Founded by a number of secondary school students on 29 May 2011, the group first came to media attention when they organised a protest against the Pro-Communist "moral and national education" put forward by the Hong Kong government in 2012.

At the height of the event, 120,000 students and members of the public attended the demonstration and forced the government to retract its plans to introduce "moral and national education" as a compulsory subject in schools.

Core members including Joshua Wong, Oscar Lai and Agnes Chow formed a new political party Demosisto in April.

[12][non-primary source needed] By late August, Scholarism drew up a charter and began lobbying democratic Legislative Councillors to sign it, which would commit their parties to make civil nomination through universal suffrage the number one priority during the coming campaign for the 2017 Chief Executive election.

[15] On 26 September, the class boycott was held on Tim Mei Avenue and the square outside the Legislative Council Complex, as an organisation applied to hold a celebration event of 65th anniversary of the People's Republic China at the Tamar Park.

At 10:30 p.m. when the assembly came to the end, Joshua Wong, all of a sudden, called for the crowd to "retake" the Civic Square, around which fences were built two months earlier.

At 10:52 p.m. police handcuffed and arrested Joshua Wong for forcible entry to government premises, disorderly conduct in public place and unlawful assembly.

Later, the protesters began to occupy Harcourt Road which police responded by using tear gas, triggering widespread occupations at Admiralty, Mong Kok and Causeway Bay.

In February 2016, Oscar Lai Man-lok, a core member of Scholarism, revealed that he, Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow Ting planned to form a political party and field at least two candidates to run in the Legislative Council elections in September.