Mahamaya College Kandy:

Eight decades of academic excellence

Upananda Jayasundara Kandy sports special correspondent

The following is a brief history of Mahamaya Girls' College, Kandy which completes 80 years on January 14, 2012.

The main building of Mahamaya Girls' College, Kandy

On January 14, 1932 amidst the chanting of Pirith, Leuke Ratwatte Kumarihamy cut the ribbon at the auspicious time of 10.25 a.m. Then her granddaughter, five year old Amara Ratwatte, walked into the school with her father.

Thereafter, Hilda Kularatne, the first principal of the new school and their teachers, Eva de Mel, Karunawathie Gunaratne, Seelawathie Thambugala and two pupil teachers followed. Sixteen pupils were admitted on that first day.

Opening ceremony

At the opening ceremony, Sarah Soysa, the leader of the Kulagana Samithiya, acknowledged Bhikku Attadassi contribution when she said that the idea of founding a Buddhist girls school had been given by him. Ten students and three teachers were admitted to the school boarding, which was located in a part of west Cliffe House. Sarah Soysa was entrusted with the management and supervision of the hostel. The principal and her family were accommodated in another. Section of this building Hilda Westbrooke Kularatne was married to P de S. Kularatne, a brilliant academic and nationalist, who was the principal of Ananda College, Colombo. Hilda tried to do for the Kandy Buddhist school, what her husband tried to achieve at Ananda College and also at Dharmaraja College.

On August 27, 1932, at an auspicious time, heralded by the blowing of the conch shell and playing of Magul Bera the new two storeyed school building was formally declared open by the Governor of Ceylon, Sir Graeme Thompson and Lady Thompson. Hilda Kularatne resigned at the end of 1932 when her husband went back to Ananda College. Then the Kulagana Samithiya appointed Bertha Irene Rodgers as the principal of the school in 1937.

Hilda Kularatne, First Principal

Lalitha Fernando, Principal from 1970-1980

N. K. Pilapitiya, Principal from 1981-1990

B. M. Wijesinghe, Principal from 2002-2005 April

Bertha Rodgers Ratwatte

On May 5, 1951 Soma Gunawardena was appointed the principal of Mahamaya and she was a strong disciplinarian. She brought the school together with the principal as the head, giving leadership even while revitalising religious education at Mahamaya and reinforcing its Buddhist foundations. Soma Gunawardene reoriented the school, to produce students to compete with students of the best educational institutions in the country. Many measures were taken to improve the standard of English in the school. The English Literary Association was revived and many academics from the Peradeniya University were invited to lecture on topics of interest. With Soma Gunawardena at the helm, Mahamaya became a highly rated academic institution by the 1960s.

On December 01, 1960 Mahamaya Girls College, a school established by ‘Buddhist women under difficult circumstances and nurtured with much hard work and sacrifice by both the founders and the principals, was taken over for administration as a State school.

On January 17, 1972, the Dept. of Education appointed Lalitha Abeysinghe Fernando to succeed Soma Gunawardena as principal of Mahamaya. When Lalitha Fernando retired in 1980, the Deputy Principal, Mrs. D. Perera ably carried on the work till Navarathne Kumari Pilapitiya popularly known as Nita Pilapitiya took over the school as the next principal. Nita Pilapitiya was quick to comprehend the new trends in the educational field and she took rapid measures to protect Mahamaya’s interests. Mahamaya’s excellent performance in the academic field and in other spheres such as sports and aesthetics and its public image as a National School in the Central Province helped greatly to get the necessary funds voted for the building of the auditorium.

The Education Department appointed Muriel Subasinghe as principal on August 15, 1990. By the 1990s there was tremendous pressure to enter Mahamaya College and there was a significant expansion in the number of students.

The Dept of Education built a five-storeyed complex of classrooms to accommodate the vast numbers’ a sports complex for indoor games badminton and table tennis, was built during this time.

Mahamaya had a further change of principals when Indra Kumari Ratnayake took over the school on July 10, 1995. To deal with the tremendous expansion of student numbers during this period the Education Department built a new three-storeyed building housing three junior laboratories and eight classrooms. To accommodate the growing numbers joining Mahamaya from other districts in the country the Education Dept also constructed a new three-storeyed building for the Hostel. During this period a large playground near the Kandy Lake for the use of the Mahamaya students was also acquired. Thereafter the Dept of Education built a swimming pool for the school making Mahamaya one of the biggest and best equipped national schools in the Central Province. By the year 2000 the number of students had expanded to 4,500.

On April 24, 2000 Bandaramenike Wijesinghe took over as the principal of Mahamaya.

She framed a programme of intensive English training for her pupils and Mahamaya has put into effect the new educational reforms with a science stream in English and a successful Grade 1 programme in Spoken English.

Mahamaya College holds its own in academic, sports and aesthetics fields. In 2001 Mahamaya had the best examination results in the Central Province with the highest number of passes in both the G.C.E. O/level and A level examinations. In the year 2000 for the G.C.E. O level examination 326 candidates were presented and 324 were successful. At the 2002 G.C.E. A levels two students came first in the island in the bioscience and commerce streams.