St. Mary's Higher Secondary School, Pattom, Trivandrum

St. Mary's Malankara Syrian Catholic Higher Secondary School Pattom, Thiruvananthapuram, is an educational institution of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. It was founded in 1940 by Archbishop Mar Ivanios, who has been called the "Newman of India." The first headmaster of the school was A. Sankara Pillai, a prominent educationalist.
In 1998-99, the higher secondary section was added to the school. The school 9000 students, 1400 of whom are higher secondary students in classes V to VII, consisting of 186 divisions. The school has 275 teachers and 12 non-teaching staff under the leadership of Principal Fr. George Mathew Karoor.
Though the school is run by the Malankara Catholic Church, it provides education to students regardless of caste, creed or religion. The leadership of the school is Moran Mor Baselios Cleemes Catholicism.

The St. Mary’s school, established under the leadership of Archbishop Mar Ivanios, started functioning from 1940. Formerly known as Sachivothama Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer Shashtyabdapurthi Memorial English High School, it was the first school in the erstwhile Travancore to have classes from preparatory to the sixth form under the same roof. It was also the first school to be established under the Malankara Catholic Church.

One of the most populous schools in the country, the St. Mary’s school began functioning with around 260 students and 12 teachers. Renowned educator A. Sankara Pillai was the first headmaster of the school.

His son Ramesh Nair was the first student to be admitted to the school. The school became a leading educational institution in the capital during the tenure of Mr. Sankara Pillai from 1940 to 1944.

Renowned teachers
Mahakavi Idayaranmula K.M. Varghese, N.G. Philip, P.M. Cherian Tharakan, G. Padmanabhan and Mannanthala Velayudhan Nair are some of the renowned teachers who served at the school.

Fr. George Mathew Karoor, who bagged the State best teacher award in 2009, is the present Principal of the school. Asha Ani George has been serving as the headmistress of the school since 2008, while P.G. Jose is the Principal of the Teachers’ Training Institute.

Students
The St. Mary’s school today has around 12,000 students in nursery, primary, UP, HS, HSS and TTA sections and more than 400 teachers and non-teaching staff altogether. The thatched and tiled buildings of the early days of the school have now been replaced by modern buildings with well-equipped laboratories, IT labs, and libraries. The Mar Gregorious Jubilee Memorial Auditorium in the school has a seating capacity of over 8,000.

The school also has a mini auditorium with around 1,000 seating capacity.

As many as 20 or more school buses operate from the school to different parts of the city every day.

Children from diverse social and economic backgrounds study in this school, which has also achieved 100 per cent success in public examinations in 1978-79 and 1980-81. Students of the school have also excelled in co-curricular activities, winning numerous prizes in youth festivals and sports meets.

Achievements
The school has bagged the Chakkiri Ahamedkutty Trophy for having maximum number of candidates for public examinations in 1988, 2000 and 2003. It also produced the State topper in the science stream in the very first year when Plus Two was introduced in the State.

An active Parent-Teacher Association, various extra-curricular activities’ clubs, endowment awards for talented students, educational exchange programme with foreign institutions, NCC, Scout and Guides and National Social Service units are the other features of the school.