St Michael’s Institution, Ipoh, is an all-boys Roman Catholic School situated next to the padang in Ipoh.
The impressive building is part of the Ipoh Heritage Trail and a notice board outside contains information about the history of the school.
A school was set up in 1912 in Ipoh by Vernier Auguste, a French brother of the De la Salle Brothers, who are a Catholic religious organisation which runs around 1,000 schools in 79 countries around the world.
The De la Salle organisation was founded by a French priest, Jean Baptiste de La Salle in France in the 17th century.
A school was opened by the La Salle Brothers in 1912 in Ipoh with 37 pupils and the first headmaster was a Mr PJ Mor Singh, although the current building originally dates from 1923 having been extended many times since that date. The original cost of establishing the school was $200,000.
In March 1942, the Japanese Civil Administration or Perak Shu Seicho was set up at St. Michael’s Institution, and during the Japanese occupation the school was used as the headquarters of the Japanese army who held early morning musters on the padang in front of the school.
The building houses a secondary school and two primary schools with a total of over 1400 pupils. On the visiting the school and conducting an unscientific survey most of the pupils appear to be of Indian descent.
The Roman Catholic school is one of the top schools in Malaysia and has many prominent alumini. Its motto is “Quis it Deus” or “who is like god?”
Malaysia 1786 - 1957 