Religious affiliation(s) Roman Catholic Phone +852 2546 0117 Founded 1927 Teaching staff 55 | Established 1927 Number of students 850 Patron saint Aloysius Gonzaga | |
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Founder Fathers of the Catholic Mission Authority Similar Saint Louis School (Primary, Raimondi College, Wah Yan College - Hong Kong, King's College, Marymount Secondary School Profiles | ||
St Louis School (Chinese: 聖類斯中學), located in Sai Ying Pun (historically West Point, Hong Kong) is a privately run, Catholic primary and (government-subsidized) secondary English grammar school.
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About the institution
St Louis School aims to 'provide an education which embraces the joy of learning and stresses the spiritual, moral, intellectual, physical, communal and aesthetic development of students'. The school motto is 'Scientia et Pietas', which means 'Knowledge and Piety'.
The school is famed for its culture of "freedom and discipline". Both the students and the staff members enjoy an extent of freedom unseen in other schools in Hong Kong. As a result, its students develop a sense of responsibility, self-reliance and independence that makes them prominent in the community through their contribution and achievements.
There are currently about 800 secondary students and 350 primary school students.
The school's sports facilities include a football playground (with a stand for about 1,300 people), a basketball court and a covered playground. The football playground is the largest among those of all the schools in West Point.
School badge and motto
The badge of St Louis School embodies a profound philosophy through the simplicity of its design.
It is promoted that all Aloysians should uphold and propagate the spirit that the school badge manifests: to be in quest of knowledge, to nurture noble character and to contribute to the society and the country.
School song
The school song 'All Hail, All Hail' was written by Rev Fr Janssen in 1957.
History
St Louis School was founded in 1864 by the Fathers of the Catholic Mission; St Aloysius was chosen as the Patron of the school. The school was initially known as the West Point Reformatory. The Brothers of the Christian Schools (commonly known as the La Salle Brothers) succeeded the Fathers in the management of the school in 1875 and managed the school until 1893.
In 1921, Bishop Pozzoni, the Ordinary of Hong Kong, requested the Maryknoll Fathers to take over. Some of the boys were orphans while the rest were remanded by the Hong Kong government, the government giving a small monthly grant for each student. The Maryknoll Fathers renamed the school 'St Louis Industrial School' and equipped it with a printing press. The students became expert in this line and seven years later when the French Foreign Mission society started their celebrated polyglot press at Nazareth in Pokfulam, they took into their employ many of these boys. When Brother Albert Staubli arrived, he added manual training to its curriculum in the way of carpentry. The famous American Maryknoller, Fr James Edward Walsh, who was one of the first four American missioners to arrive in China and the last western missioner to be released by the Communist China in 1970, spent some time at the school too.
Early in 1926, Maryknoll's Father Superior and one of the co-founders, Fr James Anthony Walsh, made a visitation of his fledgling mission fields in South China and spent some weeks in Hong Kong before visiting Kongmoon (now called Jiangmen) and Kaying (in Meixian). In the course of his stay, the position of the industrial school was reviewed and it was eventually handed back to the Diocese. In 1927 the school was given to the Salesian Fathers and has been run by them since then. The school was then transformed from a vocational school to a grammar school and it became one of the best grammar schools in Hong Kong.
The primary section of St Louis School was particularly famous in the 1970s and the 1980s, for it won almost all the inter-school quiz competitions organized by Radio Television Hong Kong.