Zahira College Mawanella makes smooth progress
Zahira College Mawanella which lies at Hingulloya, a village just 1 KM away from the Mawanella town is the only fully fledged Tamil Medium national school in the Sabaragamuwa Province. It provides total education for both boys and girls at all levels: primary, secondary and senior levels, in Tamil medium with bilingual education for students from grade 6 six onwards. It has also a wide variety of extracurricular activities. Zahira is a home for 3,300 day school children from all around the Island.
Zahira College was inaugurated in 1921 in a temporary thatched building as a Tamil Mixed School by two philanthropists, Abdur Rahman Marikkar and Abdul Majeed Marikkar. There were 43 students with late D. S. Samuwee from Mannar as the principal.
During the time of Dr. C W W Kannaggara, the Minister of Education from 1943 – 1945, GCE classes were started, and the first set of students sat for the SSC examination. The school got a mini science lab during the time of Dr. Badiud Deen Mahmood in 1962, the then Minister of Education. This improved the dimension further.
The school was promoted during the time of late D. L. M Haniffa. He is called the father education of the area. With this promotion as Maha Vidyalaya, the name Zahira was given in place of Tamil Mixed School.
Now, Zahira College Mawanella is the only Tamil Medium national school in the Kegalla district with two sections: upper school for students above grade 6; and primary section, which is housed in the
The Sri Lanka Korea Friendship School is a gesture of goodwill of the Republic of South Korea. It is a building complex having facilities for 1100 primary students with well-equipped classrooms, auditorium and kindergarten. It is unique of its type in the island. It was declared open in 2007.
Mr. K M Foumy, a past pupil of the school, gives the leadership to turn the national and local educational goals of Zahira into achievements. He is the driving force to mobilize the school management, the parents, past students and the well-wishers towards the vision of Zahira. Zahira has a committed 160 member academic staff. The Management is made up of the Principal, deputy principal, vice principals, asst. principals, zonal heads, and sectional heads
Mawanella Zahira provides education at all levels: primary, junior secondary and senior secondary levels in Tamil medium with bilingual classes from grade 6 upwards. It has a wide variety of subject combinations in the A/Levels in Science, Commerce and Arts streams both in Tamil Medium and English Medium. Every year about 100 students qualify for various faculties in the national universities.
Zahira is one of the few schools that offer English Literature and Arabic Literature at A/levels along with other English Medium subjects like Geography and Economics. At O/Levels, within a single classroom, usually about 45 students study English Literature, and last year there were 15 A’s, 10 B’s, 16 C’s and 4 S’s. The school usually maintains over 85% passing rate in the O/ Level exam with 7 parallel classes – about 225 students at all times.
In 2014, Zahira hit the headlines of the national media with M N F Sama, a grade 5 students, achieved the third rank in the grade 5 scholarship examination (and it is the first rank for Tamil medium schools). The school also set a record for having the highest number of grade 5 scholarship winners, 41 students passed the exam in 2014 which was the best among Tamil Medium schools in the Sabaragamuwa Province.
This is possible only with the special projects the school designs. The School Management, the SDC and the parents committees jointly develop special projects to improve the performances, especially academic excellence in grade 5 scholarship exam, O/L exam and A/Level exam. The year 2014 had been declared, the year for ‘Academic excellence’. As a result, the school was able to stand out in the province. The special feature of Zahira is the forma- tion of the parents’ committees. These committees work with the teachers to improve efficiency in all domains.
Mawanella Zahira plays division one football. It secured the Silver Medal in 2007 in the national school sports competitions. Last year, the under 16 rugby team secured the all island Plate Championship. Apart from these, the children play rugby, basketball, hockey, table tennis, martial arts, and hardball cricket. Zahira is the only Muslim state school where girls play basketball. It has basketball in the inter house sports competitions.
The school has a lot of aesthetic activities. Cultural competitions are held house wise.
The school organizes regular leadership training to the prefects and the leaders of the quality circles to inculcate a good school culture in the students.
The media club, the Students Media Forum, scouts, national cadets, western band, art club, agriculture club and science club are some of the quality circles found in the school. The Media Club brings out the school journal, The Zest - two issues every year. It carries the school news and articles of the students. The Media Club has its FM radio program once a year to improve the electronic media competencies, while the journal improves the press media skills. Thus, Zahira is the only school in the Mawanella Zone, where there is an active media club.
The past pupils, parents and well-wishers together have come forward to purchase a land and build a girls school.
Zahira enjoys the support of many supportive bodies like the SDC, the OBA, and the OGA. The special feature is the affiliated bodies of the SDC, the sub committees, like the College Maintenance Committee, College Education Development Committee, and College Primary Development Committee, College Discipline Committee and One Way Committee. They extend a big support to the school.
Sujitha Miranda