Elite Cranbrook school ditches tradition and goes co-ed
One of Sydney’s top private schools has ditched more than 100 years of history to open the doors to girls.
Education
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TOP Sydney private school Cranbrook is opening its doors to girls for the first time in its history, part of a growing trend for Sydney’s traditional single-sex schools to go coeducational.
The Bellevue Hill based elite school, where the fees for Year 12 boys are an eye-watering $37,000 a year, has spent months consulting with parents and alumni over the plans.
Girls will join the senior school in years 7 and 11 from the year 2026, so the whole high school will be co-ed by 2029.
The school boasts an illustrious alumni, including billionaire Kerry Packer and his son James, Atlassian boss Mike Cannon-Brookes, chief justice Sir Laurence Street and comedian Garry McDonald.
Headmaster Nicholas Sampson, said it was a “pinnacle” moment in the school’s history.
“The normalisation of inter-gender relationships is a very important benefit of coeducational schooling,” he said.
In a letter to parents Mr Sampson and council chairman Jon North said many saw the “transition as being a necessary and inevitable step forward in the context of a modern society”.
“At the same time, many parents have substantial concerns about changing the current educational model,” the letter stated.
“These include cohort size, the ratio of girls to boys, Year 11 as the entry point and the potential impact of change on educational outcomes. There is an overriding concern that any major change should be carefully considered and not rushed.”
A number of single-sex schools have moved to coeducational in recent years, including Marist Catholic School at Penshurst, Marist Catholic College North Sydney and Champagnat at Maroubra. Newington at Stanmore is also considering a proposal to go co-ed.
And the NSW Department of Education is working on a plan where students living in areas that don’t have public coeducational high schools will be given guaranteed access to a co-ed school.
That would include families in the Georges River Council, who are currently offered single-sex schools only in the middle high school years.
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