A portion of the land on which it now stands having been given by Mesdames Beynon and Osler, daughters of an early Somerset West shopkeeper and property owner.

The school motto "Sibi Fidelis Ipsi" is Latin for "True To Oneself".

The school is a site for students in the Scientific and Industrial Leadership Initiative (SAILI), a non-profit programme for promising science and engineering pupils which was set up in 2002 by the heads of the four universities in the province after they became frustrated at the low skills levels of first-year students.

They continue to take classes every two Saturdays at venues such as the MTN Sciencentre for the first two years of high school, after which they take booster lessons at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.

The school's coat of arms, based on that of Simon van der Stel, was registered in the name of the Old Students' Union with the Department of the Interior in April 1937.