Noel Chin - Instrumental for St Paul's School success

Happenings in St Paul's School - 1966

Mr Noel Chin, the former Principal of St Paul's School, Beaufort earlier succeeded Mr.Canon E.C.M. Rusted ,who was the then Principal of All Saints School ,Kota Kinabalu for 18 years.

At that particular moment, Mr. Chin was posted as the new Principal at All Saints School and he reported on duty at the beginning of the 3rd term, August 26th.

Mr Noel Chin, the third son of Canon and Mrs Chin Phu Yin had his primary education in Brunei and secondary education at St. Thomas School in Kuching. He completed his Form Six in 1956 and was awarded a Colombo Plan Scholarship for higher studies in New Zealand, taking a B.A. degree in history at the University of Otago in 1960. He was also trained as a teacher at Dunedin Teachers' College , New Zealand.

Upon returning to Sabah, he worked as a teacher at All Saints' School ,Kota Kinabalu from 1961 to 1963. In 1964, he was appointed as Principal of St Paul's School, Beaufort but for a short span of four years. He left St Paul's at the end of the second term in 1968.

He married Ms Lily Lai, the elder daughter of Dato and Datin Lai En Kong of Kota Kinabalu in 1963.

During Mr. Chin tenure as the Principal, the school began to flourish. The shooting expansion of the school was witnessed by the rapid increase of students and number of new buildings that were built to cater different purposes. St Paul's school had 290 students then but today,it has around a thousand students. Teaching staff had also grown to a figure of 22 then.During his tenure, more then RM100,000 worth of new buildings were duly erected.

A new staff house, a library, a staff room and a principal office were completed in 1966. A new block of four rooms was built during 1966/1967. That year, additional of two more classrooms were completed and two new staff houses were to be built.

Many new subjects have been added to the school curriculum i.e. History and Literature in 1964 and Malay in 1965.

For School Certificates Classes, Additional Mathematics was also offered as a subject from 1965. Biology was introduced in 1966. The school currently offered all the major Science subjects. St Paul's offered most of the subjects as available by other prominent schools. Domestic or Home Science was later introduced at a later stage by jointly held with neighbouring St.John's Secondary School. A domestic Science teacher was recruited from P.Malaysia.

Prior to Mr. Chin's departure, the students from different classes were very busy preparing parties for him. The students felt sad to lose him as the Principal of St Paul's. On his last day, the prefect organised a programme to bid farewell to him and express their thanks for the effort he had extended to the school.


In the farewell party, they sung a song called "Missing You, Sir" to express their sadness over his departure.

Rev Colin Hurford took over from Mr. Chin as acting Principal upon his departure to Kota Kinabalu in 1968.






(<- This photo was taken after a farewell dinner organised by Form Five students together with Mr & Mrs Noel Chin and other teachers)