We’re almost a quarter of the way through the 21st century and many private girls’ schools still don’t include shorts in their uniforms. It’s not that the schools are opposed to practical day wear, it’s that their alumni have such a deep emotional attachment to skirts that the change is not worth the fight.
Old boys and girls have a powerful say over Sydney’s sandstone private schools, and exercise it with a passion and a persistence that the more humbly educated find puzzling.
Old school ties … and skirts and hats and blazers.Credit: Gabrielle Charotte
War over uniform changes (“It wasn’t even worth trying,” said one former head) is just one example, and sits next to the introduction of new sports (AFL and soccer sullied the holy trinity of rugby, rowing and cricket), a widening of the brim of a hat, and allowing the sports blazer to be worn in public as hills upon which alumni will die.
This intense relationship between former students and their private schools was illustrated in January, when a handful of Newington students from decades ago picketed the school over plans to become co-educational (“I’m an old boy, my son’s an old boy and the intention was always that I’d have a grandson, but I won’t bring him to a co-ed school,” said one).
It came up again on Monday night, when Four Corners featured a man who began at Cranbrook aged three, taught there, was housemaster there, sent his sons there, and headed the old boys’ council: an entire life entwined with a school. He criticised management on staff issues, but he still loves Cranbrook. “I bought into the vision of it,” he told the program.
Newington old boys protest outside the college over its move to go co-ed. Credit: Kate Geraghty
Schools foster this relationship, boys’ schools more so than girls’ (although the girls’ schools are getting better at it). Paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for Kings or Scots or Frensham isn’t just about working towards the HSC with wealthy kids in fancy facilities. It buys membership of a lifelong club.
That club offers significant benefits to those schools and its ex-students but, as Newington and Cranbrook can attest, it has its downsides too.
One key benefit is donations. In 2022, parents and alumni contributed more than $1.1 billion towards private school building projects. Ex-students will pay $770 for watches containing “actual soil from Scots’ main oval” to fund faux-castle libraries.
Beware grown-ups who can’t let got of their sandstone private school
13
1
06.03.2024
We’re almost a quarter of the way through the 21st century and many private girls’ schools still don’t include shorts in their uniforms. It’s not that the schools are opposed to practical day wear, it’s that their alumni have such a deep emotional attachment to skirts that the change is not worth the fight.
Old boys and girls have a powerful say over Sydney’s sandstone private schools, and exercise it with a passion and a persistence that the more humbly educated find puzzling.
Old school ties … and skirts and hats and blazers.Credit: Gabrielle Charotte
War over uniform changes (“It wasn’t even........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
