Annette Sharp: Money talks to end stalemate at exclusive Cranbrook school

It was a fight to the death between the board of the prestigious Cranbrook school and the billionaire donors. It was inevitable who was going to win, writes Annette Sharp.

The Battle for Cranbrook came to its inevitable conclusion last week with a result that even the RBA’s Phillip Lowe might have predicted.

In a fight to the death between the board of the elite Bellevue Hill private boys college and a rebel group of billionaire donors, the billionaires won, as they generally do in a city that almost constantly confuses wealth with power though not always with ability or suitability.

How did the team led by Atlassian founder Scott Farquhar (whose children attend the school) and fund manager Will Vicars (whose children previously did) win a fight that began as a revolutionary idea to turn the 104 year old boys college into a co-ed institution within a year and turned into a battle to either topple or save the school’s $1-million-a-year salaried headmaster Nicholas Sampson?

Scott Farquhar. NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

Will Vicars.

Answer: By throwing millions at the school and creating the situation in which they could threaten to withdraw that money if they didn’t get their way — something the donors threatened would “ … have a detrimental impact on many aspects of school life that the boys and their families enjoy.”

The school’s affluent community was largely won over and the school board, which had backed a slower transition to co-ed but no longer Sampson who it felt had been “bought” by

The Cranbrook school.

the billionaires, last week resigned to protect the school’s reputation.

The rich won the day and gave working class outsiders like your humble columnist a harsh insight into Cranbrook’s ferocious masculine culture – the very thing the introduction of girls to the school would, as the proponents of co-ed have claimed, put an end to. We wish the first intake of girls the best of luck.

Now Cranbrook’s problematic culture has only been reinforced: He (or she) who has the most money wins and those without wealth are voiceless.

We also learned headmaster Sampson, a divorcee who lives on campus with his hot Aussie ex-Cranbrook mum Maja Will (whose catering business won’t suffer due to lack of access to moneyed old Cranbrookians) and makes five to ten times the sum paid to NSW public school principals (whose pay falls between $121,000 and $181,000 dependant on grade) has every reason to want to stay put.