St Michael's Grammar School is one of Victoria's leading coeducational 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 the Australian colonies by the Community of the Sisters of the Church, a Church of England religious order founded in London in 1870.

This richly detailed history traces the development of St Michael's over more than a century. But it casts it's net much more wildly than the issues and personalities associated closely with the school and explores in depth many more general aspects of Australian educational history, especially as they apply to independent and religious schools. The book reflects, among other things on the influence of religion on national life and identity, inter-denominational relations and rivalries, the educational implications of Australia's increasing ethnic diversity, the history of girls' education, urban renewal in Melbourne's older suburbs, the effects of evolving technology and educational practice and academic and popular debates on the relative merits of single-sex schooling and coeducation.

Unlike many purely celebratory school histories, St Michael's Grammar School: A Study in educational change takes full account of the social, economic and political pressures that have impacted, both positively and adversely, on the school and examines the controversies and confrontations that are an inevitable, and essential, part of any institute's history with clarity and balance


Includes index.