Established as an orphanage for females by a group of Scottish philanthropists serving in the armed forces in 1847, the co-ed Bombay Scottish School is now routinely ranked among Mumbai’s best Ranked Mumbai’s no. 1 primary-cum-secondary school in the Delhi-based Outlook weekly’s survey of schools across the country (December 16, 2002), Bombay Scottish School (BSS) has come a long way since it was established as the Scottish Female Orphanage in 1847. Then sited in Byculla, south Mumbai, the girls orphanage was promoted by a group of Scottish philanthropists serving in the armed forces. In 1855, a parallel institution was promoted for male orphans and in 1859 the two elementary schools were amalgamated under the name and style of The Bombay Male and Female Orphanage. Four years later the amalgamated institution was abbreviated to Bombay Scottish Orphanage. The first general meeting of subscribers to the Bombay Scottish Orphanage Trust was held on February 18, 1867 when the Bombay Scottish Orphanage Society, as it is known today, was established with its own constitution and rules. A decade later in 1878, BSS moved to its present premises on the Mahim sea face. The impeccably maintained, period stone buildings comprise 60 classrooms, three well-equipped science laboratories and a large library containing 20,000 volumes. The school’s supportive infrastructure includes three assembly halls with a cumulative capacity of 1,000, a boardroom with advanced multimedia learning systems, well-maintained gardens as well as sprawling grounds with excellent sports facilities, including a basketball court of international standards. Currently the aggregate enrollment of this highly-rated school which follows the syllabus of the Delhi-based Council of Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), is 2,772 students of both sexes instructed by a faculty of 100. Though essentially a Christian school, which subscribes to Christian values, BSS offers contemporary, liberal kindergarten-class XII education to children of all religious persuasions and denominations. “We have thrown open our doors to children of all communities, though we reserve a variable percentage of our annual intake for children from the minority Christian community. Within this framework our prime objective is the comprehensive development- physical, mental, social, emotional, moral and spiritual of our students. The school’s programmes and activities are planned in terms of attaining these holistic education goals,” says D.P.N. Prasad, a history and education alumnus of Madras and Annamalai universities who served as principal of St. Johns Higher Secondary School, Tiruchirapalli (Tamil Nadu) for five years before taking charge of BSS in 1999. According to prasad, teaching methodologies at BSS have been designed in accordance with the capabilities of children of different age groups, beginning with informal fun-oriented lesson plans at the pre-school stage, followed by semi-formal pedagogies in early primary school and progressively more formal academic education in middle and senior school. “The use of contemporary infotech and computer technologies is integrated into the school’s curriculum,” says Prasad. This gradualist education system has quite evidently served BSS well, judging by the school’s consistently high performance in the ICSE board exams. “Our class X performance is of a…
