Continuing the Convent legacy

Yesteryear: CPT in 1986; it will close its doors as a government-aided school this March.

IJS charts new chapter as curtain falls on 101-year-old mission school

SMK Convent Pulau Tikus (CPT), Penang, recently marked its historic centennial celebration.

Established in 1922, the mission school, located in the state capital of George Town, is set to embark upon a wholly new chapter.

Closing its doors as a government-aided school at the end of the current academic year in March, CPT will be handed back to the care of the Infant Jesus Sisters (IJS) order that owns the school and the land it sits on.

IJS is, in fact, the owner of the largest number of schools in the country that are not owned by the Federal Government.

With 56 mission schools – notably recognised by the word “Convent” in their names – under its wings, IJS started its education journey in Malaysia in 1852 by establishing Convent Light Street (CLS), also in Penang.

That historic school was the first all-girls school not only in the peninsula, but also throughout all of South-East Asia.

In a landmark move several years ago, IJS requested the return of CPT, and both the CLS primary and secondary schools, to forge a new path in their education missions.

CLS is set to reopen as a private international school run by two members of the school’s distinguished alumnae, while plans for CPT are still under wraps –although IJS has stated that the new direction of both schools will be decidedly different.

As a school, CPT is significantly smaller than CLS in both its land size and student body. Similar to nearly all Convent schools in the country, its enrolment has been dropping for years.

The exception to this rule, interestingly, are the small handful of Convent schools that had chosen Chinese as their language of instruction.

According to figures in the yearbooks, in 1970, CPT recorded a Form One enrolment of 223 students, which dropped to a mere 155 girls just a decade later in 1980.

Figures hovered around this number for a while but dipped even more after the turn of the century, with 118 enrolments in 2005 and 112 in 2010.

In 2017, a year before the school would take in the final new intake of secondary students – a fact that was then unknown to people – CPT registered just 61 new Form One girls.

“The most pressing concern is the dilapidated buildings across our 56 schools. The schools are very old – some over 100 years old – and over time, there will be wear and tear from the thousands of students who used the buildings,” Lady Superior of the Society of Saint Maur Sister Mary Theresa Chua, who heads IJS’ mission in Malaysia, told StarEdu in an interview.

As private schools were brought under the national education system in the 1970s, Convents – similar to other schools established by different Christian bodies, as well as Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools – have been semi-aided by the government, with the teachers and staff provided and paid for by the Education Ministry and a set amount extended for utility bills.

Sister Mary Theresa said schools relied upon their parent-teacher associations, alumni, boards of governors and willing donors for all other expenditures, expansions, repairs and maintenance.

And while this has managed to allow Convent schools to survive until today and – in many cases – thrive, a more sustainable solution is being sought with a new era on the horizon for Convent schools in the country. — By ANDREA FILMER