ICSE/ISC Council Affiliation Registration No. HP 004
School Registration Code 02111501902

Bishop Cotton, in a letter written to Dr. Slater had suggested the School Motto : Overcome Evil with Good. He wrote: I have suggested 'Overcome Evil with Good' as the motto for the School. It was the text on which I preached in the Cathedral in Calcutta on the Thanksgiving Day in 1859 when the School may be considered to have been founded. The idea of the 'Public School', which carries so clear an image today, did not exist in 1859 in India and the history of Bishop Cotton School is of public interest for the part it played in the development of public schools and in the wider history of education in this country.

In the 1840s the great schools numbered not more than half a dozen in England, and Eton, the largest, catered for fewer than 500 boys. In India, there were a handful of private schools and Military Asylums, educating the children of their neighborhood rather than the public at large. Bishop Cotton School, Shimla, is the one of the oldest boarding schools in Asia, having been founded on 28th July, 1859, by Bishop George Edward Lynch Cotton, son of an Army Captain, who died leading his Regiment in battle. A scholar of Westminster, and a graduate of Cambridge, in 1836 he was appointed Assistant Master at Rugby by Doctor Thomas Arnold, one of the founders of the British Public School system. It was the young Mr. Cotton who is spoken of as the ?the model young master? in Thomas Hughes? famous book ?Tom Brown?s School Days? which gives an insight to school life at Rugby.