MCKK - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Inspector of Schools for the Federated Malay States
Job Titles:
- Headmaster of Penang Free School
W Hargreaves, headmaster of Penang Free School, was appointed as the first headmaster to lead the establishment of the school with 40 pioneering students. Since 1965, the Malay College has been led by Malay headmasters.
As it was founded to educate the Malay elite, being royal children and the sons of Malay nobility, few of its early students were from commoner families. However, during Tun Abdul Razak Hussein tenure as Minister of Education in 1955, as a result of rising Malay nationalism, he democratized the intake. This is mainly because of his experience as an alumnus there, where he found out the aristocrats that gained admittance to this college were mainly below par compared to their less-privileged peers in Victoria Institution and Raffles Institution. Their status as aristocrats had caused them to not be independent and to have no willingness to strive for a better future. Today, only selected Malay boys aged 12 to 17 from around Malaysia are educated there.