Annette Sharp: Cranbrook woes continue with claims teacher watches porn in class

Cranbrook’s troubles are far from over, writes Annette Sharp, as the elite school has to deal with ‘unreported conduct’ including claims a current teacher watches porn at his desk during class and claims anti-Semitic bullying has not been properly dealt with.

As newly resigned Cranbrook headmaster Nicholas Sampson made plans on Saturday to vacate his comfortable on-campus Bellevue Hill cottage, the school’s council and its hastily reformed management executive began digging the school out of a vast hole.

Among issues Cranbrook must urgently address is the future employment of a teacher suspended on Friday following the exposure of disturbing emails sent to a former female student at a north shore school and reported to Sampson in 2015.

Also on the agenda is the appointment of a permanent new principal, tipped to be a woman — acting principal and junior school head Michele Marquet is a strong candidate — due to the school being committed to its controversial and problematic transition to coeducation by 2026.

There are still some bumps in the road to coeducation, and while enrolment numbers are said to be steady, sources last week claimed there had been some recent cancellations.

On Friday, a planned a joint International Women’s Day reception involving girls from SCEGGS Darlinghurst is also said to have fallen over after SCEGGS pulled out.

Nicholas Sampson resigned as Cranbrook principal on Friday.

However, the largest issue by far for Cranbrook, which has retained the services of a crisis PR man from strategic comms advisory GRACosway to manage the current scandal, is the community’s loss of faith in the school council.

The body has long been responsible for hiring and firing the school principals, yet the current one, assembled last year out of the ashes of a brutal two-year internal battle that claimed the previous council, is seen as a group whose members have one trait in common — their passionate, and some insist misplaced, support of Sampson.

Acting head of school at Cranbrook Michele Marquet.

This was in evidence on Monday night when, within minutes of the ABC broadcasting a damning though largely historic Four Corners episode criticising the culture at Cranbrook, including during Sampson’s tenure, the council issued a statement in support of the headmaster.

When he resigned four days later, parents and old Cranbookians alike were infuriated.

“The Cranbrook school council gave an unconditional endorsement of the principal to Four Corners on Monday without conducting its own investigation,” said one aggrieved parent on Saturday.

“The current school council is no longer tenable. It’s lost the faith of the school community.”

Another parent believes the current council had been assembled by members who strongly supported Sampson — a man who had openly tested governance conventions at Cranbrook when he started romancing a school mother while her son was enrolled as a student.

“Together, they selected candidates — there was no voting — and chose a group who would stand with Sampson,” another critic of the present council said.

Atlassian boss Scott Farquhar was part of the push to fast-track Cranbrook’s move to co-ed.

Another issue the council must face up to concerns claims there may be other allegations of “unreported conduct” simmering in the shadows.

This column is told these include allegations one teacher currently employed at the school watches porn at his desk during class; claims financial settlements have been brokered for boys allegedly assaulted by another teacher (we hear there were as many as eight complaints about that teacher); and renewed claims Sampson didn’t adequately address in 2022 the extent of anti-Semitic bullying allegedly taking place at the school that was swept under the rug.

With old wounds now torn open within the school’s disaffected community, the mud-slinging is once again under way.

The old battlelines established in 2021 when Sampson added his voice to a push towards coeducation have been redrawn in support of the former school council under president Jon North that resigned in 2022 after coming up against a group described by some as “billionaire disrupters”.

That group was lead by Atlassian boss Scott Farquhar, his wife Kim Jackson and old Cranbrookian and funds manager Will Vicars, who aligned with Sampson to fast-track the transition to co-ed within a nine-month time frame.

This weekend, the considered and cautious actions of that 11-person council — maligned at the time in a series of cheap PR hits executed in a gossip column for their commitment to extensive community consultation — have been validated.

It’s small consolation for the departed council, which included four Anglican nominees of the Anglican Church.

However, those who stood publicly with Sampson — notably Macquarie director Nicole Wakefield Evans, management consultant and ex-head of McKinsey Angus Dawson, ex-fund manager Warwick Negus, Cranbrook Foundation chairwoman Katrina Rathie (the only member of the school council not to resign) and former presidents of the school council, Helen Nugent, and Roger Massey-Green — may be questioning their support now.

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