As the boys of Newington College approached its sandstone entrance on the first day of school this year, they were greeted by an unusual sight. Roughly 25 adults with placards were milling about in the shadow of the school’s emblematic wyvern – a fork-tongued and tailed dragon that also once guarded Hogwarts’ Transfiguration Courtyard in the Harry Potter books. The parents and old boys were protesting the news that Newington would undergo a transfiguration of its own. According to the principal and the school council, the 161-year-old Sydney bastion of boys’ education would soon begin welcoming girls, with a plan that would see Newington entirely co-educational by 2033.
Media arrived and protestor Dallas Morgan told them that the process which led to this decision was a “sham” based purely on a “woke” ideology. It was not the last time the word “woke” was heard in this debate.
James Jordan (class of ’81) told The Weekly that, for him, the issues were a lack of consultation and a lack of choice.“Children are being enrolled when they’re very young and the parents sign up for a single-sex school, and for the history of Newington … Then that choice is taken away from them. The school council has said, ‘Oh well, you’re free to go elsewhere.’ The problem is, 85 per cent of schools in NSW are co-ed.”
While old boys fretted, the schoolboys proceeded, unperturbed, through the gates. Were it not for the protesters (some 800 have now signed onto the Save Newington College group), the school’s decision would barely have raised an eyebrow. In the past decade, The Armidale School, Canberra Grammar, Barker College, Cranbrook and St Mary’s Cathedral College have all either begun or completed a transition from boys-only education to co-ed. In ACT and NSW private boys’ schools, the drift to
