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.
Patton and Autumn Gruber in the Newington school uniform.Credit: Steven Siewert
“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 However, between 50 and 60 students have withdrawn since the co-ed announcement in late 2023.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.
Brigid Taylor, Newington’s director of co-education, is the former principal at Marist Catholic College North Shore.Credit: Louie Douvis
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.
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“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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