By the end of the 19th century Trinidad had four single-sex secondary schools, the earliest of which, St. Joseph’s Convent (Port-of-Spain), was a Roman Catholic Girls’ school dating from 1836. The most recent foundation was Naparima College (c. 1900), a Canadian Presbyterian secondary school in southern Trinidad, chiefly for Indians. The two main secondary schools - Queens Royal College (hereafter QRC), and St. Mary’s College of the Immaculate Conception (hereafter CIC) -- were founded in 1859 and 1863 respectively. QRC was the only government secondary school, and its great rival was CIC, the Roman Catholic college in the same town, Port-of-Spain. Although St. Joseph’s Convent was the earliest foundation, the objectives of secondary schools, their curriculum and modus operandi were first established at CIC and QRC, which achieved together an ascendancy over secondary education in the colony for about a century.