Geelong Grammar School is a

private Private or privates may refer to: Music * "In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorded ...

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

co-educational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to ...

boarding and

day school A day school — as opposed to a boarding school — is an educational institution where children are given instruction during the day, after which the students return to their homes. A day school has full-day programs when compared to a regular s ...

. The school's main campus is located in Corio on the northern outskirts of

Geelong, Victoria Geelong ( ) (Wathawurrung language, Wathawurrung: ''Djilang''/''Djalang'') is a port city in Victoria, Australia, located at the eastern end of Corio Bay (the smaller western portion of Port Phillip Bay) and the left bank of Barwon River (Victo ...

, Australia, overlooking

Corio Bay Corio Bay is one of numerous internal bays in the southwest corner of Australia's Port Phillip, and is the bay on which abuts the City of Geelong. The nearby suburb of Corio takes its name from Corio Bay. Etymology When Hamilton Hume and Will ...

and Limeburners Bay. Established in 1855 under the auspices of the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

, Geelong Grammar School has a non-selective enrolment policy and currently caters for approximately 1,500 students from

Pre-school A preschool (sometimes spelled as pre school or pre-school), also known as nursery school, pre-primary school, play school, is an educational establishment or learning space Learning space or learning setting refers to a physical s ...

to Year 12, including 800 boarders from Years 5 to 12. In 2009, ''

The Australian ''The Australian'', with its Saturday edition ''The Weekend Australian'', is a broadsheet daily newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964. As the only Australian daily newspaper distributed nationally, its readership of b ...

'' declared Geelong Grammar to be the "most expensive school in the nation", charging a fee of almost $29,000 for a Year 12 student. This remains true in 2024, with annual fees coming in at just under $50,000 for day students and $85,000 for boarding students. Among the school's

alumni Alumni (: alumnus () or alumna ()) are former students or graduates of a school, college, or university. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for groups of women, and alums (: alum) or alumns (: alumn) as gender-neutral alternatives. Th ...

King Charles III Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. Charles was born at Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI, and ...

. In 2017, a

Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was a royal commission announced in November 2012 and established in 2013 by the Australian government pursuant to the Royal Commissions Act 1902 to inquire into and repo ...

found that Geelong Grammar had failed to act on reports of widespread child sexual abuse.

History

The school was founded in 1855 as a private diocesan school, with the blessing of Bishop Perry, by Theodore Stretch,

Archdeacon An archdeacon is a senior clergy position in the Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion, St Thomas Christians, Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox churches and some other Christian denomina ...

of Geelong, (and the "true founder" of Geelong Grammar) with

George Vance George Oakley Vance (25 May 1828 – 1910) was the Dean of Melbourne from 1894 until his death. The son of William Ford Vance, who had been the vicar of Coseley, Vance was born in London and educated at King's College School, London and Lincoln ...

head master A headmaster/headmistress, head teacher, head, school administrator, principal or school director (sometimes another title is used) is the staff member of a school with the greatest responsibility for the management of the school. Role While s ...

and an initial enrolment of fourteen boys. The school grew rapidly and in 1857 it was assigned £5,000 of a government grant for church schools by Perry, the

foundation stone A cornerstone (or foundation stone or setting stone) is the first stone set in the construction of a masonry Foundation (engineering), foundation. All other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entir ...

was laid for its own buildings and it was transformed into a public school after the British model. The school closed due to financial difficulties in 1860, only to reopen in 1863 with J. Bracebridge Wilson, who had been third master under Vance, as headmaster. For many years Wilson ran the school at his own expense and through this time boarders came to comprise the greater part of the student body. In 1875 James Lister Cuthbertson joined the staff as Classics master. He had a great influence upon the boys of the school and was much admired and loved by them in spite of his

alcoholism Alcoholism is the continued drinking of alcohol despite it causing problems. Some definitions require evidence of dependence and withdrawal. Problematic use of alcohol has been mentioned in the earliest historical records. The World He ...

