Historic: A view of SMK Convent Pulau Tikus in Penang.
As CPT prepares to close its gates in March, teachers and students reflect on the school’s glorious past and achievements
End in glory. Leave a legacy.
This is the current mission and parting wish of SMK Convent Pulau Tikus (CPT) in Penang.
Set to close its doors at the end of this current academic year, the school continues to wave its school banner high, with its last 40 students and 11 teachers still stationed there.
Located in a sprawling, north-western suburb of George Town, the state capital, CPT was established in 1922 in a small building next to the Church of the Immaculate Conception.
Its first enrolment was less than 100 students, who had their lessons in five modest classrooms. School fees were one dollar a girl, though poorer students were allowed to pay less or nothing at all.
In under a decade, enrolment more than doubled and extensions to the building were made in 1930 and again in 1932.
Back then: An undated photo from the school gallery showing the CPT secondary and primary faculty. IJS sisters led the school as headmistresses until 1968.
After the Second World War, the number of students increased so rapidly that a piece of land just a stone’s throw away was purchased and a new school built in 1950. That school is now CPT.
Initially, older students progressed to Convent Light Street (CLS) in the heart of the inner city for their last years of formal education.
By 1959, however, CPT became a fully-fledged secondary school, catering to the education of students right until the important Form Five examinations.
The school’s parent-teacher association was established in 1973 and strong fundraising efforts subsequently began for a school building fund.
Around 1977, efforts to build a school hall intensified and lasted into the 1980s, with major donors hailing from as far as West Germany where a Catholic church chipped in RM30,000 for the effort.
The school hall, located on the upper level of Block C, has since served the school well and will host CPT’s last batch of SPM candidates in February and March.
Sisters from the Infant Jesus Sisters (IJS) religious order headed the school as headmistresses until 1968 and taught in classes until at least into the 1990s.
As with all mission schools in the country, the presence of the original founders steadily declined over the decades, particularly after all schools were brought under the national education umbrella in the 1970s.
Former head prefect Lorna Brenda Scully said she had the opportunity to learn under a number of Sisters who taught classes during her time at school.
Great pride: Law showing off the trophies and medals the school had won over the years.
“I like the fact that my school was very diverse and had students from all walks of life.
“Although it is a missionary school and we had a few Sisters as teachers, we were very respectful towards other religions.“I remember during Ramadan, non-Muslim students would try not to eat in front of Muslim students and because these values were instilled at a young age, you still carry that with you through adulthood,” said Scully, who was part of the graduating class of 1993.
Eurasian by ethnicity, surnames like Scully were commonplace in CPT for decades, with yearbooks filled with family names like Gunter, De Voose, Barbosa, D’ Aranjo, Westwood, Baptist, Bryne and Theseira. In fact, for years, it was not wholly uncommon to have more than one Eurasian in a class.
“CPT is right in the heart of Kampong Serani. By virtue of its location, many Eurasian girls ended up going there.
My grandmother and aunties all went to CPT. I think CPT is known for being central in the Eurasian community in Penang,” Scully added.
Changing demographics and the emergence of various schooling options over the years contributed to falling enrolment numbers across almost all mission schools, including over 50 Convent schools in the country that are still owned by IJS.
This trend has continued until today, with a mere 61 girls entering Form One in CPT in 2017 – a year before the school would take in the final new intake of secondary students.
Green initiative
Current principal Khaw Juat Woon had just taken over the helm of the school when the news of the closure broke.
“Some people joked that it was because I came!” she laughed good-naturedly, when met in the principal’s room, located on the first door to the left when entering the school office.
Faced with the announcement, Khaw opted to valiantly bow out “with a bang”.
“Even if we have to close, we must end in glory!
“We want to leave a legacy and let people see how special the school was; that it wasn’t just any other school.
Khaw: We want to leave a legacy.
“That’s how the tagline came about: End in glory. Leave a legacy,” said Khaw, herself a mission school alumna.
To raise the school spirit, Khaw propelled students and teachers into a green school initiative, aiming to raise awareness of sustainable living and give the school a unified goal.
Put in charge of writing up the reports for the school’s green projects was accounts teacher Law Yee Chen.
“The first year we participated in the Penang Green School Awards was 2017 and we only achieved a Silver placing, which wasn’t too bad for just a few months’ work.
“In 2018, we became champions among schools on the island and from the year after that, we had been champions for the whole state,” Law said, adding that the awards had been suspended during Covid-19 but had resumed just in time for CPT to take part one last time.
The school welcomed an auditing committee from local and state authorities last month, and is awaiting the imminent announcement of the results.
