About our school

The History of Mikes Kelemen Secondary School

“WANDERING SCHOOL”

Mikes Kelemen Secondary School in Sfântu Gheorghe is one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the region. Known by many as the "wandering school", Mikes is the secondary school in Sfântu Gheorghe that has been most affected by the changes in the history of Transylvanian Hungarians.

In 1859, with the establishment of the Reformed elementary school (later Székely Mikó Kollégium) in Sfântu Gheorghe, the question of secondary education for boys was solved, while the education of girls was still limited to the elementary level. This situation was changed in 1874 by a decision to establish a senior girls' school, which allowed the education of girls for two more years. After obtaining approval, the school board elected József Málik as the director of the new school.

The city authorities made the upstairs part of the Bazaar, the market hall that closed the market square, available to the girls' school. In the first year, 29 pupils were enrolled and began their studies in the following subjects: Hungarian, German, history, geography, mathematics, natural history, religion and ethics, kitchen gardening, needlework, drawing, singing and calligraphy.

In 1877, in order to increase the number of pupils and to meet the needs of the time, the school's directors and the local authorities decided to convert the upper school for girls into a four-form civil school for girls. In the last years of the 19th century, the school was taken over by the state and operated under the name of the Hungarian Royal State Civil Girls' School until the end of the First World War.

In 1924, Vilmos Csutak Csutak raised the idea of establishing an independent girls' secondary school, which was supported by the first headmistress of the girls' school, Erzsébet Bibó. The school management organised a fundraising campaign to raise the necessary capital for the construction. The building, designed by Károly Kós, was completed in 1927 and the boarding school was finished in 1935.

After the communist regime came to power, the 1948 Education Act abolished denominational education. Our school continued to function as a State Theoretical Lyceum, from 1976 as the Philology - History Lyceum and from 1983 as Industrial Lyceum No. 2.

The turn of 1989 brought changes for us too. On 18 January 1990, our school took the name of Mikes Kelemen Secondary School. From the 1990-1991 school year, it became a Hungarian-language secondary school again, and moved back to the same building complex in which it had been operating from 1948 to 1961.

Mikes Kelemen Secondary School currently educates more than 1,000 students in 40 classes at three levels (elementary, middle school and secondary school). The most populous is the elementary level, which was expanded in 2012 to include preparatory classes. In the gymnasium, three classes are approved each year, with the language class being the most popular among pupils. At secondary school level, students can continue their studies in mathematics and computer science, natural sciences or social sciences. The teaching of these subjects is complemented by intensive English language teaching in all classes.