Places · School
Infant Jesus Girls' High School
Aranattukara's girls' high school, run by the Holy Family sisters since 1950, long known for strong results and a nationally honoured headmistress.
Photo to come
Until the late 1940s Aranattukara had no high school for girls. The Infant Jesus Girls’ High School changed that.
Beginnings
The school grew out of the Infant Jesus Convent. When Tharakan’s School became a high school in 1947–48, its girl pupils were handed over to the Holy Family sisters, who taught them in a rented house at Padinjare Angadi. In 1950 these classes became a separate girls’ high school, built by the sisters beside their new convent on the western side of Padinjare Angadi. (The book gives the year as 1950 in one place and 1950–51 in another.) A lower primary section followed in 1952–53.
A school with a name
The book praises the school for its pass rates and for its activities outside the classroom. Much of the credit goes to its headmistress, Sister Ezhsala, whose work was honoured with the National Teacher Award in 1971.
In the years when the parish was divided between two churches, the girls of both sides studied here together. The book counts the school, along with St. John’s and Tharakan’s, among the places where that division began to heal.
Did you study here? We would like to collect memories and old class photographs from former pupils.
Related
Christian Heritage
How a riverside trading village became a Christian parish, split into two rival churches for almost seventy years, and came back together in 1964 under one roof, the St. Thomas Church we know today.
The Schools That Shaped Aranattukara
From village writing schools taught by Hindu teachers to Tharakan's School, the girls' high schools and St. Aloysius College at Elthuruth, this is how Aranattukara learned to read, and how its classrooms helped heal a divided parish.