Alice Smith School

Alice Smith School
Motto Sic Itur Ad Astra ("In This Way You Shall Go to the Stars")
Established 1946
Type Mixed, Day British International School
Location Malaysia
Coordinates: 3°07′41″N 101°42′01″E / 3.1281°N 101.7003°E / 3.1281; 101.7003
Students Approximately 1,600 students
Gender Co-educational
Ages 3–18
Houses 4
Colours White and dark green
Website alice-smith.edu.my

The Alice Smith School, established since 1946 in Malaysia is one of the oldest British international schools in Asia. The school is a not-for-profit educational foundation situated on two campuses. The Primary Campus is at Jalan Bellamy and the Secondary Campus on Jalan Equine.

The Alice Smith School follows the English National Curriculum with a strong international flavour. In 2011, the school was one of the first in Asia to be fully accredited as a British School Overseas by the Department for Education in London. 'Excellent' was the grade given in the most recent British Schools Overseas report for both the Primary and Secondary School Campuses by Tribal, a DfE approved inspectorate.

Its three-year rolling average for A Level A*-B results is 78% and the school's value-add score for academic attainment puts it in the top 6% tier of schools worldwide and top 44% of UK Independent Schools. At GCSE level, the three-year rolling average of A*-A is 63%.

The school's admissions policy is broadly non-selective. Priority for admissions is given to students of the founding trustee nations – British, Australian, New Zealand, and Irish students. These nationalities make up slightly under half of the student population. The school has around one-third Malaysians and 49 other nationalities represented.

History

The Alice Smith School started in 1946 as a stop-gap home school in Kuala Lumpur. At that stage, the expatriate schools in the cooler highlands that had been operating in Malaya before the Second World War had not yet re-opened. In 1975, Patricia Lee, former headmistress of the school from 1964 to 1989, described the motivation behind the school's inception:

People's ideas about living in the tropics began to change as the war had shown them that they had more resistance to the heat than they had imagined and they began to feel it was no longer imperative to send children back to temperate climates at a very early age. One person who held this view was Alice Fairfield Smith, whose husband Hugh was the Statistician at the Rubber Research Institute. In 1946, she decided to keep her daughter Lindsay with her and to teach the child herself. When three months later, there were enough children for two classes, Mrs. Smith realised that this was not going to be the temporary project she imagined, and the Eaton Road School was registered with the Department of Education.[1][2][3]

The school was initially located in Mrs. Smith's home on Eaton Road until the classrooms began to encroach upon the dining room, and Hugh Smith decided to take over a larger house and surrender the entire ground floor to the school. Even this space proved insufficient, and by 1949 the school had moved to the Masonic Hall in Damansara Road, an event recorded by the Straits Times in its series entitled "The Passing Scene."[4] Numbers grew to 70, and fees were $60 a term. Classes were taught by qualified teachers who were supported by a group of volunteer mothers. Mrs Smith never gave herself a salary, and her staff were not paid for school holidays. It is recorded that she said "We do not want to make a profit," and though other things have changed, this principle is as true today as it was then.

In 1949, Mrs. Smith informed a saddened group of parents that she would be leaving Malaya the following year, and she put forward a suggestion that some suitable arrangements should be worked out by parents so that the school could continue. Parents were anxious to take over the responsibility for the administration of the school, and they decided to form an Association that would place the responsibility for the administration of the school in the hands of a Council of Governors. The school was renamed the Alice Smith School, and the new headmistress was Mrs Anne Lilley, who had founded her own school in Penang.

In the early months of 1950, Mrs. Smith finally left Malaya. When she returned for a visit in 1960, the Malay Mail described her[5] as a "highly impressed but slightly bewildered visitor" who, with undisguised astonishment, surveyed the school she had started with two pupils, a blackboard, and a box of chalk. In her absence, the school had moved to a new location on Bellamy Road, about two years after the left. The new location consisted of a hall and two wings, known today as the North and West wings. At the time of Mrs Smith's visit, the school had approximately 250 pupils, and Mrs. Smith could hardly associate the busy establishment of 1960 with what she described as "the itinerant caravan of 10 years ago."

Mrs. Lilley was succeeded by Mrs. Doris Muir, who was then followed by Mrs. G. Whitmore and then Miss Denise Fleming. In this time span, two more blocks were added to the original school, along with the building that presently houses the kindergarten and the East Wing. Following this expansion, the Nursery was brought back from St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church Hall where it had been located but was subsequently disbanded when there was pressure for places for school age children.