. Upon the death of Wilson in 1895, Cuthbertson became acting head master until the appointment of Leonard Harford Lindon early in the next year. Lindon ran the school for 15 years, but was never fully accepted by the old boys because he lacked the personal warmth with the boys that had been seen with Bracebridge Wilson and Cuthbertson. By the turn of the century the school was outgrowing its buildings in the centre of Geelong, and so it was decided to move. The school council chose to open the head mastership to new applicants. Lindon reapplied but was rejected and Francis Ernest Brown was chosen as the new head master. In 1909, the school purchased a substantial amount of land in the then rural Geelong suburb of Belmont, bounded by Thomson, Regent and Scott Streets, and Roslyn Road. On 21 October 1910, chairman of the school, W. T. Manifold turned the first sod at the site of what was expected to be a new era for the school.Belmont Heritage Areas Report – Volume 1 August 2007 (PDF-3133KB)
These plans had faded by August 1911, when adjoining rural land was offered for sale as the Belmont Hill Estate. The school council judged that the adjacent suburban subdivision would work against their plans for a boarding school, not one catering for day boys. The decision was rapidly made to buy land on the opposite side of Geelong at Corio, and the land at Belmont was sold for further residential subdivision. At the end of 1913 the school left its old buildings near the centre of Geelong and opened at its expansive new site at Corio in February 1914. Brown put a greater emphasis on religion than his predecessors, and the new isolated location with its own chapel was ideal for this. Upon Brown's retirement in 1929 the school council set out to find a 40-year-old married priest as the next head master, but they ended up choosing James Ralph Darling, a 30-year-old layman and bachelor. This proved to be a most successful choice and ushered in an era of creativity and massive expansion, following the purchase in 1933, of Bostock House, the Geelong Church of England Grammar Preparatory School in Newtown, and Glamorgan Preparatory School in

Toorak Toorak () is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Stonnington local government area. Toorak recorded a population of 12,817 at the 2021 census. The name ...

in 1946. Darling's boldest initiative was the starting of the Timbertop campus, in the foothills of the Victorian Alps near

Mansfield Mansfield is a market town and the administrative centre of the Mansfield District in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the largest town in the wider Mansfield Urban Area and the second largest settlement in Nottinghamshire (following the city ...

, in 1953. He attracted many acclaimed in their fields to work as masters at the school, including the historian Manning Clark, the musician Sir William McKie, and the artist Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack. Thomas Ronald Garnett succeeded Darling in 1961. He took the school down a liberal path, most notably in early steps towards co-education, with girls from Geelong Church of England Girls' Grammar School "The Hermitage" taking certain classes at Corio by the early 1970s, but also by making chapel non-compulsory; a policy later reversed. At the start of 1972, co-education was formally introduced when girls were accepted into the two senior years. Garnett was succeeded by Charles Douglas Fisher, who continued the move towards co-education. In a staff meeting in which the votes for and against co-education were equal, he cast the deciding vote that led to the school accepting girls through all levels. In 1976, after a year of negotiations, GCEGS, GCEGGFS, "The Hermitage" and Clyde School amalgamated. Fisher died as the result of a car accident on the way to Timbertop for an end of year service in 1978. Geelong-grammar-school-hut

An interregnum of two years was followed by the appointment, in 1980, of John Elliot Lewis (who later became headmaster of

Eton College Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...

from 1994 to 2002). Under the leadership of Lewis the school set about renovating the boarding and day houses to bring them up to more acceptable modern standards, and there was a focus on improving academic results in addition to the generally rounded education offered. In part, this was achieved through introducing timetable flexibility to allow able later-year high-school students to undertake

Victorian Certificate of Education The Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) is the credential available to secondary school students who successfully complete year 10, 11 and 12 in the Australian state of Victoria (state), Victoria as well as in some international schools i ...

studies ahead of their cohort. The school is now one of 43 high schools in Australia to offer the

International Baccalaureate Diploma programme The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) is a two-year educational programme primarily aimed at 16-to-19-year-olds in 140 countries around the world. The programme provides an internationally accepted qualification for entry int ...

as an alternative to the VCE. The later years of Lewis' head mastership saw an effort (which has been largely successful) to make the school less hierarchical. The period since Lewis has seen two head masterships of Lister Hannah and Nicholas Sampson and, in 2004, the appointment of Stephen Meek. In 2018, after 13-and-a-half years as Principal, Stephen Meek retired from the School and was replaced by Rebecca Cody. She became the 12th Principal of Geelong Grammar School; the first Australian-born and first female Principal in the School's history.

