How this 162-year-old Sydney private boys school is preparing for girls

In the months after Newington College announced the all-boys private school would start enrolling girls, headmaster Michael Parker visited a handful of elite British schools that made the same leap into co-education.

“The feeling was if schools like Winchester and Rugby School could do it, then so can Newington,” he said.

Parker spent several days at Winchester College, a 643-year-old elite English boys school that broke with tradition in 2022 when it switched to co-ed; and at Rugby School, founded in 1567 as a boys’ boarding school and which became fully co-educational in 1992.

“When you step into schools that became co-ed after centuries of single-sex education, they feel like they’ve been co-ed the whole time,” Parker told the Herald. “It gave us even more confidence we could go down that path.”

Before the announcement, Parker also spent time in classes and assemblies at Barker College in Sydney’s north shore, which transitioned to a fully co-ed school three years ago under principal Phillip Heath.

It has been almost two years since the 162-year-old inner west private school announced it would start enrolling girls, a move that triggered deep division and fierce backlash among some parents and old boys who are lobbying for the decision to be reversed.

Donors withdrew bequests, alumni and parents protested at the school’s gates and opponents launched legal action in the NSW Supreme Court. Justice Guy Parker ruled in favour of the college, but opponents lodged an appeal and the case is expected in court on October 14.

The legal case is backed by Save Newington, a group of old boys and parents who argue there was no proper consultation about the move, and that parents who signed up for a single-sex school were misled.

Despite the legal battle, the $45,000-a-year school is confident the appeal will be thrown out and is forging ahead with enrolling girls in kindergarten and year 5 from next year. It will admit girls into years 7 and 11 in 2028, and become fully co-ed by 2033.

Last month, the school unveiled its new prep school girls’ uniform, which includes a grey pinafore, striped shirt, shorts and skort. The full senior school uniform – including pants, skirt and summer dress – is set to be launched in mid-October.

Parents Suzanne and Matt Gruber have enrolled their daughter, Autumn, who will start kindergarten next year. She will join the first intake of girls into the junior campus, following her brother, Patton, who is in year 2.

“For us, it was a bit of a drawback that it wasn’t a co-ed school when we enrolled our son. But there weren’t many co-ed private options in the inner west, so we went with an all-boys school,” Suzanne said.

For Matt, his “limited social interaction with girls” during his own school years was partly behind the appeal of a co-ed school for his children. The convenience of having both children at the same school was another factor. “We also wanted both kids to go all the way through from kindergarten to year 12 at the one place,” he said.

Parker said the school has “well exceeded” projected enrolments for year 5 in 2026, while kindergarten is also at capacity. However, between 50 and 60 students have withdrawn since the co-ed announcement in late 2023.

Newington has appointed Brigid Taylor, former principal of Marist Catholic College North Shore, as director of co-ed, and teachers have gone through gender bias training.

Parker said the college would stay in the Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools (GPS) for boys’ sport and join the Independent Sporting Association (ISA) for girls, alongside Cranbrook, Redlands, Oxley and half a dozen co-ed schools.

“The ISA is a great competition, and we look forward to cheering on the girls with the vigour we currently have for our boys’ games,” he says.

“We think girls are great and boys are great, and the years of research we have done tells us the same thing,” Parker says. “We think they will be better off learning from and with each other in those really formative years before they are adults.”

The primary school will introduce girls’ soccer, netball, touch football and basketball, while the college has lodged a $110 million master plan with the state government for new classrooms, upgraded senior sports courts and dance studios.

Primary school year groups will remain the same size, but the school plans to lift enrolments from 250 to 300 in each senior school year group. Demographic trends played some role in the move, the school said, but they “were not a deciding factor.”

The school said it also considered “catchment areas, the socio-economic makeup of our student body, and changes in government funding for independent schools” ahead of the co-ed move.

Newington is among about 135 single-sex private and public schools in NSW, accounting for about four per cent of all schools. While some Sydney private boys schools, including Cranbrook and Marist College, have also made the shift to co-ed, principals at other prestigious boys schools – such as Trinity, Kings and St Aloysius – say they have no plans to follow suit.

Next year, multiple NSW public high schools are also set to go co-ed, including at Asquith Girls and Boys, and Liverpool Boys and Girls.

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