In the mid-1960s, under the leadership of headmistress Ms. Patricia Lee, the school had the South Wing erected, which consisted of six classrooms, shortly followed by the library and the practical math room. A discussion also began about increasing the age of students allowed at the school, and around 1968, the Council of Governors, ever responsive to the needs of the children, decided to go ahead with the opening of the school for an older group of students. The Preparatory Building for older students was opened in January 1971. This step was taken with a certain amount of apprehension but with the knowledge that if the project failed, the classrooms could still be used for a lower age level. However, by the end of the year, more classes were being added to the Department.

Since 1950, the school has been administered by a Council of Governors made up of parents and friends of the school. This has always been voluntary work.

In the mid-1990s, there was much discussion about opening classes all the way up to Advanced Level examinations, traditionally taken by students at 18 years of age. However, there was not enough space at the current site to expand, so the school had to locate a new greenfield site, south of the city on the multimedia development corridor to Putrajaya. Funds were raised and on 11 September 1997, the secondary campus opened at Jalan Equine in Equine Park. Prince Edward, the youngest son of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, officially opened the campus on Friday, 12 September 1998 by unveiling a plaque in the school assembly hall.

The Principals of the Primary Campus include:[6]

The Principals of the Secondary Campus include:[6]

There have been two Directors of School who have overseen both campuses:

The current Head of School for both campuses is Roger Schultz, 2014–Present.

The first chairman of the Alice Smith Schools Association Council of Governors was Mr G.G.C. Wilson.[7] The current Chair is Charles Lim.[8]

Campuses

The school operates at two sites: the Primary Campus is in a wooded area adjacent to the old Istana Negara (Royal Palace) on Jalan Bellamy. This is close to the centre of Kuala Lumpur. The facilities at the Primary Campus include interactive whiteboards throughout, a virtual learning platform, three libraries, a hall, a double-storey gym, swimming pool, computer suites (PC & Mac), a performing arts centre, a sports field, sets of adventure play equipment and three play grounds.[9] The latest addition is the Jubilee Centre for parents and dedicated dining hall for students which was awarded GOLD at the Malaysian Architecture Malaysia (PAM) Awards 2015. The Jubilee Centre was opened by HRH, The Duke of York Prince Andrew.

The Secondary Campus students, staff and parents were very excited with the opening of the Seri Kembangan Interchange on the KM16.5 of Kuala Lumpur-Putrajaya Highway (MEX) in December 2015. With the MEX highway link, travelling time between the Primary and Secondary campuses and from KL city to the Secondary Campus at Equine Park has reduced significantly to approximately 20 minutes. This makes the school’s wonderful facilities at the Secondary Campus more readily accessible. The site includes a swimming pool, indoor sports hall, rugby and football pitches, an outdoor basketball court and four tennis courts. The school uses the virtual learning platform, further amplified through the widespread use of interactive whiteboards. The performing arts centre includes two theatre halls, six practice rooms and a recording studio. The expanded art space has been the site of exhibitions, recently expanded to allow exploration of other artistic mediums such as Digital Photography. The school boasts Business, Media & Technology as well as Science centres.[10]

The entire backfield at the Secondary Campus was recently re-developed to include a world class 8-lane synthetic athletics track which conforms to the standard of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), a natural turf football field, a 5-a side hockey field and a versatile multi-sport playing area. Alice Smith School is the first international school in Malaysia and the third in the world to receive the reputable IAAF certification.

This terrific development of new sports infrastructure will support and enhance further expansion of the sports programmes offered throughout both campuses of the school.


Fees

The school is in the top tier of educational establishments in Kuala Lumpur. The fees shown below are Tuition Fees per term (RM), excluding the building fee and parental deposit.

Motto

The school motto is Sic Itur Ad Astra (Latin: "In this way, you shall go to the stars").

School affiliations

The school is a member of the Federation of British International Schools in Asia (FOBISIA), the East Asia Regional Council of Schools (EARCOS), South East Asia Student Activity Conference (SEASAC), Independent Schools Council (ISC), Council of International Schools (CIS), Council of British International Schools (COBIS), The Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS) and ISAC (International Schools Athletics Conference).

References

  1. ↑ Report of the Council of Governors at the 25th Annual General Meeting of the Alice Smith Schools Association, 31 March 1975
  2. ↑ The Alice Smith Schools Association Circular to Parents, February 1951
  3. ↑ The Alice Smith Schools Association List of Parent Members 14 November 1950
  4. ↑ Straits Times newspaper "The Passing Scene" 1949
  5. ↑ Malay Mail newspaper, 12 August 1960
  6. 1 2 Alice Smith Schools Association AGM documentation
  7. ↑ Alice Smith School Association Annual General Meeting November 1951
  8. ↑ Malaysian Companies Registrar
  9. ↑
  10. ↑
  11. ↑

External links

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