Website
Website: stpatricksschoolasansol.in/

Address
Address : GT Road, Chellidanga, Asansol 713301
Phone : 91-3412281059 / 91-9635162999
Email : spsasn@yahoo.com

School motto
Sola Nobilitas virtus

St Patrick’s Higher Secondary School, Asansol, has three sections for each class from KG to class 10 and two sections for 11 and 12. There are about 1,800 students enrolled in the school. The school follows the 10+2 Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations curriculum which includes the national ICSE examination at the end of Class 10, and the ISC Science examination at the end of Class 12. The school enjoys considerable recognition for academic excellence, having produced many state and national rankers. Moreover, the school prides itself in its co-curricular achievements, with the students excelling in various fields.

Boys are prepared for the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education Examination (Class 10). Boys and Girls are prepared for the Indian School Certificate Examination (Class 12). The school academic year is from April to March.

Curriculum
Pupils can offer suitable combination of the following in the final examination:
• Bengali / Hindi
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Commercial Application
• Commercial Studies
• Computer Application
• Computer Science
• Economic Application
• Economics
• English Language
• English Literature
• Geography
• History
• Mathematics
• Physics

Hindi/Bengali is taught as third language. There are also regular courses in
• Art
• Craft
• Elocution
• Music
• P.T.
• Swimming

Special care is taken to advise the students regarding the optional courses most suitable for them. Every week there is unit test. Two main examinations are held each year followed by a Parent- Teacher meeting and distribution of results.

• Digital services
• Mobile app
• Smart classes
• SMS notification
• Web portal

Facilities
• Canteen
• CCTV camera surveillance
• Computer labs
• Library
• Meditation room
• Swimming pool

Our founder

A Vision in the making
On the 16th of October 1996, the Pope beatified Edmund Rice in a glittering ceremony and he came to be known as “Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice”. A person who devoted his life to the education of the ragged poor boys running wild on the streets of Waterford, his own sorrows taught him to open his heart out to the needy and serve them. With this desire burning in his soul, he founded the Congregation of the Christian Brothers and today, as we fondly remember him on the bicentenary of the Congregation of Christian Brothers, we present a brief synopsis

Childhood
Edmund was born to a pious and respected family, on the 01 June 1762 at West Court, Callan, and County Kilkenny, Ireland. The fourth among seven brothers, Edmund received his basic moral education at home. His family was very religious and highly respected in the community for their generosity to the poor.

Education and youth
Like any boy growing up in the Kilkenny countryside, Edmund fished, swam and played hurling. Edmund received an education denied to the majority of Catholics. He first went to “hedge school”, an illegal pay school set up by a travelling teacher. Here, he received a practical and classical education. When Edmund was seventeen, he was apprenticed to his uncle Michael Rice, who was a well-established businessman in the thriving port of Waterford. He quickly won his uncle’s confidence and a deep affection developed between them. When Edmund was twenty-four years old his uncle signed over the business to him.

Marriage and ensuing life
At a time when most of the Irish people were extremely poor and living under repressive laws, Edmund Rice became a wealthy and influential member of the city of Waterford. In his mid-twenties he fell in love with Mary Elliot and got married. However, after a few years of marriage Mary fell from a horse and later succumbed to her injuries. She was pregnant with their first child at the time of her accident. As a result the baby was born prematurely and was handicapped. Edmund named the baby Mary and took care of her until she was twelve years old. Then, he entrusted her to the care of his brother Patrick and his wife, who reared her in his home in the countryside near Callan. She lived a long and unhappy life until her death in 1859.

Early days in his vocation
By now, thirteen years had passed since the death of his wife. Edmund realized that he needed a vocation in his life. His own sorrow and grief taught him to open his heart in compassion to the poor and needy that surrounded him in Waterford. His heart went out to the ragged poor boys running wild on the streets. Edmund Rice wanted to transform the lives of the poor children of Waterford. He wanted to raise their dignity in the face of appalling poverty. For him, education was the key to their freedom. The education he sought to provide would not just equip them with skills but would enable them to know that they were cared for and loved, that they were worthwhile and important. He began to search for soul mates to carry out his mission. Early in 1802, two young men, Patrick Finn and Thomas Grosvenor offered to join hands with Edmund without any fee or reward. He and his companions took up temporary commendation over some stables in New Street and immediately began a form of community life.

The Congregation of Christian Brothers
Out of Edmund’s desire to follow his vocation “The Congregation of Christian Brothers” was founded and finally in 1820, after he took his final vows, he was elected Superior General of the Christian Brothers. His spirit continues to flourish through his congregation, which is working in five continents today, with missions in Britain, Rome, the USA, Argentina, Zambia, Ghana and Papua- New Guinea as well as many other countries. The motto of this congregation is, “To do and to teach”.

Short history of the school St Patrick’s School was founded by the Christian Brothers in 1891. The Congregation of Christian Brothers, established by Edmund Ignatius Rice, is a Catholic society from Ireland that has undertaken missionary and educational work worldwide. St Patrick’s School, Asansol, is one of the Christian Brothers’ Schools in India. For a brief span during the Second World War, the administration of the School was under the Jesuit Mission of Patna and the school was shifted to Kurji.

St Patrick’s was originally a fully residential school. It started admitting day scholars later and finally closed the hostel completely in 1984. The school has enrolled girls in Classes 11 and 12 since 2009.

The school spans across a large area in Asansol, with buildings, fields, a swimming pool, various laboratories in different streams, an auditorium, a huge pond and acres of virgin wooded areas on the GT Road. It is one of the major tourist destinations of Asansol: a must-see for anyone who visits this place.

