Diocesan College
| Diocesan College (Bishops) | |
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Pro Fide Et Patria
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| Address | |
 Diocesan College (Bishops)
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Camp Ground Road, Rondebosch, 7700 Cape Town South Africa |
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| Information | |
| Type | All-Boys Independent College School |
| Established | 1849 |
| Founder | The Rt Revd Robert Gray, Bishop of Cape Town |
| Principal | Mr Guy Pearson |
| Chaplain | Fr Terry Wilke |
| Grades | PreK - 12 |
| Houses | Founders, School, White, Birt, Gray, Kidd, Mallett, Ogilvie |
| Colour(s) | Navy and light Blue |
| Affiliation | Anglican, HMC, ISASA |
| Website | www |
The Diocesan College, or Bishops as it is more commonly known, is an independent, all-boys school situated in the suburb of Rondebosch in Cape Town, South Africa. The school was established in 1849 by Robert Gray, Bishop of Cape Town.
The institution consists of three schools: the college for grades 8 – 12; the preparatory school for grades 3 – 7, and the pre-preparatory school for grades 0-2.
The college is situated in Campground Road at the main campus, and a small portion of this land is used for the pre-preparatory school. The Preparatory School is situated in Fir Road, Rondebosch close to the college campus.
The college has eight houses: Founders, School and White are the boarding houses, and Birt, Gray, Kidd, Mallett and Ogilvie are for day-scholars. Each house has about 70 to 100 students. The preparatory school has four houses: Van der Bijl (for boarders and day-boys), Bramley, Brooke and Charlton.
The Collegiate of the Diocese of Cape Town (hence the name Diocesan College) was founded by Bishop Robert Gray, the first Anglican bishop of Cape Town, in 1849 at his house, Bishopscourt in Cape Town. He founded two schools there, one of which was described as for the "native children" and the other for "European children" (this being the current school). Living with schools was hard for the bishop and this led him to establish the schools elsewhere. The black children moved to accommodation near the city, where Zonnebloem College now is. This movement left the bishop short of money and so he bought an unproductive farm in Campground Road, Rondebosch, to which the school was moved and on which it remains.
Leavers sit the Western Cape Education Department examinations, most private schools in South Africa sit the Independent Examination Board school leaving exams.
Bishops is one of only four schools in the world to offer an annual Rhodes scholarship since 1901 to an ex-pupil to attend the University of Oxford. This is a result of the school having been part of the initial Rhodes Scholarship Experiment. When approached to help formulate the plan for the scholarship, Bishops was suggested by Mr Ernest Kilpin (later Sir Ernest, after he was knighted for services to the Union of South Africa) as a suitable school for the experiment and Cecil Rhodes agreed. Like Bishops' founder Robert Gray, he mistrusted purely secular education..
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Wikipedia