| St. Peter's College(SPC) | |
|---|---|
| St. Peter's College, Agra
Palma non sine pulvere
Victory not without toil. |
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| Location | |
| Wazirpura Road, Agra, Uttar Pradesh India |
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| Information | |
| Type | Private School |
| Founded | 1846 |
| School board | ISC (Class XII), ICSE (Class X) |
| Principal | Rev. Fr. John Ferreira |
| Vice principal | Rev. Fr. Prakash D'Souza |
| Staff | 100+ |
| Number of students | 3500+ |
| Campus size | 50 acres (200,000 m2) approx. |
| Campus type | Urban |
| Houses | St. Paul's (Red) St. Francis' (Blue) St. Lawrence (Green) St. Peter's (Yellow) |
| Newspaper | The Peterian Chimes |
| Website | Official Website |
St. Peter’s College, Agra is one of the oldest convent school in India. It is a Minority Anglo-Indian Christian Institution granted Minority Rights under Article 30 of the Indian Constitution. It is located in to the east of Paliwal Park and opposite the commercial district of Sanjay Place. The campus is approximately 50 acres (200,000 m2). The school is accredited under the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education board for grade 10th and under the Indian School Certificate board for Grade 12. The school professes to follow a ten-point vision programme and has been a prominent educational institution in Agra. In the 2006 ISC exams, Satyam Saxena, a student of the school ranked 1st in the country with 98.25% marks.[1] [2]
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Since its inception, the head of the College was known as the Rector it the College was a boarding school. Thereafter when the College was opened for day-scholars only, the name of the Head was changed to Principal, a nomenclature which continues till date. The Principal is the whole-and-sole in charge for its running. He is assisted by a Vice Principal who generally looks after the affairs of the middle section (i.e. class 6 - 8) and a Head Mistress who generally looks after the primary section (i.e. class 1 - 5). The Rectors, Principals and Vice-Principals of St. Peter's College have been as under; [4][5]
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Rectors
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Principals
Vice - Principals
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In the last two decades, the School has seen four Principals: Fr. George Paul (1990-1996), Fr. Dennis D'Souza (1996-2001), Fr. Mathew K. (2001-2007) and Fr. John Ferreira (2007-incumbent). While the School attained lots of local popularity under Fr. George Paul by swapping across most of the district and State level sports championships, Fr. Dennis D'Souza is accredited for the expansion of the school by the constructing a new cycle stand and building the swimming pool in the school and also giving shape to a number of new ideas which were built upon by his successors. It was also during his reign that the School completed 150 years of its existence (1996) and celebrated its sesquicentenary functions. It was a grandest event ever witnessed by the School with the programme running for over two months and organizing a number of State level championships, including a Carnival and a Science Exhibition which was inaugurated by then Union Minister for Science and Technology, Government of India.
Under Fr. Mathew K., the school saw the development of the new Junior wing, the replacement of the cycle stand with an auditorium. And the construction of a new, bigger cycle stand in place of the field across from the middle-school wing, informally called the C Field. The School also witnessed highly increased alumni relations, for example an alum of the school in the Defence Ministry donated a fighter jet and a tank to the school. The jet found its way to the center of the new cycle stand while the tank stands at the entry of the school. The school also went tech-savvy by teaching its students computers from the primary classes all the way to the 12th grade whereas earlier it was only compulsory between classes 5 - 10 and optional for those in classes 11 and 12. The current school website also went live under Fr. Mathew as with the school newspaper. [6]
Fr. John Ferreira, after taking over from Fr. Mathew was quick with changes. Fr. Ferreria's focus on the health of students lead him to introduce full yoga sessions for the entire school during the daily assembly.
The College promotes various co-curricular and extracurricular activities. As an entire year engagement, it conducts election in the starting days of each academic session wherein the electees are invited to form a parliament type governance system with the Principal as the nominal head of the Parliament with the entire activities carried out by the elected students. The functionaries work in various official capacities such as the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Speaker of Assembly, various Ministerial positions, etc.
On the co-curricular front, the College organizes and participates in a number of activities. [7] Other than the occasional participations, the College also organizes each year a Cultural Festival which takes place starts in late August and culminates in mid-September. It involves all the sections of the College (i.e. Primary: Class 1 - 5, Middle: Class 6 - 8; and Senior: Class 9 - 12) at their respective and also overall levels. Participants are judged by external evaluators and the winners are lauded for their efforts in various ways. A number of competitions take place in this week. Some of these are activities take the form of Debates, [Quiz]]zes, Elocution, Essay-writing, Paper-presentations, Plays and performances, Dancing, Singing, etc.
On the extracurricular front, the entire student section of the College is grouped into four Houses; namely, St. Francis, St. Lawrance, St. Pauls, and St. Peters. These houses are constituted for the purpose of promoting and conducting intra-College co-curricular and extracurricular competitions. Each of the House is headed by a House Captain whereas the Houses are together represented by the College Captain, who is on a position analogous to the Prime Minister in the student Parliament. While the House Captains represent the Houses internally in the intra-College sports competitions, the College Captain, along with the Captains of the various individual sports teams, represent the College in inter-College competitions at district, state and national levels. The College has it own cricket, basketball, football, hockey, lawn tennis, table tennis, badminton, handball, volleyball, tug-of-war, as well as the dance teams.
The month of October (and sometimes November) is devoted to Sports and outdoor field activity which involves a number of intra-College tournaments. The month begins with the trials and selections and culminates on what is termed as the Sports' Day, which is usually attended and addressed by a current or former national level sporting figure. Kapil Dev, Milkha Singh, P. T. Usha, Kiran Bedi have been the few dignitaries who have attended the Sports' Day in the previous years. [8] The College also organizes various inter-Collegiate events. The most popular of these is the "Archbishop Athaide Memorial Football Tournament" which is now being organised for more than 40 years. Other tournaments include those on basketball, cricket, tennis, swimming, Roller skating, athletics, etc. St. Peter's College has also won the coveted 'Shah Jahan Trophy' for 7 consecutive years in the Moon School Olympics, an annual sporting event in which students from various schools of Agra District participate as teams.
The building of the college was shown in the A-V clip prepared for Agra's Rakesh Maini, a finalist in the popular talent hunt show, Indian Idol 5, as part of Agra's heritage structure.