Kuala Lumpur · History
How a Harvard graduate's home classroom became Malaysia's first British school
Alice Fairfield-Smith started a small school in her Kuala Lumpur home in 1946 because she could not find a suitable education for her daughter. Eighty years on, that school serves 1,600 pupils across two campuses.
In 1946, with the Second World War barely over and Kuala Lumpur still finding its footing as a colonial city, Alice Fairfield-Smith faced a simple problem: there was nowhere suitable to send her daughter to school. Her answer was to open one herself, in her own home on Jalan Eaton. A biology graduate of Harvard University and an experienced teacher, she began with a handful of expatriate children. In doing so, she founded what would become the first British international school in Malaysia.
From a family home to a permanent institution
Alice Fairfield-Smith ran the school for four years. When she and her family left for America in 1950, there were 70 pupils and seven teachers. The school was formally named The Alice Smith School, and responsibility passed to Anne Lilley and a newly constituted body, the Alice Smith Schools Association (ASSA), which placed governance in the hands of a Council of Governors. That structure, a not-for-profit foundation registered in Malaysia, remains in place today, making it the only British international school in Kuala Lumpur that operates without a commercial owner.
In August 1960, Alice Fairfield-Smith returned on a sentimental visit and found enrolment had topped 250, more than three times what she had left behind. The school had already outgrown Jalan Eaton: it relocated to Jalan Bellamy, in the heart of the city, in May 1955. Patricia Lee, who served as principal from 1964 to 1989, oversaw a sustained period of growth. Under her leadership, a dedicated Preparatory building for older pupils opened in January 1971, with more classes added before the year was out.
A second campus and a coming of age
By the mid-1990s the school had outgrown a single site. A purpose-built secondary campus opened in 1997 on a 25-acre site in Equine Park, Seri Kembangan, roughly 30 minutes south of the city centre. The following year, in September 1998, HRH Prince Edward arrived to formally open the RM33 million facility. The two-campus model the school operates today, Primary at Jalan Bellamy for Preschool to Year 6 and Secondary at Jalan Equine for Years 7 to 13, dates from that moment.
Roger Schultz served as Head of School from 2010, a tenure of 12 years during which the school expanded its physical footprint considerably. The Alice Smith School Foundation launched in November 2018, structured around five funding areas: community, scholarships and bursaries, special educational projects, buildings and facilities, and endowment. Its launch coincided with the opening of more than 6,000 square metres of extensions and refurbishments to the Humanities, Library, Sixth Form and Indoor Sports blocks at the Secondary Campus, unveiled by the British High Commissioner to Malaysia. The Jubilee Centre at the Primary Campus, opened in 2016, won gold at the Malaysian Architecture (PAM) Awards.
Curriculum and accreditation
The school follows the English National Curriculum from Early Years through to IGCSE and A Level. The Secondary Campus structures its programme in three phases: Middle School (Years 7 to 9), Upper School (Years 10 and 11) for IGCSE, and Sixth Form for A Levels. In 2023, 82 per cent of students who secured university places in the UK did so at their first-choice institution.
Alice Smith was among the first schools in Malaysia and Southeast Asia to receive British School Overseas (BSO) accreditation from the UK Department for Education, earning an Excellent rating in both the 2011 and 2014 inspections. The 2014 report, which judged both campuses excellent, led directly to full membership of the Council of British International Schools (COBIS). A COBIS Patron's Accreditation visit in March 2019 returned an outstanding report. In June 2024, COBIS awarded the school two Beacon Status Awards, for Ethos and Values and for Student Leadership, recognising it as a school that exemplifies COBIS standards and shares best practice globally.
Beyond BSO and COBIS, the school holds membership of the Council of International Schools (CIS), the Independent Schools Council (ISC), the East Asia Regional Council of Schools (EARCOS), and the Independent Association of Preparatory Schools (IAPS), the first school in Malaysia and only the fifth in Asia to meet IAPS entry requirements. It is also a founding member of the Federation of British International Schools in Asia (FOBISIA), the regional body it helped to create.
Present day
Sian May became Head of School in summer 2022, succeeding Roger Schultz after a five-month search by the Council of Governors. She had previously served as Director of Senior School at Education in Motion, developing educational strategy across 13 schools in Asia, and before that as Head of Middle School at Sha Tin College in Hong Kong. The school's motto, Sic itur ad astra, in this way you shall reach the stars, reflects a continuity of ambition that runs back to Jalan Eaton.
Today Alice Smith School has around 1,600 pupils drawn from close to 50 nationalities. The Primary Campus sits at No. 2 Jalan Bellamy in central Kuala Lumpur; the Secondary Campus at No. 3 Jalan Equine in Seri Kembangan. The school's 8-lane synthetic athletics track at the Secondary Campus is certified by World Athletics, the first international school in Malaysia and the third in the world to hold that standard. A new Head of School, Dr John Knight, who has previously worked at St George's British International School Rome and the British School of Brussels, is due to join in September 2026.