Campuses

Geelong Grammar School has four

campus A campus traditionally refers to the land and buildings of a college or university. This will often include libraries, lecture halls, student centers and, for residential universities, residence halls and dining halls. By extension, a corp ...

es: * Corio Years 5 to 8 (Middle School) and 10 to 12 (Senior School), boarding and day. * Bostock House Preschool to Year 4, day. * Toorak Campus (formerly known as Glamorgan) Preschool to Year 6, day. * Timbertop Campus (1953-) Year 9, Full-time boarding The school had planned in the 1990s to open a campus in northern

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

, but the project was cancelled following the

1997 Asian Financial Crisis The 1997 Asian financial crisis gripped much of East Asia, East and Southeast Asia during the late 1990s. The crisis began in Thailand in July 1997 before spreading to several other countries with a ripple effect, raising fears of a worldwide eco ...

, as the Thai government suspended many major projects.

Buildings at Corio

Some notable buildings at Corio include: ;The Handbury Centre for Wellbeing aka. The Wellbeing Centre The Handbury Centre for Wellbeing is Geelong Grammar's main centre for sport, health and overall wellbeing. It was opened on 20 April 2008. The Centre comprises a multi purpose sports hall, a FINA-accredited 25 metre pool with diving bowl, a fitness centre, a dance studio, the John Court Café, the GGS Shop and the School's Medical Centre, Kennedy, that also has rooms for counselling services and physiotherapy. Perry Quad Built in 1913 and extended in the 1930s the Quad is located at the centre of the school between the Dining Hall and the chapel. It houses classrooms, school administration, the Morris Room (staff dining room), three staff residences (The Dovecote, The Eyrie, and the Vicarage), the Hawker Library, and, until 1986, Perry House. The central quadrangle is grassed and there is a fountain in its centre. It is often used for assemblies and plays. The clocktower is on the eastern side of the Perry Quad. Hawker Library Originally the school library, its décor dates from the 1940s. From 1979 it housed the History Library, and was in 2005 converted into the Michael Collins Persse Archives Centre. The building now houses the Institute of Positive Education. The Cloisters Linking the Quad and Chapel, the Cloisters are the school's main

war memorial A war memorial is a building, monument, statue, or other edifice to celebrate a war or victory, or (predominating in modern times) to commemorate those who died or were injured in a war. Symbolism Historical usage It has ...

. There are plaques commemorating OGGs who died in the First and

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

s at either end. The

ANZAC Day Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia, New Zealand and Tonga that broadly commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders "who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations" and "the contribution and ...

service is held around the Cloisters every year. Silence is to be maintained at all times in the Cloisters. Chapel of All Saints Built in stages between 1914 and 1929 the chapel is at the spiritual centre of the school. All students must attend a weekday service and boarders must also attend on Sundays. The 3 manual organ was originally built by Hill in 1909 and was expanded in 1958 by J. W. Walker. Dining Hall Built in 1913 and extended in 1933 the Dining Hall is where all Senior School students take meals. There are paintings of all former Head Masters of GGS, as well of some of the school founders, and some the Headmistresses of The Hermitage and Clyde. Darling Hall Built in the 1960s the Darling Hall serves as the Middle School Dining Hall and Examinations Hall. At its East end is the sanctuary that was originally in the Assembly Hall of The Hermitage. Music School Built in 1938 and standing out as one of the few buildings at Corio not constructed with red bricks, the Music School contains many small practice rooms, a band room, and the Music Hall, which is used for many concerts by students, staff, and visiting musicians. Art School Built in 1937 the Art School served as the only centre for art in the school until the construction of the Sinclaire and Hirschfeld Mack Centres in the last 5 years. It remains at the centre of art in the school, being used mostly for painting and drawing. Fisher Library Built in 1979 and renovated and extended in 2005 the Fisher is now Senior School's sole lending library, now incorporating the collections of the former History Library. School for Performing Arts and Creative Education (The SPACE) Completed in May 2015 (replacing the Bracebridge Wilson Theatre), The School for Performing Arts and Creative Education (commonly referred to as The Space), holds two spaces. The 270-seat Studio is named The Bracebridge Wilson Studio, while the larger 800-seat Forum is named The David Darling Play House. The Space is where most school plays and school assemblies are held. Bracebridge Wilson Theatre Opened in 1978 (replacing the 1890s Bracebridge Wilson Hall, which burnt in 1976), the "BW" was where most school plays and school assemblies were held. It seats approximately 300 people in fixed seating. However, seating capacity can be expanded to accommodate approximately 600 people. With the construction of the School for Performing Arts and Creative Education, the "BW" was made largely redundant. Cook Quad Built in stages until the 1930s the Cook Quad houses most of the school's Science Department.

