Scotch College is a private, Presbyterian day and boarding school for boys, located in Hawthorn, an inner-eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Its foundation was due to the initiative of James Forbes, of the Free Presbyterian Church, who had arrived in 1838 as the first settled Christian minister in what became the colony of Victoria in 1851.

The school opened on 6 October 1851, under the name of the Melbourne Academy in a small house in Spring Street, with Robert Lawson, a Scot from Edinburgh University, as the first principal.

The house was soon outgrown, as was a larger one on the northwest corner of Spring and Little Collins Streets (later the Ulster Family Hotel) and the Church applied to the government for a grant of land.

Under his successor, Alexander Morrison, the school grew and prospered; it came under the oversight of the newly formed Presbyterian Church of Victoria in 1859.

Morrison had been Rector of St John’s Grammar School, Hamilton, Lanarkshire [12]and remained at Scotch for 46 years, during almost all of which time his brother Robert was a master of the college.

Gilray was succeeded in 1953 by R. Selby Smith, an Old Rugbeian who had served in the Royal Navy during the war and was at the time of his appointment deputy director of Education for Warwickshire.

Roff's tenure, though a brief seven years, was characterised by an expanding voice for staff in the day-to-day management of the school, the establishment of a Foundation Office at the School under the direction of a Development Officer and the widening of the House System to provide greater depth in pastoral care.

In 1980 the decision was made to incorporate the school and a new Council was appointed, with representatives from the Presbyterian Church of Victoria, the Old Scotch Collegians' Association and the community at large.

F. G. Donaldson, a vice principal from Wallace High School (Northern Ireland), with a PhD in atomic physics from Queen's University Belfast, succeeded Roff in 1983.

Some extra-curricular groups and activities at Scotch are: Scotch College competes in the Associated Public Schools of Victoria (APS) league in athletics, badminton, basketball, cricket, cross country, Australian rules football, hockey, rowing, rugby, soccer, squash, swimming and diving, table tennis, tennis, volleyball and water polo.

[52] Studies over the years have found that Scotch College had more alumni mentioned in Who's Who in Australia (a listing of notable Australians) than any other school.