Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
To Ustaz Qayyum, Principal of Khalifah Model School Secondary, to our teachers, to our parents, to our students, and to every guest who walked through our doors this morning: peace be upon you all.
Ustaz Qayyum, thank you for inviting me to speak. I am sitting seven thousand miles away in Ireland, and yet you made room for my voice in your hall. That is a kindness I do not take lightly.
Let me begin where all our work should begin.
وَإِذْ قَالَ مُوسَىٰ لِفَتَاهُ لَا أَبْرَحُ حَتَّىٰ أَبْلُغَ مَجْمَعَ الْبَحْرَيْنِ أَوْ أَمْضِيَ حُقُبًا
“Musa said to his servant, ‘I will not rest until I reach the place where the two seas meet, even if it takes me years.’”
Al-Kahf (18): 60
A Prophet of Allah. With scripture. With revelation. And still, the knowledge he was sent to find was not waiting for him at home. It was at the junction of two seas, and he had to walk there.
Notice that Allah did not send him a book. Allah sent him on a journey. An unusual journey. A difficult one. For years, if that was what it took.
Some knowledge will not come to you while you sit still. It has to be travelled into.
That is our Lifelong Learning Module. That is learning beyond the four walls of a classroom.
LLM has become the signature programme of KMSS. Not because no other school runs something similar. Others do. It is our signature because of where we place it: very close to our mind, and very close to our heart.
Every year it gets better. Every year our students look forward to it. And every year, the teachers raise the bar on themselves.
It is dear to our mind because LLM is curated deliberately, grounded in the learning sciences, and built on an experiential education framework.
So let me be precise about something. LLM is not co-curriculum. LLM is core curriculum.
In the classroom, our students learn reflectively and progressively as active learners. In LLM, the learning switches modes. It becomes hands-on. It becomes lived. Students see, feel, and experience how knowledge actually behaves once it leaves the page and enters the world. That is not an extra. That is the point.
It is dear to our heart because LLM is curated wholeheartedly, with one hope: that our students fall in love with learning, and then fall in love with it again.
Self-discovery. Hidden talent. An interest nobody noticed. A curiosity nobody had triggered. LLM activates all of it.
Yes, there are challenges. There is frustration, anger, exhaustion, the full thick and thin of any real journey. But it ends the same way every time. Students come home cherishing what they went through, and loving learning a little more than before.
Now, to the students of LLM 2026. Let me name you, group by group.
Gen-Q Backpackers. You wrote the words of Allah in Braille, so that a child on Pulau Bait who cannot see the page could still read it.
Blend & Bloom. You took the used cooking oil that every household throws away, turned it into soap, and gave the handwash to the community at Sriti Kota Warisan. Waste into worth.
Guardian of The Earth. You crossed a border. You did a gotong-royong at Lake Toba in a language that was not your own. Khalifah is not a title. It is a walk.
Garden Chef. You composted, you saved seed, you harvested, you cooked, and then you handed sandwiches to strangers at Stadium Mini Sepang. Seed to plate, and plate to somebody else.
WoodCraft Wonders. You stood in front of a table saw at WISDEC, and you did not flinch. Somewhere in this school, there is furniture you built with your own hands.
Wiring and Technical Training. You wired a circuit, and a lamp came on. Amanah and ihsan can be learned holding a screwdriver, and you learned them.
All six of you, listen carefully. LLM is not a school holiday. It is not a school trip. It is your parents investing in you so that you can discover a version of yourself as a learner that you had not previously believed or imagined. Honour that. Make the most of it.
To our guests and the public joining us for the first time: you are genuinely welcome here. You are not visiting a showroom. You are walking into a school with its work on display, and you are free to look closely.
To parents considering KMSS for your child next year: watch our students today, not our banners. Listen to how they talk about what they did. That will tell you more about this school than any brochure I could write.
To our current parents: thank you for your trust, and thank you for your investment. I know exactly what this costs. The programme grows more expensive every year, and we fight hard to keep the figure as low as we honestly can. Please know that your money is treated as a trust, not a fee.
To our teachers: thank you for planning it, executing it, and making it possible again and again. LLM does not happen by inspiration. It happens because you carry it.
To the spouses and children of our teachers: thank you for lending us your husband, your wife, your daddy, your mummy, while LLM took place. We know the house was quieter and heavier without them. That patience is part of this programme, even though your names appear nowhere on the poster.
So today, everyone, let us make the most of this exhibition.
How I wish I could travel back to Malaysia to be there with you. Since I cannot, let me ask this of you instead. Ask our students questions. Invite them to share their reflections. And do not spare us: we welcome your criticism and your feedback, with one intention only, which is to make learning happen, and to make it accessible to as many as possible.
May Allah bless our teachers, our students, our parents, and this school.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
Hasrizal Abdul Jamil is Director of Education at Yayasan Pendidikan Khalifah.
Naas, Co. Kildare, Ireland
www.hasrizal.com
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