SMS Kelantan as I Remember

This is a collection of stories and old photos of me, friends, teachers and events during my secondary school years (1975-79) at SMS Kelantan, which is now known as Sek Men Sains Tengku Muhammad Faris Putra. The school itself was started in 1973, and moved to the new campus in 1974 (you'll see grassless field in some pix!)

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Monday, March 17, 2008

Our First SPM/MCE Results (1976)

Last week SMSTMFP came out to be in the top 10 (in Malaysia) for their outstanding SPM 2007 results. I was told that 35 students got ALL As with 8 of them getting ALL 1As (only a maximum of 10 subjects was allowed for the students to take).

Now, suddenly my memory took me back to some 32 years ago. The year was 1976, to be exact. Can't remember the date, but it must be around March. Our first batch of SPM/MCE candidates sat for the exam just the year before. I can't remember the exact date, but on that particular day we found out that the SPM/MCE results would be out the following day.

That night we went for our prep (in the classrooms) as usual. When we finished our prep and were about to take our nightly supply of Hollick/Milo, we heard about the good news - one of our students actually got 9As for MCE! Out of that he got 6A1s. I don't know who told me, but words went around saying that our principal (Mr Mahathir) couldn't wait for the following day, so what he did was to take Rema Ragavan, a form 1 student home for a short visit. Her father, Mr Ragavan was the deputy director for the Kelantan Education Department.

The following day (did we have a special assembly?) we found out that the school achieved 100% passes in MCE (I'm not sure about SPM) - that's a first in Kelantan! Our best student, Hilmi Hassan was definitely one of the best Malaysian students then.

Now, we were wondering, who was this "Hilmi". Eventually everybody found out that he was a very quiet boy, who was on the committee of the "Chess Club" (what else?). We also found out that his father was the owner of "Pustaka Aman Press". Hilmi became an overnight celebrity!

Together with so many other students, he went to UK for his A-Level and degree. He did his A-Level in Norwich, I think. Don't ask me how I know all these ;-). Someone told me that Hilmi now works in KL and lives somewhere in the Hartamas area, though I've never met him since 1976.

The best student for SPM was Kak Zamratul Maisarah, who went on to study medicine. She's now an assoc prof in ENT in UKM. I googled her name and found this page. Her brother was my student in Ipoh in 1986 and/or 1987, but unfortunately I have forgotten his name :-(

Anyway, back to the exam results, 32 years on, it seems that the school has managed to uphold the excellent tradition ;-)