The Councils were formed in 1959 to replace all sports councils previously organised at district level for the organisation of inter-schools games. The Councils have always adopted a 'gotong royong' approach, where the Principals, Heads of Department and teachers offered their time and schools' resources and took turns to organise the various inter-school sports competitions for the students. It was a group of educators coming together as a community to provide competition opportunities to develop students' sports talents and character.

The annual NSG competition opportunities provide a valuable platform for our students to cultivate values and develop character through sports. This is in line with the Council's motto of "Character in Sporting Excellence".

Since 1959, Principals of Singapore schools have come together at the national level to organise inter-school games to encourage sports participation and promote sports excellence. The Principals now organise themselves into the Singapore Primary Schools Sports Council (SPSSC) and the Singapore Schools Sports Council (SSSC) to organise games for the primary and secondary schools/pre-universities respectively. The National School Games have been wholly run by the member schools, involving teachers, HODs, Administration Managers and all school leaders. MOE HQ provides technical advisory for the games. In 2014, the National School Games Office (NSGO) was formed to serve as a central coordinating office to offload schools from some of the administrative and operational work of organising the NSG.

Before 2015, the NSG were funded by the participating schools. An annual school subscription fee (computed on a per-student basis) was collected from every Government and Government-Aided schools. Fees were deliberately kept low to ensure that school sports remain affordable and accessible to all schools. With effect from 2015, the Councils have been receiving full funding from MOE for the running of the NSG and for overseas sports competitions which the Schools Sports Councils have obligations to participate.

The NSG forms the largest sporting platform organised for school students in Singapore. With more than 400 championship titles, the annual National School Games (NSG) involves more than 55,000 student athletes across schools in Singapore. The NSG SSSC sports organised have increased from 16 sports in 1968 to 28 in 2016 while the SPSSC sports have increased from 10 to 21 over the same time period.

The NSG stretch from Term 1 in January to Term 3 in August of every school calendar year.

 

The Singapore Schools Sports Council (SSSC) is affiliated with the regional sports organisations to provide top student athletes with the opportunities to spar with regional players, i.e. ASEAN Schools Sports Council (ASSC), the Asian Schools Football Federation (ASFF) the Asian School Sport Federation (ASSF) and International School Sport Federation (ISF).