SINGAPORE - The first six years of my formal education were spent in a Catholic primary school. My parents enrolled me and my brothers there as they felt a single-sex environment was more conducive to learning and was more aligned with Islamic values on gender separation than co-ed schools.

These schools were widely regarded as institutions that imbued character, with brothers and sisters who devoted their lives to nurturing their young charges of all faiths in not just academic subjects, but also universal moral values and character development.