Publisher's Synopsis
St Michael's Grammar School is one of Victoria, Australia's leading co-educational independent schools, with a current enrolment of more than 1200 students. Established in St Kilda in 1895 as the Collegiate Day School for Girls, it was one of five schools founded in Australia by the Community of the Sisters of the Church, a Protestant religious order founded in London in 1870.;This detailed history traces the story of St Michael's over more than a century. It seeks to cast its net wider than the issues and personalities associated with the school and to explore in depth many more general aspects of educational history, especially as they apply to independent and religious schools. The book reflects, among other things, on such topics as the influence of religion on national life and identity, the history of girls' education, urban renewal in Melbourne's older suburbs, the impact of changing technology on educational practice and more recent academic and popular debates on single-sex schooling and co-education.;Seeking to be more than a purely celebratory school history, the work takes full account of the social, economic and political pressures that have impacted, both positively and adversely, on the school and treats the controversies and controntations that are an inevitable, and essential, part of any institution's development with clarity and balance.
