Daisy Turnbull, Director of Coeducation and Academy

Dear Parents and Carers

It was wonderful to meet with parents, sons, and daughters on Meet the Mentor Day this week. I spoke about the transition to coeducation and what it will mean for current Cranbrook students, as well as some excellent questions from younger sisters who joined their families. 

As you would all know we are two years away from coeducation commencing in 2026, and it was a great opportunity to remind everyone that all of our current students from Years 7 – 10 (and of course everyone in the Junior School as they progress through to the senior campus) will be part of a coeducational campus. This means that while students in Years 7 – 9 currently won’t be in coeducational cohorts from 2026 their Houses, assemblies, chapels, co-curricular activities, recess and lunch will be coeducational. 

With our new uniform announced at the end of last year, we are now working on the sporting uniforms and looking at the expansion of our excellent sporting programmes to include netball, football, basketball and touch football for girls and offering coeducational opportunities for other sports including rowing, tennis, sailing, swimming, volleyball, cricket, cross country, athletics and cross country. 

We continue to prepare our current students for coeducation through the Student Wellbeing Programme run by Mrs Angelique Sanders, Director of Student Wellbeing, and looking at the way our school can build its great culture to be inclusive and equitable for all students and staff. Beyond our school gates it is becoming increasingly clear that social media and explicit imagery online is impacting all of us, but especially children and teenagers. According to the Esafety Office website half children aged 9 – 16 have seen explicit sexual imagery online. 

Recently the Financial Times (apologies, it is paywalled) released data showing that in young people aged 18 – 30, the gap between men and women with where they sit politically is growing as well. There is a chasm forming between young men and women. That chasm can only be bridged through empathy and experience. Fascinatingly Korea was mentioned in the data as having the greatest gender divide, and their schooling system is between 90 – 95% single sex schools. 

As a school community, including parents, staff and students, we need to focus not just on correcting the impact of what young people see online, but building and developing empathy for other people. We will continue to endeavor to have events with other schools to deliver coeducational opportunities, and bridge that gap so our students are able to celebrate a kind and compassionate companionship with all around them. 

For the Academy, co-curricular activities will all be up and running this and next week, with study centre commencing in week 2. I encourage parents to look at enrolling their sons in study centre to embed an effective study routine. You can register here. We will also be holding an International Women’s Day event on 7 March (Women’s day eve, if you will) with exceptional members of our school community speaking, the invitation will be sent out soon. 

I wish you all a wonderful start to 2024.

Daisy Turnbull
Director of Coeducation and Academy