St Aloysius College in Birkirkara has produced Maltese leaders and presidents for decades. Kristina Chetcuti set out to learn the secret behind its success.

Say ‘St Aloysius’. Did you just pronounce that as ‘Aloysis’ or ‘Aloweeshus’?

I’m sorry to say that if you have just uttered the first option, your cover is blown, and you do not know a thing about the school and its true and proper Aloweeshians.

The name is the first thing that is drilled in the students.

The rector paces up and down assembly teaching the new intake of 60 or so students how to pronounce it.

Not that they will use it much really, because throughout their life they will refer to is as ‘il-Kulleġġ’, (the college), as in ‘the one and only’.

The language reflects the prestige of the school. And the statistics prove it.

Out of eight presidents, five went to St Aloysius. Two former prime ministers – Eddie Fenech Adami, Lawrence Gonzi went to the Jesuit-run school.

We are breaking the tradition of the common entrance exam and we are proud of that – now the system is inclusive and we have mixed abilities

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and five of his Labour parliamentarians went there, as well as nine Nationalist MPs, including Opposition leader Simon Busuttil and deputy leaders Beppe Fenech Adami and Mario de Marco.

When they visit the school, amid nostalgic talk they all make reference to “the sense of discipline” and “the values” instilled in them by the Jesuits.

Clearly, the school’s education system is on to something.

In the 1940s it was mostly attended by children in the vicinity of Birkirkara.

Eddie Fenech Adami, in his autobiography Eddie – My Journey, recalls that his father went to have a chat with the rector and that was that.

By the 1960s and up to 10 years ago, entrance to the college was by means of a tough examination and only those who scored highest secured a seat in the classrooms.

“When the sieve is very fine at the entrance point, it is hard to get bad pupils out at the other end,” said one former student.

Past pupils rave about the way the education system encouraged free-thinking, achievement and the spirit of free enquiry.

Most speak of an “education with a military touch”, and discipline taught them “to rebel” and “speak up”.

A 40-year old past student to this day recalls the rector’s words on his first day of school.

“‘You entered as children, you shall leave as men’, he told us.”

The secret perhaps lies in the fact that students are constantly made aware of successful past pupils who attended the college.

But 10 years ago, the entrance examination was scrapped for “a more inclusive system”.

Rector Fr Jimmy Bartolo said that even the Prime Minister’s son would not be able to bypass this system.

“It is strictly by ballot. Yes, we are breaking the tradition of the common entrance examination and we are proud that we are breaking it – before we used to focus only on those who are intellectually gifted – now the system is inclusive and we have mixed abilities.”

This has upset many generational Aloysians. One former student, whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather had attended the college, said: “I hope the college returns to its roots before I ever have my own son because, irrespective of everything else, this pedigree will force me to send him there and I may not be able to send my son there because of some policy of selection by lot.”

Many former students claim the college had always been inclusive, with places reserved for people with disabilities or from deprived social backgrounds.

“Scrapping any kind of criteria of selection is not a methodology, it’s chaos,” complained one.

Despite the change in entry requirements, Fr Bartolo still believes the school will keep churning out leaders, and not only in Parliament.

He cites Jesuit Refugee Service director Katrine Camilleri, environmentalist Astrid Vella and singer Ira Losco who attended sixth form at the college.

“Our students can be recognised for their social commitment,” Fr Bartolo said.

They are all told that when they grow up they “have to be men and women for others”, he said, quoting a 1973 speech of Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe.

It is a motto that is often repeated by past students who claim, especially those who go in politics, that they “want to be of service to others”.

We go round the school corridors for a bit of ‘celebrity spotting’, looking at photos of successful past pupils – and it feels like walking straight into the Who’s Who pages.

At length, we find Dr Muscat sporting a mullet and Dr Busuttil a teenage moustache.

A boy is then called out from a class so we can take a photo of the new school badge.

When he goes back to his seat, the rector says: “That boy is a mathematician, even at this age, he is amazing with numbers.”

He may well be our future finance minister.

Anthropologist and former pupil Mark Anthony Falzon

My premise is that the statistics have little, if anything, to do with the cleverness of students and/or the quality of the teaching at St Aloysius. I think the answers are elsewhere.

The main reason has to do with family background. In my time (1982-87) il-Kulleġġ was generally believed to be the best boys’ school on the island.

St Edward’s was posher (and English-speaking) but didn’t have the aura of achievement and academic excellence enjoyed by St Aloysius.

Looking back, we came from three main backgrounds.

First, a sprinkling of students from old money elites – who in those days tended to opt exclusively for St Edward’s or St Aloysius, largely depending on family tradition.

Second, a considerable chunk who came from professional backgrounds, whose fathers were lawyers or doctors.

Third, there were students whose parents were of humbler circumstances but had great plans for their sons and were prepared to pay for them. The competitive entrance examination, coupled with the pushy parent, made sure the door was ajar for this third group.

This made for a potent cocktail, which was a sort of mix between an elite flavour: double-barrelled surnames, well-known business and professional surnames and such, and an obsessively driven social aspiration based on the largely correct assumption that education was the key to mobility (‘issir nies’).

One might add the networks of ‘old boys’ and such legacies (weddings at the college chapel, for example) that in turn fed into the whole system.

At some point in the late 1980s, early 1990s, things changed, and fast. This was the result of meddling by Labour governments, the growth of independent schools, and so on.

The upshot was that the elite and professional types migrated away from the school (not from sixth form though, for various reasons); on their part the aspirational types began to look elsewhere. By the late 1990s at the latest, il-Kulleġġ had lost its aura.

Thankfully or not, a word came to the rescue: inclusion. I consider it a kind of consolation prize.  My prediction is that today’s statistics will be redundant in a generation.

Well-known faces

Presidents who attended St Aloysius College
Anthony Mamo
Anton Buttigieg
Vincent Tabone
Guido de Marco
Eddie Fenech Adami

Where did our Prime Ministers go to school?
George Borg Olivier – Lyceum
Dom Mintoff – Seminary
Eddie Fenech Adami – St Aloysius College
Alfred Sant – Lyceum
Lawrence Gonzi – St Aloysius College
Joseph Muscat – St Aloysius College