St. Andrew's has served the Jackson, Mississippi, area for over sixty years, offering a college preparatory education, which has always stressed the physical, moral, and academic dimensions of a student's development.
The School's beginnings were modest yet full of inspiring vision. In 1947 the Vestry of St. Andrew's Church voted to use the Parish Hall to house a school program, which would embrace grades 1-4. A charter was secured, and St. Andrew's Episcopal Day School opened to 45 students; Mrs. Adele Franks was the founding Headmistress. Kindergarten and fifth and sixth grades were soon added, and, as the numbers grew, so did the School's fine reputation. Indeed, by 1955, St. Andrew's was chosen "model school" from hundreds of Episcopal schools throughout the nation.
Seventh and eighth grades were added by the mid-sixties, and in 1966 St. Andrew's moved to its fourteen-acre campus on Old Canton Road. Its new facility was described by a local newspaperman who attended the School's opening as being "an architectural and educational wonderland." Upper School grades were added year-by-year in the early 1970’s, and the first class of seniors graduated in 1974. During the mid-1970's a growing number of African-American students, attracted by the School's academic reputation and open hand of welcome, enrolled at St. Andrew's.
Long-range planning, which was undertaken at the end of the seventies, indicated that St. Andrew's would soon outgrow its Old Canton Road Campus. Hence, seventy-four acres of rolling pastureland along the Natchez Trace were purchased, and the successful $4,000,000 Fund Drive in 1983 made possible the start of new campus construction in October 1984. The North Campus, serving grades 9-12, opened in September of 1985. At that time a 36,000 square-foot classroom building and the Speer-Lyell Observatory were in place.
Opening in the fall of 1994 on the Ridgeland campus were classroom and laboratory buildings to accommodate the move of the Middle School, a library resource building, and a dining commons building. The Center for Performing Arts opened in 2003.
The South Campus continues as home for pre-kindergarten through the fourth grade.
Students of all races and religions attend St. Andrew's. The School belongs to the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) and the Southern Association of Independent Schools, and is affiliated with the State's public and parochial schools through the Mississippi High School Activities Association (MHSAA). Honors include recognition by the prestigious Cum Laude Society and an assessment by SACS that St. Andrew's provides "a quality education second to none in the State and the entire Southeast." In 2005 St. Andrew’s was selected as a recipient of a grant from the Malone Family Foundation to provide an endowment for scholarships for gifted students with financial need. In total, the endowment campaign of 2004 grew St. Andrew’s endowment from less than $1 million to almost $6 million in invested funds.