Rear Window
Cranbrook Revisited (by the ABC)
Parents’ groups displayed no indication of any shift of allegiance away from battle-scarred headmaster Nicholas Sampson. Given the history, this is no wonder.
Myriam RobinRear Window editorBrutal are the politics of Australia’s elite private schools, and intense is the fascination they hold for the rest of society.
One can pity the poor children caught between the daggers and the cameras. Though, for those whose academic sojourn passes without horrific abuse – which is a separate and grave issue – there are consolations, like a world-class education, exquisite grounds and extended proximity to society’s burgeoning elite.
For the parents of the children sent to Cranbrook in Sydney’s east, the morning after a Four Corners exploration of the treatment of women at the soon-to-be-coeducational school brought the discomfort of TV cameras stationed at the school gates for drop-off. But little indication of any shift of allegiance away from battle-scarred headmaster Nicholas Sampson.
A little context – or rehashing of this column circa 2022 – helps explain why.
Nicholas Sampson is nothing if not battle-hardened.
In short: relations between long-standing school council president Jon North and Sampson became poisonous, in part over when the school should accept female pupils. They couldn’t be in the same room together; one or the other had to go.
Sampson had the overwhelming support of the school community, members of which said as much to North in several meetings. This led, eventually, to North stepping down, and the whole council (barring Bubs Australia bruiser Katrina Rathie) with him.
The repercussions, for a time, continued. In November 2022, for example, The Daily Telegraph claimed the resignations were due to concerns the school had become “the ultimate boys’ club”, in a story canvassing the treatment of female teachers.
In Four Corners’ more recent investigation of these issues, North alluded in a statement to a “concerted campaign” by Sampson’s supporters to “intimidate council members”, including through “threats to commence legal proceedings to terminate their tenure”.
Cranbrook School hoped for a fresh start with a new school council. Flavio Brancaleone
It was widely reported that billionaire fund manager Will Vicars, Dexus chairman Warwick Negus, McKinsey & Company partner Angus Dawson and prominent director Nicola Wakefield Evans wrote to the council foreshadowing an application to the NSW Supreme Court to dissolve it. But so what? Coming after extended attempts to resolve the impasse, is that intimidation?
After all, who is the council meant to represent anyway, if not the parents and community of the institution, 1000 of whom signed a petition supporting the headmaster?
In her opening monologue, investigative reporter Louise Milligan refers to this battle, stating the program had uncovered “a very different picture” of what happened. The suggestion later advanced is that North, while generally supportive of coeducation, didn’t think the school was ready for it while serious cultural issues remained. Sampson, meanwhile, was a sort of crash-or-crash-through proponent keen to capitalise on 40 scholarships offered by billionaire parents Scott Farquhar and Kim Jackson.
As written at the time, parent frustration boiled over when North took nearly 12 months to respond to the scholarship proposal, and got even worse after the AGM when it became apparent North was trying to move Sampson on (Four Corners implies he had worthy reasons). It’s unusual that Sampson, a man repeatedly charged with being at best cavalier about deep-rooted sexism, is simultaneously a long-standing public proponent of educating girls alongside boys, but go figure.
Doing the rounds of parents’ groups on Tuesday was a photo posted last month to the Instagram account of Four Corners interviewee and ex-president of the alumni association Jason Graham-Nye, whose charisma, disgust at the ordeal of an unidentified female marketing executive and dismay at the treatment of the former school council did much for Four Corners’ narrative.
In the photo, Graham-Nye is pictured among friends at what appears a lazy weekend lunch. At the table sits key North ally Craig Carroll, who at the time of the blow-up was in his 17th year on the school’s council. And right next to Graham-Nye sits current Cranbrook Council vice president James Sheller, one of those who replaced Carroll when the former joined the mass board exodus.
That isn’t to indicate Sheller had anything to do with the program: he actually took a leave of absence from the school’s council last week after discovering a “long-standing and close friend” was involved with Milligan’s story.
As for Cranbrook, one parent who put in an application for her daughter this month received an email apologising for processing delays, pegged to “a large volume of applications”.
One wonders if some guardians of the inaugural female students, due to start in 2026, might now change their mind. Or maybe they’ll be reassured by Chanel Contos’ statement that the students of such institutions “disproportionately go on to run our country and make policies and run businesses”. For parents accustomed to the same, the latter has, in the past, almost always won out.
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