Largest OBS campus opens on Coney Island with accessible adventure

Currently, not all students get to participate due to limited space at OBS’ Pulau Ubin campus. In 2025, 18,000 Secondary 3 students, or about 65 per cent of the cohort, were enrolled.

With the new Coney Island campus, OBS can finally accommodate the entire cohort by 2030. About 800 students will join each camp, which will be run up to 32 times a year.

The OBS Coney Campus had been a decade in the making. It was first announced in 2016 and scheduled to be completed in 2020, but faced delays due to issues such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the need to ensure that construction methods minimised impact on the environment. The project had a budget of $250 million.

OBS executive director Nicholas Conceicao said: “We want to encourage all Secondary 3 students from all schools to come together, have a shared experience at Outward Bound, make new friends, build confidence and learn to work as a team.”

Sheltered high-adventure elements

Against a backdrop of less diverse and shrinking friendship circles among youth, National Youth Council chief executive David Chua said the camp could encourage young people to build bonds across different backgrounds.

When a media team visited the OBS Coney Campus on Sept 8, a course was under way for students from Catholic High School, Peicai Secondary School, Woodlands Secondary School and Jurongville Secondary School.

They were easily spotted with their bright orange OBS hats and bulky backpacks, with some clutching wooden camping sticks, trekking across the grounds or deep in discussion. Not a single mobile phone was in sight.

The campus’ high-adventure elements can accommodate four people at a time, putting more emphasis on teamwork, unlike those on Pulau Ubin which are designed for individuals or pairs, said Conceicao.

These challenge ropes courses are in both open-air and sheltered spaces, so activities can continue regardless of rain or shine. Other low-adventure elements – such as a see-saw structure where students have to work together to find their balance – dot the landscape.

A 23m-tall outdoor cliff wall offers advanced features like a rockface climbing route with obstacles. The campus also has a Sea Operations Centre for water-based expeditions such as kayaking, rowing or sailing.

Some students will get to explore both the Pulau Ubin and Coney campuses over the five-day course. They sleep in tents outdoors while on expeditions, and use sleeping bags in the sheltered lodges – sans air-conditioning – when in the campus.

Inclusive and sustainable features

To design features tailored for students with disabilities – a first among the OBS campuses here – OBS engaged persons with disabilities and consulted experts in industrial safety processes.

In one high-adventure activity, both the student and a specialised wheelchair are secured to overhead cables with a harness and have to navigate across tilting panels with their teammates’ help.

The move towards inclusivity was gradual. OBS first started adapting its programme for deaf students by inviting teachers fluent in sign language to communicate vital information such as safety briefings.

OBS instructor Faizal Nordin recalled conducting a course for a team which had four deaf students. He said they initially felt nervous and did not want to be a “burden”.

One night, he saw other students trying to learn sign language from their deaf group mates. They warmed to one another, and the students with disabilities subsequently started contributing in activities like land expeditions and outdoor cooking.

“They were happy that the rest of the group wanted to learn from them, too,” said Faizal.

Several members of the public had been concerned that the natural environment, including the island’s iconic airy casuarina trees with needle-like twigs, would be affected by the construction of the new campus.

Jacky Pan, design director of architectural firm Henning Larsen, which led the landscape architecture design for the new OBS campus, said its planting strategy maintained the immersive and rustic character of the island. He noted that a “significant part” of the existing vegetation – particularly the established casuarina woodland – was retained and incorporated into the overall campus structure.

About 120 plant species were brought together in the landscape, including about 4,500 new trees, and different planting layers were designed to establish a “more connected and resilient ecological system over time”, said Pan.

The campus’ buildings are designed with ventilation louvres and solar panels to minimise energy consumption. Rainwater is also used for irrigation and washing of equipment.

The rest of Coney Island, which is connected to the mainland by two bridges on its western and eastern ends, remains open to the public.