“When we started, we did not have many plants at all but we swapped what we had a lot of with other schools.
Winning endeavour: Green projects are part and parcel of education at CPT. Law (far left) with students Nurul Shifa Assofea Zamri, Sharifah Rabiatala Adawiyah Syed Mohamed, Nurfarah, Nur Athirah Mohd Zamri and Nur Sabrina Rahmat.
“We also did a lot of other funny things like collecting plants that were thrown away by (surrounding) residents. We had even collected cow dung from the roadside to use as fertiliser.
“We were also helped by our very innovative gardener, S. Ravikumar, who managed to propagate 20 to 30 plants from one main tree,” Law said.
With the hard work came results and CPT now holds a very long list of awards in the areas of sustainability, green living and recycling.
While CPT students have all become very competent gardeners and well-equipped in matters of recycling, the green school experience has also borne other positive fruits.
“I’ve gained confidence from this whole experience. Previously, many of us teachers mainly focused on what was happening within the school.
“After we became involved with green projects, we had to go out, meet more teachers and speak with confidence.
“We can also see that the relationship between the CPT teachers and students are very close. There is no protocol when you are planting trees.
“To succeed, we must do everything together and get our hands dirty together. From there, we built our relationships,” Law said.
Lasting legacy
The school’s green efforts have also yielded green of another kind – abundant cash prizes.
“All in all, we have won about RM50,000 in prize money.
Every year, we have lesser and lesser students (as enrolment has stopped) and this year, we are down to 40 – all in their Form Five year.
“Even so, we have managed to win every year since 2017. That is the wonder of CPT,” Khaw remarked.
Asked what these funds were used for, Khaw happily replied that all students in CPT ate for free in school until recently. The funds also went back into promoting more green projects, this time with CPT in the organising seat, she shared.
The girls happy with the fruits of their labour.
Throughout the pandemic, the school organised and co-organised virtual best-practice sharing sessions, quizzes and twinning programmes with schools both in and outside the country.
Teaming up with organisations like WWF-Malaysia and GreenSmiths Penang, along with state bodies like the Forestry Department and Education Department, CPT organised state-level green competitions and exhibitions that concentrated on topics like net zero emissions, deforestation, as well as training and team building.
Law and two partners went a step further by registering their own non-governmental organisation on June 5 – World Environment Day – 2021 with Khaw as the advisor.
The Green Educators Workgroup (GREW) is open to all educators in Penang who are interested in promoting education for sustainable development and currently has 76 members from over 30 schools.
Taking its initiatives to the global stage, CPT obtained an internationally-recognised Green Flag Award from the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) in 2021 – the second school in the state to have received such a recognition.
Following that, it launched the “Eco-Schools Programme in Penang”, jointly funded by Koperasi SMK CPT Bhd and Unesco Malaysia, where CPT mentored 11 schools that had expressed interest in environmental sustainability education.
Under its guidance, two on the list – SMK Convent Butterworth and SJKC Union – obtained their own Green Flags while six other schools clinched the Silver Award.
Mementos from all these accomplishments and many other past awards can now be found at the school gallery, which Khaw hopes will remain even after the school closes it gates.
“This is our legacy, the history of the school; that there once was a school named CPT. If these are taken away, there is nothing left for people to come back to.
“And the ex-students are always happy to come back. Their names are here. Their teachers’ names are here.
“All the things that they won, the prizes, the collection of the school magazines and the old photos. We have so few teachers left now but I am so proud of them. I’m proud we have done this much for the school and we ended gloriously,” Khaw concluded.
Alumnae walk down memory lane
“During my time, CPT was more focused on character building than mere academics. There were many different extra-curricular activities to join so that it wasn’t just all books, but fun and play as well.”
Lorna Brenda Scully, head prefect from the Class of 1993,
Wildlife Conservation Society regional grants & programme manager, Greater Mekong & South Asia
“My mother and all my aunties attended school here and I’m the ninth in my family to attend CPT. When I saw my aunty’s face in the school gallery, I can’t believe that I’m part of the last batch of students here.”
Nurfarah Hanim Hasmanizam, Class of 2022
“I believe in qualified teachers and I have no problem sending my children to a missionary school. The first purpose of parents sending their children to school is to ensure they learn and increase their knowledge. To all teachers from my generation to my daughter’s, a big ‘Thank you!’. All the knowledge you had given cannot be repaid. All our memories cannot be bought.”
Noraini Ahmad Basri, Class of 1996, Royal Malaysian Air Force (R)