Headmasters and principals

Curriculum

Geelong Grammar offers its senior students a choice of the

International Baccalaureate The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), more commonly known as the International Baccalaureate (IB), is a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and founded in 1968. It offers four educational programmes: the I ...

(IB) or the

(VCE).

Extracurricular activities

Sport

Geelong Grammar is a member of the

Associated Public Schools of Victoria The Associated Public Schools of Victoria (APS) are a group of eleven independent schools in Victoria, Australia, similar to the Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools in New South Wales, the Great Public Schools Association in Quee ...

(APS).

APS & AGSV/APS Premierships

Geelong Grammar has won the following APS and AGSV/APS* premierships. Boys: * Athletics (6) – 1926, 1928, 1936, 1946, 1951, 1954 * Badminton (4) – 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004 * Cricket (8) – 1903, 1906, 1915, 1916, 1961, 1962, 1990, 2014 * Cross Country (1) - 1986 * Football – 1902 * Rowing (30) – 1885, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1898, 1914, 1917, 1920, 1922, 1924, 1934, 1935, 1943, 1950, 1953, 1954, 1971, 1974, 1975, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1994 Girls: * Athletics (8) – 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 * Badminton (3) – 2002, 2003, 2005 * Cross Country (4) – 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996 * Hockey (2) – 1993, 1994 * Netball (2) – 2012, 2018 * Rowing (23) – 1985, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 * Swimming (3) – 1986, 1987, 1988

School journal

''The Corian'' is the journal of the Geelong Grammar School. Published as ''The Geelong Grammar School Annual'' (1875–76), ''The Geelong Grammar School Quarterly'' (1877–1913) and ''The Corian'' (1914–present). Published quarterly from 1877, it reverted to an annual in 1992.

In popular culture

In 2020–2021 filmmakers John Harvey and Rhian Skirving directed the

docu-series Television documentaries are televised media productions that screen documentaries. Television documentaries exist either as a television documentary series or as a television documentary film. * Television documentary series, sometimes called d ...

''Off Country'' for

NITV National Indigenous Television (NITV) is an Australian free-to-air television channel that broadcasts programming produced and presented largely by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It includes the six-day-a-week ''NITV News Updat ...

, which screened in 2022 as part of NAIDOC Week. Originally conceived as a feature documentary, the four-part series follows seven Indigenous high school students from around Australia who have left their families to study at Geelong Grammar, over the course of a year in 2020. The series was filmed during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, which meant that the school year was not a typical school year. The series received good reviews, and Skirving and Harvey received a 2022 ADG Award from the Australian Directors' Guild for the series.

Notable alumni

Former students of Geelong Grammar and old girls of The Hermitage and Clyde School are known as ''Old Geelong Grammarians'' (OGGs), and may elect to join the school's

alumni association An alumni association or alumnae association is an association of graduates or, more broadly, of former students ( alumni). In the United Kingdom and the United States, alumni of universities, colleges, school A school is the educati ...

, the Old Geelong Grammarians Association. Former teachers include the German/Australian artist Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack. In 2001, ''

The Sun-Herald ''The Sun-Herald'' is an Australian newspaper published in tabloid or compact format on Sundays in Sydney by Nine Entertainment. It is the Sunday counterpart of the ''Sydney Morning Herald''. In the six months to September 2005, ''The Sun-H ...

'' ranked Geelong Grammar School fourth in Australia's top ten boys' schools, based on the number of its male

mentioned in the ''

Who's Who in Australia The pronoun ''who'', in English language, English, is an English interrogative words, interrogative pronoun and a English relative words, relative pronoun, used primarily to refer to persons. Unmarked, ''who'' is the pronoun's subjective form; ...

'' (a listing of notable Australians). Among the school's notable alumni are Charles III,

King of Australia The monarchy of Australia is a key component of politics of Australia, Australia's form of government, by which a hereditary monarch serves as the country's sovereign and head of state. It is a constitutional monarchy, modelled on the Westmi ...

