Having primary education is the main right of a child. According to the law, every child should be sent to school until the age of 16 years. Having the opportunity to study in a prestigious and famous school is one of the best privileges that you can have as a child. Kingswood College Kandy is such a school that provides that privilege to the young boys who are seeking education.
The initiation of the School
Kingswood College can is a result of Mr Louis Edmund Blaze’s wish. He decided to start a school of his own in the lush green Kandyan Kingdom. And in Eighteen Ninety-One he opened the school under the name of “Boys High School” in a building located in Pavilion Street. In the beginning, there were only eleven boys in the school. The main need to initiate this school was because all the others schools were missionary schools or government schools funded by the state.
Expanding the school was not an easy task for Mr Blaze. The school got government funds only until it was stable. After that, the funds were not provided. So Mr Blaze was struggling with financial issues because the income gained by the school fees was not sufficient to manage all the expenses. So he had to make a decision to save the school.
Blaze decided to grant the management of the school to the Methodist mission. While the funds were provided by the mission and Mr Blaze maintained and developed the school in a sophisticated manner. He designed the school as per the public school system in England. In Nineteen Eighty-Nine they changed the school name into “Kingswood College Kandy”.
Further expansion of Kingswood College
Kingswood College became the first school to get the rugby football sport. It was because Mr Louis Blaze knew rugby since he played the sport when he was studying for his degree in India. In Eighteen Ninety-Three the sport was introduced to Kingswood. Later on, the sport was spread to other schools like Trinity College Kandy and Royal College Colombo.
In Nineteen Twenty Five, the school shifted to its current premises. The location was called Randles Hill named after Sir John Randles. He was the person who donated funds to purchase the land and build the required buildings. His donation was sufficient enough to build two buildings for lower school and upper school, 2 buildings for hostels and 2 playgrounds.
Kingswood College had its first Prize Giving in Eighteen Ninety-Five at the town hall. F Dornorst was the Chief Guest of the event. The Kingswood Prize Giving has a unique tradition that was introduced by Mr Blaze. The prize winner of the oratory prize gets to recite the special prologue. This is a descriptive verse about the special occasions that happened in school, the country as well as around the globe. After Mr Blaze, an Old Boy of the school continued to write this prologue but without mentioning the name of the writer.
Initiating Steps of Kingswood College
Kingswood College has initiated so many things in the history of the Sri Lankan schooling system. This was the first school to hire a female teacher to a boys’ school. Her name was Annie Bartholameuz to teach the first and second Standards. It is also the first school that introduced a school band. Kingswood also initiated Traffic units as well send representatives to the World Jamboree in Paris and to the Red Cross centenary congress.
The school was also a pioneer in starting cadetting. The school is also famous for being a team in the first inter-school soccer https://www.espn.com/soccer/scoreboard match.
Shaping up the discipline
Kingswood College is also a school that got affected by World War II. There was a huge scarcity in square rule books which were needed for the second standard Arithmetic subject. So the teacher came up with a solution. She converted single rule books into square rule books along with the students. This was an incident that implies that Kingswoodians were trained to make use of available resources.
Also, they were trained and taught manners within the classroom and even outside the classroom. For instance, Kingswoodians were trained to walk from the left side of the road. Mr Blaze was about to cane a student and he asked a volunteer to bring the cane. A student was intrigued and volunteered to bring the cane. And he was the first one to be canned. Mr Blaze did this to imply that a true Kingswoodian would never enjoy a fellow Kingswoodian being punished or pushed back.
Today, Kingswood College is a home for more than Three thousand young gentlemen providing standardized education along with polishing up their skills and talents. Meanwhile shaping up them to be disciplined and well-performing smart gentlemen indulging the motto “Fide et Virtute”
