them questions
about their day and such. The fact that they were very direct with their questions shed
some light on their school culture, and how it differs from ours.
2. Did you have conversations with anyone?
a. What did you learn from them? (e.g. lead board structure, their job
scopes, initiatives etc.)
Gan Eng Seng Schools lead boards consist of the Chairpersons, CCA Leaders, and
Prefects. They work together to maintain discipline and uphold their school values,
which are Discipline, Respect, Integrity, and Resilience. Their schools Prefectorial
Board does not seem to have any kind of booking system. They maintain school
discipline by mainly just reminding their school mates to not break rules. This is vastly
different from our school. It is quite remarkable that the SLs are able to maintain
discipline just from issuing reminders. From experience, it is quite hard to maintain

discipline without any punishment or sorts. As such, we really admire the respect that
the school population has for the SLs.
Something that was rather interesting was that the outgoing leaders, for example, the
head prefect and the Head of Recruitment of PB, were still part of the student leader
executive committee even though they no longer assumed their former roles. In that
sense, the student leader executive committee is adjunct from PB, and one could
assume different roles in either one or both.
Many of their student leaders hold multiple positions across the various lead boards.
This is discouraged but there are still many student leaders with many positions.
In terms of initiatives, their school works in the same way as ours -- the SLs come up
with an initiatives that they want to carry out and the teachers have to approve of them
before they can be rolled out to the entire school.
3. Is there anything that you have learnt from this investiture and would like to
share with anyone else?
The student leaders who were hosting us were very outspoken and proactive, and
would approach us to strike a conversation if they saw us talking to each other. We felt
that this is something that we could learn from. By being more outspoken and proactive,
we would be able to come across as being more confident and passionate about the
various aspects of our schools and leave a better impression on visitors.
Though the board structures in different schools are vastly different (in terms of which
boards they have and what we all do), we are all leaders in our own capacity, and we all
lead to serve. No matter which school we come from, or which position we assume, the
reason as to why we chose to lead is ultimately the same -- to serve the school and the
community around us.