The Cathedral & John Connon School is a co-educationalprivate school founded in 1860 and located in Fort, Mumbai, Maharashtra. It has five sections: Pre-Primary, Infant, Junior, Middle and Senior Schools. The school also controls the 300-year-old St. Thomas Cathedral; CAJCS was founded to provide choristers to the Church.
History
In 1860 Bishop Harding and the Cathedral Chaplain opened a grammar school within the walled city of Bombay which, along with a smaller establishment for girls, were the first of many strands that have joined to form the Cathedral and John Connon School. A Choir School, established with the objective of providing choristers for the St. Thomas Cathedral, Mumbai, the first Anglican Church in Mumbai was founded in October 1875. Meanwhile, the Bombay Scottish Education Society was founded in 1866. The society put up a building on the Esplanade, and named it for John Connon. In 1878 a high school in Byculla, set up by the Bombay Diocesan Society, was merged with the Choir School to form the Cathedral High School. The present Senior School building, a blend of Indian and Gothic architecture, was erected in 1896. A girls' school had been started in 1880. In 1922, in a public meeting held at the Town Hall, the present Asiatic Society of Bombay library, a suggestion was put forward by the principal of the Cathedral Boys' School for the Cathedral Schools and the Scottish School to work together, instead of competing, and thus the Anglo-Scottish Education Society was conceived. The schools were re-organized into the Cathedral Boys' School, the Cathedral Girls' School, and the John Connon School. Today the old boys' school is the Senior School; the old girls' school is the Middle School; and the John Connon School is the Junior School. The Infant School, located at Malabar Hill, was set up in 1965. The Senior School also serves as the main administrative office for all the sections of the school. The IB arm of the school, set up in 2015, plans to shift to the Deutsche Bank Building by 2018. The building is located in the same vicinity as the school, right next to Sterling Theatre.
School badge
In 1923 the Cathedral Schools and the Scottish School were amalgamated to form The Anglo-Scottish Education Society. Miss Whitfield, the Principal of the Girls' School, wanted a badge which was representative of both elements of the Society: Anglican and Scottish. A badge was designed in which the Bishop's Mitre represented the Anglican side, while the Scottish neighbours were symbolised by the white diagonal cross of St. Andrew.
The Cathedral Model United Nations is run entirely by the school's student body over a period of three days, where students assume the roles of delegates representing countries. From a start in 1996 - the first CMUN had only one committee, it has grown into an event with over 700 delegates attending. CMUN 2007 was the first to have delegates from outside Mumbai. Schools like Mayo College, La Martiniere Calcutta, Doon School, and others attended the conference. 2011 featured the first international delegates from Rato Bangala School from Nepal and Aitchinson College, Pakistan.
House system
There are four houses in the school - Barham, Palmer, Savage and Wilson - named after Barham, James Palmer, Arthur Savage and Percival Wilson, the founders of the Cathedral School and the John Connon School. The House System serves as the centre of school life, with students from the houses competing at sports, games and other co-curricular activities, primarily divided into 2 categories- Cultural and Sports which include a plethora of activities. There was also another house, that was brown in color, called Kuruvilla that was later disbanded and students were distributed amongst the houses available since it made more sense to have four houses in order to keep competitions easier.
