Graduation at GNS: the early years

The number of students graduating from GNS in recent times has been upwards of 80 students with this year being no exception as 87 students will become new alumni. But it has not always been anywhere near that number and even not always an option in the earlier years of our founding schools, Norfolk House School and Glenlyon Preparatory School. The ability to have graduating students has always been determined by the schools’ mission, parent needs, finances, staffing, facilities and a curriculum that offers Grade 12 courses.

At Glenlyon Preparatory School, throughout its history between 1932 and 1986, it never offered a curriculum beyond Grade 10 and only one boy, Philip Spencer in the Grade 10 class of 1981, actually fully graduated from Glenlyon, completing Grade 10, 11, and 12 course requirements all in his Grade 10 year. He went on to earn his Doctorate in Mathematics at Harvard by his early 20’s.

Glenlyon Preparatory was what it claimed to be, a school that prepared students for high school education in schools that would take them to graduation. For many years after 1932 its top class was Form V, a Grade 8 equivalent, with a few exceptional students leaving with a higher grade equivalent. From 1954 to 1970 the top class became Form VI, a Grade 9 equivalent, again with some top students leaving with a higher grade completion. However, in 1964 Glenlyon adopted the Grade System (which was already in place in the Province since the early 1930’s). In the 1970/1971 school year, Glenlyon then implemented a Grade 10 class, which remained the top class until amalgamation with NHS in 1986.

So even though Glenlyon did not take students to graduation, GNS does recognise those students who moved on after completing the top class as ‘graduates’, although technically they would graduate from the school they moved to after their time at Glenlyon.

At NHS, the story was different. The first time students had a chance to graduate, or matriculate, as it was known in earlier days, came 15 years after its founding in 1928 when three students were successful. However, it was likely not equivalent to the matriculation soon to be understood as Grade 12, but a Junior Matriculation that was in place after the Grade 11 equivalent year. The change to Senior Matriculation came in 1933 when, as a result of the 1925 Putnam-Weir Report, Grade 12 was fully established in the province. Miss Atkins, preferred not to comply with the Grade 12 name but referred to the level as Form VI. This allowed her to not be confined by the age-grade system but allowed flexibility with her enrolment decisions to add students of a younger age who were deemed able to handle the academic rigours of an older class.

However, students reaching graduation was not always a goal at NHS. Graduating in academics for girls was not always held as necessary for their futures, as many families often had little interest in academic achievement, their only goal being a satisfactory “coming out” as debutantes, attending a finishing school and travelling. Hence the numbers of students graduating from NHS fluctuated considerably. So much so, that there were times when the future of the school was jeopardized by its lack of senior enrolment. Case in point, from 1953-1957 there were no Grade 12 students at NHS and for some of those years none in Grade 11 or Grade 10. This was due in part to finances of the school and the inability to hire staff to teach the required curriculum and in part to lack of boarding for older students after the condemnation of the boarding house, Gonzales.

It was only after the goal-setting of the then Chairman of the Board, Mr. Hugh Henderson, and his astute hiring of Miss Winifred Scott as Headmistress, that NHS again established a pathway with programmes for girls to graduate at Grade 12. This remained an important goal of the school without ‘interference’ until the mid-1970’s. It was at this point that circumstances within Victoria’s independent schooling system in arts, academics, athletics and enrolment had a significant effect upon both Norfolk House School and Glenlyon Preparatory School.

In 1971, University School and St. Michael’s School amalgamated into St. Michael’s University School. The establishment of this all boys school would have a direct effect on the directions taken by Norfolk House and Glenlyon schools.

From 1977, Glenlyon started to seriously consider options for creating a school that offered Grade 11 and 12, partly due to increasing pressure to gain entry into a graduating school at a much earlier grade level because of a decrease in availability of Grade 11 placement options. Norfolk House on the other hand came under a similar pressure at the senior level, in part because of concerns over declining patterns of enrolment in the senior school due to preferred options at other schools.

The bottom line for both Glenlyon and Norfolk House schools was to find a way to resolve their Senior School concerns. Over the next eight years they worked both independently and cooperatively through many potential scenarios involving many, many people that ultimately led to a strongly supported solution that became the establishment of Glenlyon Norfolk School in March 1986.

As far as graduation for that landmark school year, twenty-one Grade 12 girls were the first graduates of GNS. The Grade 10 boys, instead of ‘graduating’ from Glenlyon now had the option to continue into Grade 11 at the new GNS. In the 1986/1987 school year, one boy who ‘graduated’ from Glenlyon back in 1985 was invited back to GNS to join nineteen girls in the graduating class. The following years saw a steady move towards equalization of the girl/boy ratio and by 1996 it was 34:31 which gradually moved towards the 80+ numbers of the present day.