By Jordan Baker
Sydney private school Cranbrook, which has admitted only boys for more than a century, will become fully co-educational from years 7 to 12 within less than a decade.
The scope of the plan goes further but will take longer than the original proposal put forward last year by the council of the Bellevue Hill Anglican school – the alma mater of billionaire Kerry Packer and his son James – which was to admit girls only into years 11 and 12 from 2023.
The co-education plan was backed by powerful parents, including billionaire Atlassian founder Scott Farquhar and his wife, Kim Jackson, but opposed by others, such as columnist and former Labor senator Graham Richardson.
Sydney boys’ school Cranbrook will become co-educational from years 7 to 12 within a decade.Credit: James Brickwood
After months of sometimes heated consultation with parents and alumni, the school on Wednesday told parents it would extend co-education to the whole high school. Girls will join years 7 and 11 from 2026, so the whole senior school would be co-ed by 2029.
“There is broad community support for co-education at Cranbrook,” the letter, signed by council chairman Jon North and principal Nicholas Sampson, said. “Many see the transition as being a necessary and inevitable step forward in the context of a modern society.”
Months of consultation also showed some parents were worried about the educational impact of the original plan, the ratio of five boys to two girls, and the size of the year group.
Under the new timeframe, in which girls will be admitted in year 7 and 11 from 2026, many of their sons will have left the school when the changes begin. There would be students of both genders in each year of high school by 2029 as each year 7 cohort moved up through the grades.
That would ensure a more balanced ratio and overcome “concerns around only having girls in the senior years [years 11 and 12] while the middle years remain single sex,” the letter said.
“By introducing co-education in year 7, students are able to grow together during their secondary education in preparation for the senior years.”
However, the transition will happen more slowly than under the original plan, which would have begun in 2023.
The co-ed proposal had strong support from younger alumni. In May, almost two dozen recent head prefects wrote to the council, saying private boys’ schools foster attitudes and behaviours that are no longer acceptable in broader society.
“The current single-sex independent school structures in Sydney create one-dimensional interactions between the genders … some of the attitudes and norms of behaviour that develop in these communities are, rightly, no longer acceptable in broader Australian society,” the letter said.
The council said the longer time frame minimised disruption to present students and allowed plenty of planning time to consider issues such as curriculum, pastoral care and facilities for the female students. There were no plans for co-education in the junior school.
“The headmaster and school council are excited by the proposed changes and believe that they will create an enriched learning environment that better supports our students during their time at Cranbrook and beyond,” the letter said.
Cranbrook is one of several boys’ schools making the move to co-education amid debate over whether single-sex schools serve students in the modern world.
Newington, in Stanmore, is consulting parents about a proposal and would be the second GPS (Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools, a group of the state’s oldest schools) school to do so after The Armidale School.
Barker College in Hornsby has also completed its transition to co-education. “More than 80 per cent of the world’s great schools are co-educational,” Barker explained on its website. “The world has shifted.”
Sydney Catholic Schools has begun introducing girls at Marist Catholic College North Shore and has finished the tradition at Marist Penshurst, while girls will begin at Champagnat in Maroubra next year. It is proposing a similar change at St Mary’s Cathedral School.
It has also announced plans to merge De La Salle College and Bethlehem College at Ashfield.
To prepare for girls at Marist North Shore, the school added a maroon tunic to the uniform, changed the names of the sports houses – which mostly commemorated notable priests – and put the staff and students through gender bias training.
However, there are no plans to merge or introduce co-education at any of the NSW Department of Education’s 30-odd single-sex schools, despite a push from parents in Randwick and the inner west.
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