Sydney Church of England Grammar School


The Sydney Church of England Grammar School is an independent Anglican school for boys located on Sydney's Lower North Shore, New South Wales, Australia. The school operates across two campuses, offering an early learning centre, primary and secondary education. The North Sydney campus has four boarding houses for Year 7-12 students, offering weekday and full-time boarding.
Established in 1889 by the Church of England, Shore has a non-selective enrolment policy and serves approximately 1,800 students from ELC to Year 12, including 200 boarders from Year 7 onwards. A separate campus in Northbridge provides co-educational classes from ELC to Year 2.
Shore is a member of the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia, the Junior School Heads Association of Australia, the Australian Boarding Schools' Association, the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, and is a founding member of the Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools of New South Wales.

History

The Sydney Church of England Grammar School was founded on 4 May 1889, and was the initiative of Bishop Alfred Barry of the Sydney Diocese of the Church of England, after the closing of the St James School in 1886. The site of the school was chosen by the first headmaster to be the Victorian mansion of the famed gold prospector Bernhardt Holtermann, a German immigrant who is associated with the discovery of the Holtermann Nugget in the Australian gold fields. He used his newfound wealth to build a magnificent home in North Sydney, which is now a boarding house of Shore. His sons were among the first students enrolled at Shore.
The St. James' School Compensation Trust Act provided for the foundation of:
The school’s colours and diagonal stripes are drawn from Christ's College, Cambridge, where the founding headmaster studied. The school crest features symbols representing its values and affiliations: the Bible and the Southern Cross appear on the top row, alongside a shell, symbolising a connection to St. James' School, and a torch. The school motto is displayed beneath these elements. Moreover, the boater, a piece of uniform which has become closely associated with the school, was first encouraged to be worn in 1912, before becoming compulsory in 1924.
The school has two official names: the Sydney Church of England Grammar School and the Shore School, although it is more commonly known as the latter. The name 'Shore' was formally adopted in the early 1990s to distinguish it from other institutions. This change was partially driven by the difficulty of chanting 'Grammar' at sports events, as Sydney Grammar School students were already using the term, and to avoid confusion with SCEGGS, Shore's sister school. The name 'Shore' also reflects the school’s location in Sydney’s North Shore region.

Campuses

The Sydney Church of England Grammar School is situated on two campuses:
  • North Sydney
  • Northbridge – ELC to Year 2 and sports grounds

    North Sydney

In the senior school, in addition to the administrative centres and classroom blocks there are:
  • War Memorial Chapel
  • The War Memorial Hall
  • Ken and Joan Smith Auditorium
  • BH Travers Centre, including the Boer War Memorial Library and Basketball Courts
  • The Benefactors Building, including the Bob Gowing Museum incorporating the school archives, mainly of the accomplishments of previous headmasters to school academic and extra-curricular achievement.
  • The Centenary Building, including the art department
  • Sporting facilities, including one oval, cricket nets and tennis courts. In 2016, the school announced plans for an updated gym, squash courts, basketball court, an indoor/outdoor 50 metre pool and new classrooms as a part of the Shore Physical Education Centre. Construction began early 2018 and has been completed.
The Preparatory School, originally constructed in 1926, was completely renovated in March 2006.

Northbridge

An Early Learning Centre for boys and girls in the two years prior to starting Kindergarten, as well as a Kindergarten to Year 2 learning facility for boys and girls, was opened at the Northbridge campus in 2003. With Long Day Care facilities, the ELC is open 48 weeks per year.
The school's main sports facility is also at Northbridge, on land bought in 1916. The school was given a choice of either buying the neighbouring Graythwaite property, or the land at Northbridge. The school chose the land at Northbridge as playing fields, of which the school was in desperate need. This campus now features six full-sized ovals, tennis courts, pavilions and dressing rooms. The grounds were opened in 1919 as a memorial to the 880 old boys who served, and the 122 who died in the Great War.
The grandstand and associated facilities were redeveloped in 2008 at a cost of $9 million.

Curriculum

Subjects

Shore offers a wide variety of subjects. Traditionally the school is most successful in Business Studies and Economics, producing 6 state rankings in the past 4 years including first in Business Studies in 2020. Shore has also produced strong performances in Mathematics - producing eighth in 2021, fifth in 2018 and third in 2017 in the Extension 1 course, and second and sixth in 2022 and first in 2017 in the Extension 2 course, in addition to Latin, where the school has produced 6 state rankings since 2016.

Rankings

Co-curriculum

Sport

Shore students may participate in a variety of sports, mainly within the GPS competition. Sports include rugby union, soccer, cricket, tennis, taekwondo, basketball, rowing, cross country running, athletics, shooting, surf lifesaving, and snowsports. Furthermore, the school is currently trialing new sports such as Australian rules football and hockey.
Until the arrival of Headmaster R.A.I. Grant, the choice of sports available to students was very limited. For example, during the winter months, there was only rugby union unless a medical exemption was available. That changed after 1984, with sports such as tennis and soccer being made available to all students.
The school's boatshed and pontoon for its rowing club is at Gladesville on the north shore of Sydney's Parramatta River. Shore was the third Sydney school to take to the water and has been rowing in the GPS competition since the late 1890s, to great result.

Performing arts

Shore has a comprehensive performing arts program, including Music Ensembles and Drama productions. Music ensembles include two concert bands, two stage bands, an orchestra, three string groups and the Shore Chapel Choir, as well as a number of other smaller ensembles. The Shore Performing Arts Centre features a proscenium arch theatre with 500 seats as well as a hydraulic orchestra pit, counterweight fly system and a state of the art lighting and audio control booth, and a multi-configurable black box theatre with seating arrangements ranging from 25 to 150 seats. The centre also boasts a wide range of orchestral rooms for both performance and rehearsals.
Recent musical productions include Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Oliver!, ''West Side Story, Anything Goes, A Peculiar People, Les Misérables, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Recent dramatic productions include Our Town, Lord of the Flies and The Cherry Orchard.''

Publications

The school has a weekly publication, The Shore Weekly Record, which, along with informing boys and parents of upcoming happenings and sporting fixtures and results, gives boys the opportunity to express their writing and artistic talents in their own section, usually the inner part of the publication.
Other publications are the Shore Reports and the Torch Bearer.

Headmasters

Notable alumni

Shore alumni are commonly referred to as 'Old Boys', and may elect to join the school's alumni association, the Shore Old Boys Union. Shore is notable for its strong connections in banking and finance, having produced the current CEO of Challenger Ltd and Chairman of Magellan Financial Group, in addition to CEOs and Chairmen of the Bank of New South Wales, the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, IAG, MLC, Perpetual Limited, and Rothschild Australia. However, some of Shore's most notable old boys have come from other walks of life, including:
In 2001, the school was ranked seventh in the Who's Who of boys' school rankings in Australia, and second in New South Wales based on the number of alumni mentioned in Who's Who in Australia.