The exam format to enter Royal changed with an exception to the rule in 1959 to favour the powerful. SWRD Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister was assassinated in September 1959. It was stated that Anura, his son, was too stressed to sit the Entrance Examination two months later. The test was still held, and they took in carte- blanche all 140 from RPS. Thirty five were taken from outside RPS tosatisfy the 80:20 ratio. Thus there were five forms of 35 each in 1960 as compared to the norm of four forms.

The 1960 Royal intake included the future Prime Minister Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe and the now President in 2024. Also in the list was future Minister Dinesh Gunawardena and now the Prime Minister. On the floor of the Parliament both of them questioned the then MP Anura Bandaranaike in gaining ‘back door entrance ” to Royal College without sitting the competitive entrance examination. Anura passed away in late 2000s. A clear case of preferential treatment for the influential and powerful. Some people are more equal than others.

Later on, I was to get to know that the teachers at RPS and STC trained their students with “sample papers” on the Royal Entrance Test. We had no such luck at Thurstan.

Monday 7 January 1957 was an important day for 140 of us who assembled at the West Wing Lobby of Royal College at 9 am. Mr C.P. de A Abeysinghe, who introduced himself as the Lower School headmaster, called us to attention. We were later to find out that he was better known as “Cowpox”. He called up names according to alphabetical order and at the shout of “Kodituwakku” two of us stepped forward.

One was rotund and chubby with a suitcase in one hand. The other was the opposite, and very skinny. That was me. “What are your initials?” queried the Lower School Principal. We both looked non-plussed, until he thundered; “What Kodituwakku are you? Who is H N and who is E N?’ Hewamallika Nanda beat me to it and stepped out. “You go to 1-A and you E N go to 1-D” was the direction. The better fed and fat cat got the class 1-A. My education in English was ever continuing. New word added: “Initials”.

I thought that HN by having his wits about had stolen a march over me by being allocated with the better students, taking Thurstan as an example in Class classification. But I was mistaken.

Mr Lionel Samararatne was the Master of 1-D and his first instruction was to write an essay on “How to fly a kite”. I was basically clueless, although I had flown many a kite. I submitted a very poor essay and got an “E” grade. I just could not thread together the actions and pull them together. This was perhaps a prophetic introduction to my career at Royal: I have had many instances in life, where detractors, have told me to “Go fly a kite”.

There were four classes of 35 each of mixed ethnicity. Thus, English became the lingua franca. Mathematics, consisting of Arithmetic, Geometry and Algebra, were done in English and the only subjects conducted in Sinhalese was Sinhala Language and Buddhism. The first two reports of mine were not promising at all, 20th followed by 28th in class. Competition was intense. A tough road lay ahead.

I was to find out at end of the first year a feature that made Royalists jell. At end of the year examinations, the first in class in Form 1-D went to 2-A, second to 2-B, third to 2-C, fourth to 2-D and fifth to 2-A, and the cycle was repeated for every class and for each year in Lower School up to GCE (Ord Level). Thus, due to this marvelous system, we intermingled and by the fifth year in College we knew a majority of our classmates.

An intricate system of permutations and combinations, but a lot of work for the Masters. Now a piece of cake with the advent of software and personal computers.

At the fifth form which was GCE (OL) class, the students were divided into three streams, Engineering, Biology (Medicine) and Arts. It was a students’ choice as to which stream was preferred. More often than not, parents influenced the choice. “Son, we want a doctor in the house” was a common plea by the mother. Thus many students made the wrong career choice at an age of 15+ to please their parents.

One such classmate who was good in Classics and Literature which were Arts subjects was compelled to get into the Medicine stream and spent about three years struggling through his GCE (OL) examinations. On leaving school, and after three unsuccessful attempts at gaining entry to Medical College, he finally ended up as a lawyer – a career complementing his abilities after a ‘miserable academic career” at school. He became a very successful lawyer .

The Upper School comprised the GCE (OL) and the two years leading to University Entrance (UE), the Lower Sixth and the Upper Sixth. Engineering and Medicine streams were conducted in English only. Arts stream was predominantly in English.

The switch to medium of instructions being the mother tongue – Sinhala or Tamil – began for GCE (OL) in 1965 and for UE in 1967. For our cohort, all subjects in the Upper school were in English. Royal College was set up by the British in 1835 and started out as the Colombo Academy. It was based on the model of Eton College, a leading boy’s boarding school in England.

In the Sinhalese Literature class taken by the Vice Principal, Mr. Bogoda Premaratne, students were studying a Jataka story where the all-powerful god Sakra came down to earth disguised as a beggar to observe some injustice being done to the Bodhisatva. Mr Premaratne asked a dozing classmate, “How did the Sakra come?” meaning in what disguise he had come.

Not being aware of what was going on, the napping classmate was prompted by his friend to say “By bus, Sir” which he dutifully did, earning him the nickname, ‘Sakkaraya! This is a humorous episode of childhood pranks, and is an excerpt from an address in Melbourne in 2010, by my classmate at Thurstan and Royal, Lal Goonewardene.

