Daisy Turnbull, Director of Coeducation and the Academy
As we approach coeducation, I wanted to take the opportunity to provide a regular update on news within the School, upcoming coeducational events, as well as articles of interest and discussion.
This term we have announced the new coeducational uniform which will be introduced from Term 4 in 2025. We are also working on the sporting uniforms as well as updating the junior school uniform to reflect the updates. It has been wonderful to work with the senior leadership, School Council, CSPA, Cranbrook students, and girls from other schools on this important and visible step towards coeducation. It was wonderful to see Year 4 students attending their admissions interviews and testing, enjoying each other’s company and working together. Click here to view the video.
Term 4 will have multiple coeducational events for students. Year 9 will be having a full day PDHPE excursion with Ascham including Ceroc Dancing, and Year 11 Drama will be hosting a dinner for drama students across schools. We will also be hosting the Sumobot Robotics competition on 9 and 12 November.
In the September holidays I spent a lot of time reading books that spoke to many of the issues and topics raised around coeducation, including Chanel Contos’ book Consent Laid Bare. Chanel has a particular experience of her own education in this local area, and while reading it, I was consistently reminded of how important the student wellbeing programme that Angelique Sanders runs is in ensuring our current students to be young people of character, empathy, and respect. In Term 3 we had Katrina Marson speak to Year 10 students from Cranbrook and Kincoppal about sex education and consent, and it highlighted the importance of having these conversations together, rather than in silos.
I also read Chloe Dalton’s book Girls Don’t Play Sport, which showed the importance of giving women’s sport resources, attention, and respect. Of course, 2023 has been the year for women’s sport, and as we move to coeducation it has been wonderful to work with Matthew Grice, our Director of Sport on how we will introduce coeducational sport as well as girls’ teams for specific codes.
At the end of Term 3, Plan International released its Gender Compass, a first of its kind research project which segments the broader Australian public into six groups according to their beliefs, policy, preferences and behaviours in relation to gender equality. The research was led by Dr. Rebecca Huntley, who created the Climate Compass. When I attended the launch webinar, the main take away I found from it was that while with the Climate Compass there is a distinct impact of age – whereby younger Australians are almost entirely supportive of policies that combat climate change – in relation to the Gender Compass, there are representatives in all age groups in the groups from Trailblazers to Rejectors. Specifically, in the group referred to as rejectors, 66% are male, and 20% of the group are aged 16 – 29. This shows that conversations around gender equality and engagement are not going to be unnecessary as time goes on, but are required for every generation.