; media mogul

Rupert Murdoch Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian - American retired business magnate, investor, and media mogul. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of List of assets owned by News Corp, local, national, a ...

; actress Portia de Rossi;

John Gorton Sir John Grey Gorton (9 September 1911 – 19 May 2002) was an Australian politician, farmer and airman who served as the 19th Prime Minister of Australia, prime minister of Australia from 1968 to 1971. He held office as the leader of the leade ...

Prime Minister of Australia The prime minister of Australia is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Australia. The prime minister is the chair of the Cabinet of Australia and thus the head of the Australian Government, federal executive government. Under the pr ...

1968–1971;

Mizan Zainal Abidin of Terengganu Al-Wathiqu Billah Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin ibni Almarhum Sultan Mahmud Al-Muktafi Billah Shah (; born 22 January 1962) is the Sultan of Terengganu, reigning since 1998. He previously reigned as the King of Malaysia, from 2006 to 2011 ...

King of Malaysia The King of Malaysia, officially ''Yang di-Pertuan Agong'' ( Jawi alphabet, Jawi: ), is the constitutional monarch and Figurehead, ceremonial head of state of Malaysia. The office was established in 1957, when the Federation of Malaya gained ...

2006–2011; Tim Macartney-Snape, mountaineer and author; billionaire businessman

Kerry Packer Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer (17 December 1937 – 26 December 2005) was an Australian media tycoon, and was considered one of Australia's most powerful media proprietors of the twentieth century. The Packer family company owned a controlling ...

; singer-songwriter

Missy Higgins Melissa Morrison "Missy" Higgins (born 19 August 1983) is an Australian singer-songwriter and musician. Her most popular singles include "Scar", " Steer", and " Where I Stood". Her Australian number-one albums are '' The Sound of White'' (2004 ...

; Entrepreneur and Climate 200 Founder Simon Holmes à Court. Jock Landale; NBA Center for the Houston Rockets.

Sexual abuse

In 2015, the

heard evidence about many decades of complaints at the school. One student reported that he had been expelled after reporting sexual abuse he had experienced there, after spending only two weeks at the school. One former student said he was touched on the genitals by a chaplain and then threatened with expulsion when he reported the abuse. The witness described the school's Timbertop campus, where King Charles III spent two terms in 1966, as "similar to ''

Lord of the Flies ''Lord of the Flies'' is the 1954 debut novel of British author William Golding. The plot concerns a group of prepubescent British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves that led to ...

''". Another former student suggested that Geelong Grammar should repay the fees of abuse victims. In a statement issued in August 2015, Stephen Meek said the school "absolutely condemns any form of abuse... that has occurred at the school in the past... I greatly regret that not all of our students received the care and support to which they were entitled". However, he had told school council meetings in 2007 that litigation regarding some of Philippe Trutmann's 41 victims had been settled for about A$350,000, and his report stated: "Overall, this has been a very satisfactory financial outcome for the school".

List of perpetrators

* Jonathon Harvey * Philippe Trutmann * John Hamilton Buckley * John Davison (deceased) * Graham Leslie Dennis * Stefan van Vuuren * Norman Smith (deceased) * Max Guzelian (deceased) * Andrew MacCulloch (deceased) * David Brian Mackey

Associations

Geelong Grammar School is a member of the

Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference The Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), formerly known as the Headmasters' Conference and now branded HMC (The Heads' Conference), is an association of the head teachers of 351 private fee-charging schools (both boarding schools ...

, the

Junior School Heads Association of Australia The Independent Primary School Heads of Australia (IPSHA) formerly Junior School Heads Association of Australia (JSHAA), is an incorporated body representing the heads of independent primary schools in Australia. Officially established in Septem ...

(JSHAA), the Australian Boarding Schools' Association (ABSA), the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA), the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria (AISV), and is a founding member of the

(APSV). The school is also a member of the G20 Schools Group. The school has offered the

(IB) since February 1997.

References

External links

* {{authority control Educational institutions established in 1855 Associated Public Schools of Victoria Boarding schools in Victoria (state) Schools in Geelong International Baccalaureate schools in Australia Member schools of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference Junior School Heads Association of Australia Member Schools Co-educational boarding schools Grammar schools in Australia 1855 establishments in Australia Geelong Grammar School