Mr Bogoda Premaratne came to Royal as Vice Principal in early 1960s and became the Principal in 1966. His two immediate predecessors, Messrs. J C A Corea and Dudley de Silva being “Old Royalists”, with the former being the first Ceylonese to be appointed to that position in 1948. The Royal College Union (RCU) came to the fore in their ill-advised resolution to oppose Mr Premaratne’s appointment, as the Principal in 1966. The sole reason being that the well qualified Mr Premaratne was not an “Old Royalist”.

Thankfully the Education Minister IMRA Iriyagolla and the Deputy Prime Minister of the day and an Old Royalist himself, J R Jayewardene, asked the RCU “to go fly a kite”. Mr Premaratne was an excellent teacher and was also to prove his administrative skills in heading the school and becoming the Director General of Education.

We were blessed to have a set of excellent teachers some of whom were academically brilliant at the University, obtaining First or Second Classes and yet choosing teaching as their vocation. Others were trained teachers. Career guidance was solely lacking for the students. It was a case of “University or nothing” unless the parents were able to direct their offspring. Some very wise students, and in the minority did not sit the examinations for University Entrance even once, and opted out to do articles in Accountancy and/or join a bank or the mercantile sector as a junior executive. Fluency in English being an asset to join the workforce. Many who failed to get into the University ventured into accountancy, law or banking to flourish well in life in future.

Royal Primary School (RPS), was the main arterial flow to Royal College as explained earlier. RPS had an excellent framework and an organized structure set up for extracurricular activities, be it sports, scouting or in literary pursuits as “book clubs” etc. There were House competitions leading to class and team photographs which have now become a golden archive for memorabilia for the former RPS students.

Former RPS students excelled in team sports at RC with some of them displaying their skills and performances especially at the Royal-Thomian and Bradby Shield to be savoured through history. In sports the star classmates of mine who performed when it mattered and in the spotlight of public gaze were Vijaya Malalasekera and Lakdasa Dissanayaka, both performing unforgettable and still spoken feats at the Royal Thomian in 1963 and at the Bradby in 1964 respectively. There was also Jhana Wickremesinghe who won the blue riband 440 yards at the Public Schools Athletics meet in 1965. The best allrounder in terms of the combination of sports, extra-curricular activities and academic criteria being, Lal Goonewardene.

I wish to present the following statistics while being the first to admit that academic performance in school is not an accurate guide of an individual’s passage through life. It is however a barometer. The pinnacle of school education was to vie against everybody in your age group in the country and win a place in the University of Ceylon (UOC), the only institution of higher learning in Ceylon up to the late 60s. In fact the best performer in terms of being a visionary businessman was Gamini (Gabo) Pieris whose highest academic achievement was scraping through GCE (OL) after three attempts.

Of the 28 students who came from outside the Royal Primary (RPS) to the ’57 batch, 17 entered UOC, or as a percentage, 60%. Of the 112 who came from RPS, 27 entered UOC, making it 25%. The analysis is a confirmation of the vision of Kannangara in making education accessible to all, and not only to the privileged. Of the 14 who came from Thurstan’s Sinhala and Tamil streams seven or 50% entered UOC. However, among the top six academic achievers of the’57 Group honours were evenly shared between RPS and outsiders. All six were wired in humility. The two top seeds in this respect Ranjit Galappatti and Darin Gunasekera justified their school rankings and kept true to form by getting first- class honours at the University and ending up with their PhDs.

In sports, cadeting, scouting, literary associations, choir and debating at RC, the RPS products were the runaway winners. As an extension of the vision of Kannangara, Royal and Ananda after an island wide search gave 10 scholarships each based on GCE (OL) results. The pioneering batch entered in June 1961, based on the GCE (OL) results of December 1960. Eight went into Engineering stream and two to the Medicine stream in the first year of University Entrance.

From the above ten, two left within a week back to their respective schools of De Mazenod in Kandana and Ratmalana Hindu College citing poor teaching at Royal. These scholarship holders could not believe that in their new school, a master taking an allocated subject sleeping through the two final periods from 2.20 pm in the afternoon onward till the closing time of 3.40 pm. The master however took the precaution to allocate some problems from the text book before his siesta. It was the final bell at 3.40 pm that normally aroused him from the slumber.

The eight who remained at Royal entered the University. The two that left too joined them at the University. Thus whether Royal improved their academic performance is highly debatable. Nevertheless, in other activities beyond the classroom, Royal offered far greater opportunities than either De Mazenod or Hindu College. In fact per student Royal had the highest per capita expenditure in the country of any school. A disproportionately higher investment compared to counterparts in metropolitan, rural and suburban schools.

“Based on muti-faceted factors as entrepreneurship , services to the poor and aiding the community and in my opinion, of the ten top achievers since leaving school only four attended the University.

When the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University was queried on; “What is the advantage of a degree?” he paused, and said with a deadpan expression: “It takes others longer to find out that one is an idiot”.

I wrote an article to the College Magazine Committee and presented it to the Principal in late 1963 on how external entries from outside RPS enhanced the Royal College performance based on University Entrance examination held in 1962 and the resulting University intake of 1963. The Principal, however told me to “go fly a kite” in rejecting my contribution. I should have learnt that even the Principal of Royal College is averse to any suggestion that is perceived as criticism, either directly or indirectly of the institution he was heading.

By Nihal Kodituwakku ✍️