Tanglin Integrated Secondary Technical School was officially declared open by Mr Ong Pang Boon, Minister of Education, on 16th October 1964. It was situated in the first satellite housing estate of Queenstown at Commonwealth Avenue. It was Singapore’s first technical school where the medium of instruction was in Chinese. It was also the first to admit female students to its technical courses. It was renamed Tanglin Technical Secondary School in 1969.

The school’s crest was updated towards the end of the eighties. The pentagon symbolises the core values of character (德), knowledge (智), physical well-being (体), team spirit (群), and aesthetics (美). A book and four horizontal ascending bands were added to signify the new emphasis towards a knowledge-based and character-building education.

The school celebrated its Silver Jubilee (25th Anniversary) Celebrations in 1989, with Dr Tay Eng Soon, Senior Minister of State for Education as the Guest of Honour. He said: “Tanglin Technical can take pride in being one of the pioneer technical schools which helped prepare young Singaporeans for industrialisation. In that sense, Tanglin Technical is part of Singapore’s history.”

Tanglin Technical Secondary School was moved to West Coast Road (our current location) in 1993, and was renamed Tanglin Secondary School. In that year, we also adopted ‘Strive for Success’ as our motto. Programmes focusing on the holistic development of the students were introduced, including BASIC (character education) programme, Student Leadership Development Programme, Aesthetic Education Programme (AP), Interdisciplinary Project Work (IPW), Innovation & Enterprise (I&E), and Sports Education Programme (SEP). Partnership with the various Polytechnics led to the introduction of the Applied Subject (AS) on ‘Fundamentals of Electronics’ and Advanced Elective Modules (AEMs).