St. Xavier's Collegiate School

src: i.ytimg.com

St. Xavier's Collegiate School (informally SXCS) is an independent private day school for boys located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It was founded in 1860 by the Jesuits, and it is named after Francis Xavier, a 16th century Jesuit missionary to India. The school completed its sesquicentennial year in 2010.

Video St. Xavier's Collegiate School

History

The school was founded in 1860 by the Scoiety of Jesus, an all-male Catholic religious order formed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola. The school is named after Francis Xavier, a Spanish Jesuit saint. The founder of the school is Fr. Henri Depelchin, who oversaw most of the groundwork during the early years.

San Souci theatre

The San Souci theatre at 30 Park Street (now Mother Teresa Sarani), Kolkata-700016, was burned to the ground by fire in 1843. The property was purchased by Jesuits from Belgium and became the present campus.

Foundation years

The motto Nihil ultra along with the crest of the college date to the rectorship of Jesuit Fr. O"Neill, 1904-1913.

The present imposing five-storied building was built in six years, from 1934 to 1940 at a cost of Rs 9 lakhs, which was collected partly from the public of Calcutta, assistance from Belgium, and the huge rental received from the American army that occupied the building during the second World War. Expansion of the school has been a ceaseless effort, with a campus slated for Salt Lake City, Kolkata, and a second boys' hostel not far from the existing one.

A commemorative stamp was issued by the Indian Post on 12 April 1985 depicting the campus, and in its commentary recognising the school's contribution to society.

Maps St. Xavier's Collegiate School

Programs

Students have excelled on the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education exam. In 2017 Xavier had the top-scoring boy nationwide, among 73,633 examinees, on the ISC exam. In 2013 Xavier was ranked by Digital Learning as the top school in West Bengal.

The school is divided into houses, all trained in synchronized marching. The tertiary section extended to coeducational Honors Arts and Science programs and Teacher Training while still on the high school campus. Xavier runs a large hostel for male students. The school opened a university division division in 2017, at New Town, Kolkata.

In 2011 Xavier was judged the best eco-initiative school in Kolkata City for its preparation of compost manure for organic gardening. The school also won a football tournament organized to promote outdoor exercise, that youth not become addicted to staying indoors with their computers. The travelling cricket team in 1916 won first place in a tournament in Leicester, England. In September 2016 the school hosted an exhibition of about 90 paintings of Mother Teresa to commemorate her canonization that month.

src: www.cricketcoaching.co.za

Steps toward university

Xavier is expanding into tertiary education in collaboration with other groups, as with the Jesuit Xavier School of Management in Jamshedpur, on a new 17-acre campus in Rajarhat near New Town, Kolkata. A research centre with post-graduate courses is also planned. While schools of engineering and medicine are being considered, plans are progressing slowly to assure that fees will remain low and a wide range of students will be able to afford the education.

src: i.ytimg.com

Notable alumni

• Dhritiman Chatterjee, actor
• Utpal Dutt, actor
• Raj Kapoor, actor
• Dilshad Khan, Hindustani classical singer
• Derek O'Brien, Barry O'Brien and Neil O'Brien, quizmasters
• Norman Pritchard, dual silver medalist, 1900 Paris Olympics
• Sanjeev Sanyal, economist
• Siddhartha Shankar Ray, barrister, Chief Minister of West Bengal, Indian Ambassador to the US
• General Shankar Roychoudhury, Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army
• Huseyn Suhrawardy, fifth Prime Minister of Pakistan
• Satyendranath Tagore, first Indian to join the Indian Civil Service, elder brother of Rabindranath
• Shashi Tharoor, UN undersecretary, External Affairs minister
• Aditya Vikram Birla, industrialist
• Jagadish Chandra Bose, scientist, Fellow of the Royal Society
• Barun De, historian; chairman, West Bengal Heritage Commission, Calcutta
• Sourav Ganguly, Indian cricket captain
• P. Lal, writer
• Aditya Vikram Sengupta, filmmaker and artist
• Rabindranath Tagore, writer, 1913 Nobel Laureate
• Jyoti Basu, longest serving Chief Minister of West Bengal, India
• Kaushik Basu, current senior vice-president and chief economist of the World Bank
• Sanjiv Goenka, vice chairman, RPG Enterprises
• Mahan Maharaj, mathematician, Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar award winner

src: fort-sxcs.com

References

Source of the article : Wikipedia