Type Private School board ICSE/ISC Phone 033 2548 2060 Founded 1848 | Established 1848 School district Calcutta Founder Edmund Ignatius Rice | |
Motto Vince Te Ipsum
(Conquer Yourself.) Religious affiliation(s) Roman Catholic Christian Address Dum Dum Rd, Jheel Bagan, Purba Sinthi, South Dum Dum, Kolkata, West Bengal 700030 Similar North Point Day School, St Mary's Technical Campus, St Mary's Church School, Saint Aloysius Orphana | ||
In 1848, The Congregation of Christian Brothers (Missionaries of Ireland) founded the Calcutta Male Orphanage at Murgihatta, Calcutta. In 1947, it came to the present campus in Dum Dum in North Calcutta and was renamed St. Mary's Orphanage and Day School. The school particularly serves the northern and eastern part of Calcutta and North 24 Parganas District.
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Campus
St. Mary's is one of the most prestigious schools of Calcutta having one of the biggest campuses in the city comprising two football fields, an auditorium, a basketball court, a skating rink, parks, badminton court and of course class rooms. The school also has a library, computer centers, laboratories and a chapel hosting mass and other holy events.
As the school was also a residential school for orphans and the underprivileged till 2006, it also has dormitories, a dining hall and a kitchen, along with servants quarters and the three main school buildings. However, the boarding closed down in 2006 and the school is now run as a day school only.
Education
St. Mary's provides education under the ICSE/ISC board, New Delhi. It is run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers of Ireland. Nursery section and +2 level i.e. Class XI and XII, have been introduced. From the 2012 session admission of girls to the +2 level has also started, breaking the school's long-standing reputation of being a premier Boys' only school in Calcutta.
However, in a kind of way the school had become co-ed much earlier, as the open school under the NIOS which is personally supervised by the Brothers had been co-ed since inception. The open school drives literacy among the poor and underprivileged. St. Mary's provides +2 education under NIOS. Secondary education under NIOS is provided by its sister school St. George's in Bowbazar (Central Calcutta).
Up to the 1990s, the Brothers used to oversee the running of the school, and also used to take classes. They could be seen roaming the long aisles and corridors of the school in their white cassocks. However, post the 1990s, the school started appointing specialist educationists as the Principal or Headmistress (Starting with Ms. Paula Ghosh), and the running of the day school was handed over to them, while the Brothers took a backseat and focused primarily on overall administration of the school and social upliftment of the underprivileged, apart from running the NIOS section of the school. The school has had two Headmistresses in the past in Ms. Paula Ghosh and Ms. Dorothy Noronha and the day school is now being administered by the Principal, Mr. Joseph Dias.
St. Mary's Orphanage & Day School has also produced many notable alumni, including ace shooter Joydeep Karmakar, who finished fourth in the 50m prone rifle event at the London Olympics of 2012.