Trinity Grammar School (New South Wales)

History

The Right Reverend G.A. Chambers, OBE, DD, subsequently Bishop of Central Tanganyika, founded the School in 1913 at Dulwich Hill, of which Parish - the Parish of Holy Trinity - he was then Rector. At its foundation, Trinity was a small parochial school with 29 boys enrolled. This number had reached 57 at the end of that year.

Having been appointed Warden of the School, Chambers' immediate task was to find a Headmaster. Thus, K.T. Henderson was appointed as the first Headmaster of Trinity Grammar in February 1913. In November 1915, the School formulated its motto, Detur Gloria Soli Deo, which may be translated from Latin to "Let Glory be Given to God Alone". The School colours were chosen to reflect the liturgical season of Trinity, namely green.

A property known as "The Towers" was purchased by the parish and used both as a School and Rectory. Later a larger property, "Hazeldene", was to be bought, also acting as both school and Rectory. The present site at Summer Hill, set in 8 hectares (20 acres) of land, was first occupied by the School in 1926, during the Head Mastership of G.E. Weeks.

By 1942 the prospects for Trinity were grim and it was decided that it should be closed. As a last attempt to save the School, the Council appointed J. Wilson Hogg as Headmaster in 1944. By the time Wilson Hogg retired in 1974, Trinity was flourishing and had become one of the leading independent schools in NSW.

Milestones

1988 - 75th anniversary of the whole school.

2013 - Centenary of whole school and also 75th anniversary of the Preparatory school.

Trinity Grammar School Preparatory School

Sir Philip Sydney Jones built "Llandilo House" in 1878 on a large property bounded by The Boulevarde, Albyn Road, Kingsland Road and Wakeford Road and lived there until his death in 1918. The property was then subdivided and a group of Strathfield residents headed by Rev. Wheaton, a Congregational minister, bought the house for a school, which was known as Strathfield Grammar School.

In 1926 it was offered to Trinity Grammar School and bought by them, but Strathfield Grammar School and Trinity Grammar School continued to function as separate establishments until 1932, when the two became Trinity Grammar School.

From 1932 until 1937 all teaching (except some Science) was done at Strathfield and boys were taken by bus to Summer Hill for sport. The boarders lived at Summer Hill. 1938 saw a division, the Senior School returning to Summer Hill and Strathfield being established as the Preparatory School.

The Preparatory School now has over 500 pupils from PK-6.

Junior school

In 1946 the then Headmaster, Mr James Wilson Hogg, introduced a Junior School to the Summer Hill Campus and commenced with 36 boys in four classrooms. The Junior School, in various arrangements of classes and with up to 78 boys continued at Summer Hill until 1956, when all of the primary school boys were relocated to the Preparatory School at Strathfield.

In 2000 the Junior School was re-established by the Headmaster, Mr G. Milton Cujes, on the Summer Hill campus as a gesture of good faith to the families who had committed to the Southern Campus, a venture that until this date has not been realised. The Junior School recommenced with 72 boys in four classes from Year 3 to 6. The classes were located in temporary accommodation between No.1 Oval and No.3 Oval.

In 2002, the School Council determined that the Junior School would become a permanent part of the educational profile at the Summer Hill Campus for the foreseeable future.

In 2003 the Junior School moved to permanent accommodation in the old Boarding House, and was formally recommissioned in a ceremony whose guests included Messrs Neil Buckland and Neil Demeril, both of whom had been students at the Summer Hill Junior School in the 1940s.

In 2006, the Junior School expanded to include an Infants Campus, based in Lewisham, specifically for children from Pre-School to Year 2 age. The site for this development was the land on which the St Thomas Beckett Primary School had been previously located. This portion of the school began with 12 students, and now has over 50 students.

Having received planning permission from Ashfield council, the School has proceeded to demolish several houses on Seaview Street, creating a space in which the new Junior School was to be built. Construction on the site concluded in later end of 2012 and the new Junior School was officially opened on 3 October 2012 by The Right Reverend Robert Forsyth. In 2013 trinity started to accept preschool.

Campuses

The School consists of three separate but closely linked establishments:

Attempts were made in the early 2000s towards establishing a campus in Sydney's southern suburbs. Such plans have been postponed indefinitely by the School. In 2014 the school decided to close the Outdoor Education Centre at the Pine Bluff Campus, located near Bigga, New South Wales due to the cost associated with maintaining the Outdoor Education Center in a remote location. The land that was used for the Outdoor Education Center was donated previously to the school by an old boy.

Facilities

The Trinity Grammar School senior campus is located in Summer Hill, and features a mix of old and new buildings and facilities.

Some current facilities of the school include:

School Song and Prayer

The school song is Detur Gloria Soli Deo, and is sung to the tune "Stuttgart" No.200 in the Australian Hymn Book

The school prayer is read during quadrangle assembly every morning, with a single leader reciting the verse before the rest of the school affirms it in the traditional Christian manner.

