The School was founded during the Malayan Emergency. Attacks by insurgents against rubber estates led the Incorporated Society of Planters - I.S.P to seek a safe location where expatriate planters could send their young children to school while keeping them in Malaya.
Penang Hill was identified as a suitable location and the I.S.P leased the premises of the former Crag Hotel on Penang Hill to open a new Primary Boarding School for approximately 60 children in mid-January 1955. Among its first pupils were children from a small private school called Uplands which had been run from a bungalow on Penang Hill before 1955. This small school was subsequently absorbed into the I.S.Ps new school. It is very likely that because the new School stood for high standards in education and was also at some altitude, it was seen as fitting that the name Uplands also be adopted and its students referred to as Uplanders.
The School had two parts - most of the buildings being at the Crag Hotel site, whilst the kindergarten was in Grace Dieu. A highlight of the period on Penang Hill was the visit of Queen Elizabeth II in 1972. In 1976, day students were accepted at the School. A year later in 1977, the Secondary Department was started and Uplands left Penang Hill for its new home down at sea level, occupying the former St. Xavier’s Branch School on Kelawei Road in Pulau Tikus.
In 1988 Uplands acquired the use of the former St Joseph’s Novitiate, a beautiful heritage building behind the Primary School facing Gurney Drive and the sea - in a move that finally brought the whole school including boarders, together on the same campus.
The school has retained Uplands in its current name which is:
The International School of Penang (Uplands)
I studied there from Form I to Form V
ReplyDeleteI loved the place. I loved teachers and matrons. Moreover, I
ReplyDeleteloved the food there.