High achievers look back at 140 years of all-round success

One of Hong Kong's oldest and most famous girls' schools celebrates its 140th anniversary today with a reunion of four of its headmistresses and more than 3,000 past and current students.

Diocesan Girls' School (DGS), at 1 Jordan Road in Kowloon, has long enjoyed a reputation for grooming high-achievers. But according to former student and long-serving headmistress Catherine Joyce Symons, it was not always like that.

'Dictation' and 'tyranny' were the order of the day before 1939, when Elizabeth Mary Gibbins arrived from London to head the school, she said. It was Ms Gibbins who began to transform DGS into the elite school that is so sought-after by parents, even today, for the all-round education it offers.

DGS was founded by the Anglican Church in 1860 when it was known as the Diocesan Native Training School. It was renamed Diocesan Girls' School six years later. The school was initially sited in Bonham Road and Eastern Street on Hong Kong Island, but was relocated to Kowloon in 1913.

In its early decades, the school was mainly staffed by spinster missionaries who provided rudimentary education to the Eurasian girls who dominated the student population.

Dr Symons, who was born in Shanghai in 1918 and moved to Hong Kong at the age of three, was among them. She left the school in 1935 to study at the University of Hong Kong.

Today she will return to the school for its anniversary. During the celebrations it will be Ms Gibbins, the headmistress who recruited her as a teacher in 1939 after she had completed her degree, whom she will remember for having had the greatest influence on the school. 'DGS would not have become what it is now without her,' said Dr Symons.