House system

Students at the Summer Hill campus are divided into sixteen houses, named after significant facets of the school's history, the four original Houses were Archer, Henderson, Hilliard and School. School House is reserved for boarders, although non-boarders can now be placed into this house to supplement the numbers. Boys are usually put into their family house, the same house as their father or grandfather or brother. Each House has a House Captain and a maximum of 2 House Vice-Captains, with the majority of houses also having an unlimited amount of Prefects (Students can be both Prefects and House Captain/House Vice-Captain).

Each year the different houses compete for the House Cup in a variety of activities such as swimming, track and field, touch football, indoor soccer, chess, debating, music, academic, cricket, fitness challenge, dodgeball, tug of war and quad challenge. Through these activities houses are awarded points, and at the completion of the calendar year the house with the most points wins the Cup, presented at the Final Assembly. In the case of significant victories, such as winning the Swimming Carnival or Track and Field, each house gives three cheers (in quick succession, clockwise around the Quadrangle) for the victorious house, with the victorious house giving three final cheers for the School. These cheers are led by the House Officers (often aided by Prefects), who typically deliver the three cheers with as much volume as can be mustered.

Taubman House is the current House Championship Holder (2016), the current Swimming Champion is Taubman House (2017) and current Track and Field Champion is Hilliard House (2016).

The senior school is divided into sixteen houses, as follows:

The Preparatory School is divided into four houses, as follows;

The Junior School is divided into four houses, as follows;

Old Junior School houses were;

Curriculum

Trinity offers both the Higher School Certificate (HSC) and International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IB) for Year 11 and 12 students. Boys in the HSC and the IB, while being able to interact with each other through the House/Pastoral and Sport/Curriculum systems, are taught separately, due to the differing nature of the two curricula. In 2007, the IB Primary Years Program (PYP) was launched as an initiative to prepare both Junior School and Preparatory School students for the IB Diploma Program. The School is currently in the second phase of accreditation as a PYP school. Despite its relative success, however, the IB Middle Years Program (MYP) has not been introduced into the Middle School. Both the PYP and the MYP are specifically designed for an introduction into the IB, and, due to the popularity of the IB among students, there is a chance that the MYP will be brought into the Middle School in years to come, although the School has neither confirmed nor denied this.

Sport

Trinity Grammar School is a member of the Combined Associated Schools (CAS), and through this association competes with other members of the CAS as well as ISA and GPS member schools.

Sporting activities offered include:

Premierships

CAS official premierships were not awarded during the period 1942-1988.

CAS Championships and Premierships

Double CAS Championships

Other Championships

Co-curriculum

The School offers a range of academic, vocational, sporting and co-curricular activities and groups, including:

Controversies

In 1971 a Trinity student sued the school and one of its masters, claiming that he had been caned excessively. Colin Morris, 15, said that his buttocks were sore for three days, and bruised for three weeks, after receiving six strokes of the cane. The judge threw the case out, saying that the punishment had been reasonable, and added, "The salutary effect of the infliction of pain on a schoolboy, experience might show, justifies the reasonable use of this form of chastisement on healthy teenage boys."

Between 1984 and 1988 a senior school Mathematics teacher, Mr R. Doyle, was accused of sexually abusing two students who had been undertaking private tutoring with him on school grounds. Mr Doyle eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 1997, long after his dismissal from the school.

In 2000, a group of Year 10 boarding students assaulted a boy several times using a large wooden dildo made in a woodwork class, which the students called the "Anaconda". Three students were expelled by the school and convicted of various offences as minors. Compensation payments to two victims of bullying at the school are likely to have been approximately $1 million. It was alleged that the school had a culture of bullying A film loosely based on the incident, Boys Grammar, was produced in 2005. Academics now quote this case, and the school's attempts to minimise public awareness and perceived damage to it, in studies in this area.

Trinity's plan to bulldoze eleven of the seventeen houses it owns bordering the school grounds, in order to build a swimming pool, multi-purpose hall, classroom block and underground carpark, was approved by the NSW Land and Environment Court in November 2007. The single Ashfield Councillor who supported the application was an alumnus of the school, and described his fellow Councillors as "envious" and "a pathetic bunch of people".

In January 2016, the school was brought to prominence as a result of instances of "sexualised behaviour" that occurred at the conclusion of 2015, between Year 1 students of the school. The allegations involved sexual acts being performed by students, whilst unsupervised during school hours, in the school toilets and playground. The Department of Family and Community Services were brought in to investigate the matter after the school was contacted by a concerned parent of one of the victims.

Alumni

Alumni of Trinity Grammar School are known as Old Trinitarians and automatically gain membership members of the school's Alumni Association, the Old Trinitarians Union. Through the Old Trinitarians Union, Old Boys regularly compete against current students in various sports such as cricket, volleyball and basketball, with the winner of the overall competition given the Jubilee Cup on Speech Day, with the President of the OTU collecting it on behalf of the old boys and the School Captain collecting it on behalf of the School.