Daisy Turnbull, Director of Coeducation and Academy

Dear Parents and Carers,

It has been an incredibly busy term for coeducation at Cranbrook. In Week 5, we hosted an afternoon tea for our incoming Year 7 students, including some of our Year 5 Junior School students, incoming boys and incoming girls. The students were led by our current SRC representatives and learnt the basics of Bin Ball, as well as getting to know each other with some physical bingo.

In Week 10, we hosted the Young Change Agents Academy of Enterprising Girls workshop with over 50 female students from Years 5 – 9. The students were tasked with coming up with a social enterprise idea that solves a problem in their community. From food to a robot delivery service, to banning social media and dog friendly green spaces, the girls showed how effective they can be in solving problems for the future, working as risk takers, thinkers, inquirers, open-minded people, communicators and in a very short amount of time with only a few dozen Taylor Swift mentions throughout the day!

On Monday this week, we hosted Year 10 Kincoppal Rose Bay for the students to listen to Katrina Marson speak on the topic of Relationship education: what’s the point? In this interactive session, Katrina worked with students on the topics of consent, communication and boundaries. Sessions such as these are very important for our students, and even more so to be having the conversation with girls, rather than only hearing half the story, for half the room. 

We have also held information sessions for parents and at the start of Term 2, we will be holding an open evening for Year 9 girls to commence the enrolment process for Year 11, 2026. If you have any questions regarding coeducation, please do not hesitate to contact me or Meredith Stone, Director of Admissions. 

As Cranbrook readies for coeducation, work is being done across the school to ensure holistic preparation. This is being overseen by the Coeducation Transition Committee which includes senior leadership staff and some council members. The committee is divided across fourteen workflows from curriculum and sport to facilities and policies. Over the coming weeks, I will take you through some of the preparation happening in each of the workflows run by the Coeducation Transition Committee.  

The first area which is fundamental to the coeducation transition is our curriculum. As an IB continuum school, all students study the NESA curriculum through the lens of the Middle Years Programme. It is important to note that the vast majority of IB Schools are coeducational.  

Cranbrook will be introducing new curriculum courses in 2025, the year before girls start. We will be looking at the potential of offering HSC Dance and, in time, HSC Food Technology as well, but the latter requires specific learning spaces. Within the IB Diploma Program, we will be offering a World Religions course that aligns with the HSC Studies of Religion course.   

Work is underway in all faculty areas where programmes are being reviewed and where there is a need to refine or rewrite, we are implementing them for 2025. For example, in English, the new and streamlined Stage 4 and Stage 5 Curricula has allowed for opportunities to focus more on an increased number of perspectives that reflects the essential knowledge, understanding and skills that students are expected to learn through the study of a wide range of literature. In Year 7, the students focus on ‘Unleashing Creativity’ in their opening unit, before they explore ‘A Hero’s Journey’ through close studies of The Hunger Games and Book of Dust. Each term brings an increase in rigour through the type of texts studied, but also the concepts and values evident within said texts. From ‘First Nations Stories’ to ‘Overcoming Adversity’ in Year 8, to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Orwell’s Animal Farm in Year 9, progressing towards the exploration of Macbeth in Year 10, along with a relevant and important ‘Politics and the Media’ unit, the students at Cranbrook are able to draw practical connections between their studies and the real world, preparing them for success in further study and in life. 

It is important to note that Cranbrook already has a broad range of subjects studied and our units of work reflect the world we live in, not the microcosm of a single sex school. So, while we are updating programmes, we recognise that we are already in a more gender inclusive space for many of our subject offerings. 

Daisy Turnbull
Director of Coeducation and Academy