Christian Brothers
The first of the Irish Christian Brothers arrived in Kolkata in January of the year 1890. It was the Vicar General, Reverend T Oliffe who, on a visit to Ireland, petitioned the Superior General of the Irish Institute of Christian Brothers to undertake the change of schools in India. The Brothers initially started in The Calcutta Male Orphanage and later with a second opening at St Joseph’s College, Bow Bazaar. The early years were difficult in Calcutta. However, the Christian Brothers were determined to take up the challenge. Their faith and courage in the face of difficulties, their fidelity and their refusal to be turned aside by obstacles that seemed insurmountable has served as an inspiration in the years that followed.

It was in 1890 that the Archbishop made a passing reference to Asansol and was anxious that a school be started there. The opening of the first school outside Calcutta took place in January 1891. This was St Patrick’s, Asansol. Br Paul Kinnear was appointed Director. The school started with 4 brothers and 13 boys. The year 1892 saw the unfolding of the drama of a dynamic Indian Province, in which the Brothers were united ‘with a common purpose and a common mind’. The work of expansion gathered momentum with the formal taking over of St Joseph’s College, Nainital. Other openings included a school at Howrah, St Michael’s High School, Kurji (Patna), Goethal’s at Kurseong, St George’s Free School, St Joseph’s Collegiate School, Allahabad, St Edmund’s, Shillong, St Vincent’s, Asansol in 1927, St Edward’s, Shimla, St Mary’s, Mt Abu, St Aloysius High School, Quilon, St Columba’s, New Delhi, with training centres for Brothers at Kurseong and Shillong.

In April 1968, the brothers took over the conducting of the Parish school at Dadar (Mumbai). By the early seventies the Brothers opened two schools, one at Bassein (Mumbai) and the other in Goa. On 05 January 1990 the Brothers in India celebrated the centenary year of the coming year to Calcutta of the little band of four Irish Brothers. While the number of Brothers in most of the Provinces of the congregation, the last decade or so has witnessed an unprecedented missionary effort to deprived countries and regions throughout the world.

Accordingly in 1988, the first missionary effort of the Indian Province was launched with the departure of three Brothers to the Gambia, West Africa. The choice was simply because it was the most deprived area in Africa as far as educational facilities were concerned.

Today, the Christian Brothers are the inheritors of a great tradition of men who toiled and gave their lives unsparingly in a great cause. The Brothers in India have attained the numerical strength beyond anything ever known before in our provincial history. Within this vast continent the Brothers have become attentive to the cry of the poor. They have expanded their ministry with new openings at Gujarat, Karnataka, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh and very recently to Myanmar. Within a short period of time the ministries carried out by the Christian Brothers and committed lay people who minister alongside them, are not confined to the classroom. Brothers in India are now involved in a centre for the deaf and physically handicapped at Shillong, ministries with street children and involved with National Open School system. With a deep awareness that their primary vocation is the need to make the Most Helpless their special concern in all their educational endeavours, the Christian Brothers in India continued a process of identifying their distinctive values of Edmund Rice education in the school network.

Nai disha
In keeping with the noble vision of our founder, Blessed Edmund Rice and the Congregation of Christian Brothers, St Patrick’s has embarked upon the noble venture of helping the poor children, who are found begging in the Asansol Railway platform. In order to give desired shape to this blessed idea, ’Nai Disha’ was launched on 10 August, 2002 - the Bicentenary year of the congregation of Christian Brothers. Mr Ravindra Verma, the RPF commandment of Asansol Railway Division, inaugurated essentially a school of the poverty-ridden kids, ‘Nai Disha’. Mrs Seema Paul, the respected Headmistress of St Patrick’s Higher Secondary School, Rev Br M R Beddoe, Superior of St Patrick’s and St Vincent’s, and other Christian Brothers and Railway officials also graced the inauguration programme. The school already has children from various age groups and is ever growing in strength. These children, otherwise beggars and child labourers, are given a free meal everyday and their classes are held from 10.00 am to 12.30 pm, on a daily basis. The boys of St Patrick’s School spend some precious time with them, teaching them and playing with them. There are two teachers, who look after their education related activities and proper care is also taken for general health and hygiene. They are supervised by Mr A Kuriakose. Sound medical checkup is provided for these children from time to time by doctors from the city.

Apart from this, help in various forms and kinds like medicines, funds, clothes, educational materials, etc. also pours in from our parents and ex-students whose interest and participation in this scheme has gone a long way in making this venture a grand success. From daily reports, one learns that these impoverished kids are progressing at a steady pace. As a certification of the above fact, it is also heartening to learn that, one of the kids was placed in St Vincent’s technical stream, where he is doing a course in automobile machinery. The platform children, otherwise very jovial and childish like any other normal kid, live a life of extreme poverty and deprivation. Their very extension and survival is an everyday struggle, and as a result most of them suffer from malnutrition and other deadly diseases. When they grow up in such an atmosphere ‘where survival of the fittest’ is the basic norm, they only succeed in becoming drug-addicts, criminals or prostitutes. So this noble scheme launched by St Patrick’s Higher Secondary School could go a long way in making this world a beautiful place for them.

School Anthem
Here all let’s sing a school song
For the best school of them all.
Cheer all, cheer for St Patrick’s
Cheer for St Patrick’s Asansol.
Whatever the task on us depend,
We’ll fight to the last our school to defend,
Whether at books or games, it’s all the same
We are always top in the end.
So here all let’s sing a school song
For the best school of them all.
Cheer all, cheer for St Patrick’s
For we are the best of all.