Robert Newstead was appointed the first resident Minister of Negombo and the Dutch bungalow, which later came to be known as the Mission House was bought that same year.

In 1820, with the completion of the Wesleyan church, the Mission House was fully released for the school.

In 1916 Claribel Beven became the first girl to get through the Elementary School Leaving Certificate Examination and in 1917 the first woman missionary principal, A. D. Dixon, was appointed.

Past Principals: The motto of the school is More Beyond, translated from the Latin plus ultra , the motto of Francis Bacon, who used it, along with the device of a ship of discovery, sailing past the Pillars of Hercules, out of the small Mediterranean sea into the vast Atlantic Ocean beyond, to describe the knowledge he offered mankind.

It is a symbol of transcendence: open systems go beyond boundaries and point past themselves, toward a greater universe; beyond the finite, there is the infinite; beyond the known, the unknown.