St. George's Anglo-Indian Higher Secondary School, in Chennai's Shenoy Nagar, holds the title of India's oldest school. It was founded in 1715 by the East India Company as the Military Male Orphan Asylum, originally intended to educate the children of Company employees — and, notably, only British and European children at that. Indian children were denied admission in the school's earliest years, a policy that stood in sharp contrast to what the institution represents today.

The school was renamed in 1823 and has operated continuously ever since, making it not just India's oldest school but one of the oldest in the world still in active use. Spread across a 21-acre campus, its red-brick buildings — including a heritage chapel and classroom block recognised among Chennai's protected structures — give it a distinct, centuries-old character that's hard to find in most modern Indian schools.

Today, St. George's educates around 1,500 students from nursery through the +2 level, and is known for keeping its fees notably lower than other Anglo-Indian schools in the country. It's also built a reputation in sports, particularly field hockey — alumni from its hockey programme have gone on to represent both Tamil Nadu and India at various levels. Its library is one of the more unusual features on campus, still holding books dating back to the 18th century.

For a school this old, a few other Indian institutions come close but don't quite match its age. Delhi's Anglo Arabic Senior Secondary School, founded in 1696 as a madrasa before being reorganised into a school in the 1820s, is sometimes cited as older in informal lists — though most authoritative sources, including historical records tied to its 1715 founding, recognise St. George's as India's oldest continuously operating school in its current form.

Three hundred years on, St. George's stands as a rare thread connecting India's colonial-era education system to its present one — a school that began by excluding Indian children and now serves as a point of pride for the very city it was built in.