TOMORROW will be the last day for SMK Convent Pulau Tikus to operate as a government-aided school before its final batch of 40 Form Five students and 11 teachers bid each other goodbye.
CPT, as well as SMK Convent Light Street, will be returned to the care of the Infant Jesus Sisters (IJS) religious order that owns 56 mission schools across the nation.
These two Convent schools are the first to be returned to IJS since all mission schools were brought under the national education umbrella in the 70s. They had stopped the intake of students since 2018. There are plans to turn them into a private school and a higher institution of education.
SMKCPT was established in 1950 but its primary school was set up next to the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Pulau Tikus in 1922. CLS, on the other hand, was founded in 1852 and is the oldest all-girl school in South-East Asia.
The two schools would have closed their doors end of last year but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, their Form Five students took the 2022 SPM examination from Jan 30 to March 15 this year.
“It’s going to be a very sad day for all of us.
“I have a lot of fond memories since I became the principal here in 2017,” said Khaw Juat Woon, who will be posted to become the principal of Convent Bukit Mertajam next month.
CPT, however, is living up to its slogan: ‘End in glory, leave a legacy.’
It has been at the forefront of green initiatives among the schools for the past five years, winning many competitions along the way as well as some prize money.
When Khaw joined CPT in 2017, CPT was not very active in green initiatives. She began to plant, grow and care for bougainvillea.
Law Yee Chen, an accounts teacher, later joined Khaw in the project and subsequently, more and more teachers followed suit.
In 2017, CPT took part in the Penang Schools Green Award and got a silver medal, but the following year, it finished as the Penang island schools winner.
It went on to emerge as the overall Penang Schools Green Award champion in 2019.
CPT has several titles under its belt, such as the Sekolah Lestari Anugerah Alam Sekitar, four times state-level PERKISS (SW Corporation) winner in 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2022; and three times MBPP Pertandingan Kitar Semula winner in 2018, 2019, and 2022.
Another accolade came its way in 2021 when CPT received the accreditation of Green Flag Awards from the Foundation of Environmental Education (FEE), the second school in Penang to achieve the recognition.
This victory inspired CPT to share the secrets of its success with other schools.
“After we got the Green Flag Award, we started to train many other schools in our ‘Eco-Schools Programme’. We applied for the Unesco Malaysia grant and we got RM18,900.
“Out of the 12 mentees, we are proud that two of them obtained the Green Flag. They were SJKC Union and Convent Butterworth in June 2022 and August 2022 respectively.
“You see, we did well in green initiatives. So, we wanted to leave a legacy.
“After all, our school is going to close. We trained other schools which were interested in sustainable environmental education and we also gave away our plants to all of them,” Khaw added.
Having won the Penang Green School Awards may seem like reaching the pinnacle for Khaw but for Law, who will be sent to SMK Datuk Haji Mohd Nor Ahmad in April, she had other ideas.
“We won a lot of money from the competitions. When they freezed all co-curricular activities during the Covid-19 lockdown, Law was bristling with ideas.
“She turned to online activities and carried out more than 10 programmes, competitions, webinars, sharing sessions, and workshops from the state level to the international level,” Khaw said.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, she said CPT also started an international webinar, called the International Webinar Best Practices Sharing Session.
The job of hosting the international webinar was later passed on to SKJC Union and SMK Convent Butterworth, which was instrumental in landing both schools later the Green Flag Awards.
Khaw’s interest in environmental issues began by sheer chance when she was a teacher at SMK Air Itam. Every day a student would come to the teachers’ room to collect unwanted newspapers and other papers, tie them up and put them on his bicycle before he sent them to the Tzu Chi centre for recycling.
Seeing this, Khaw would help the boy bundle up the papers. Then, one day after the boy had graduated, SMK Air Itam started to collect newspapers for recycling. That eventually led them to win the Chief Minister’s Green Award (supported by Fairchild) in 2005 and 2007.
Khaw was then transferred to SMK Jelutong, and wherever she went, victory seemed to follow. She also encouraged her students to collect papers and bottles for recycling and the school went on to become the Penang island schools winner.
Now that Khaw and Law will go separate ways after the closure of CPT, it does not mean that is the end of their green campaign.
They will still be active in green activities undertaken by a non-governmental organisation they helped form, called the Green Educators Work Group (GREW). It was set up on June 5, 2021, to coincide with World Environmental Day. Khaw is the adviser while Law is the secretary.
Just recently on March 21, CPT was adjudged the runner-up at the Penang Schools Green Award 2022, behind SMK Convent Butterworth.
“We’re glad that Convent Butterworth, one of our mentees, is the champion.
“Since we are closing, the total prize money of RM4,250 that we won will be donated to the Penang Island City Council (MBPP) for it to organise a green workshop for schools,” Khaw said.
From next year, or rather, from next month, there is no longer a CPT.
Thousands of students have already passed through its gates, inspired by the school’s motto: Simple in Virtue, Steadfast in Duty.
Fittingly, the school ends in glory and leaves a legacy!
Story by K.H. Ong
Pix by Law Suun Ting