In 1943, the danger from the war removed, the two branches of Bishop's College were reunited at Boyd Place. The number on the roll at the re-establishment was 100. With the end of the war, the country was moving towards independence, and Bishop's College had in 1943 introduced Sinhala and Tamil as the media of instruction in the kindergarten, while they were being taught as a subject. Although the school had been established as a Christian missionary school, the Sisters of St Margaret had, as early as 1909, adopted a pluralist approach to religion. Of the 114 students at that time, 22 were non-Christian. In 1938 a Buddhist student was appointed head prefect. Moving into the future: 1955-2000 In 1955 the sisters, due to non-availability of personnel, gave up guiding the school. The school thereafter had its policy determined by a board of governors with the Bishop of Colombo as chairman. L. Y. Pode was appointed principal. In 1959 Bishop's College had the first Ceylonese principal, A. C. B. (Amabel) Jayasuriya, and with her came a new identity to the school. With a focus on national culture, she introduced the practice that the students of other faiths should commence their day with their own religious observance, as the Christians did, and have their own societies and celebrate their own festivals. She had a school song composed in Sinhala and set to oriental music. A Hewisi Band was trained to complement the Western Band. The activities of societies were in Sinhala, and in Tamil as the Tamil stream came up the school were on par with the English which had been a long-established tradition. In 1959 Geoffrey Bawa and Ulrik Plesner were engaged to design a new three-storey classroom block for the school. The classrooms are located on the first and second floors with an open ground level, which is used as a covered activity and play area. The design is influenced by Scandinavian modernism with its "white cubic architecture" "sharped edged prismatic forms and brise soleil facades". The interior of the classroom block is protected by perforated external wall panels which are supported on a concrete portal frame and inserted between the exposed beam-ends to give an impression of extreme lightness and delicacy. A heavy horizontal eaves beam is hung out to protect the facade and to mask the pitched roof, thus accentuating the horizontality and modernist credentials of the