Join the Preshil Alumni

Why Join the Preshil Alumni?

The Alumni and Friends of Preshil offers the opportunity to catch up with old friends and find out what everyone is doing now, and to meet other interesting Preshilians. You’ll be kept informed of what’s happening at the school and invited to the school events (such as Art Shows and Music Festivals, among others) and other special Alumni and Friends, “Blast from the Past” events. Preshil values its extended family – get involved. Stay involved. Help to ensure that there will be always be a Preshil! View the article “Preshil vision is still splendid” by Matthew Pinkey taken from the Herald Sun.

“Preshil vision is still splendid.”

By Matthew Pinkney — 29 November 2005

Everyone has a story about their student days: a vicious teacher, an awkward romance, or the outsider who became famous. But for the alumni of one Melbourne school, the memories are far more newsworthy.

Classes held in the nude, whole terms spent lounging beneath trees, and the study of Buddhism instead of basic literacy and numeracy. Compulsory vegetarianism, non-compulsory classes, and a ban on any form of competition were all on the curriculum.

Yet despite this anarchistic approach to education, the school has prospered and is celebrating its 75th birthday. That Preshil has survived so long is a tribute to the many visionaries who were prepared to ignore educative fashions, the contempt of some mainstream schools, and a tide of misinformation, some innocent, some malicious. It was this misinformation that created the myths described above.

Of course, none of those things ever happened at Preshil and never will. Yet the furphies live on. Last week, I went to a corporate Christmas party where I mentioned I’d been at Preshil from kindergarten to HSC. A former employer overheard and said if he’d known, he’d have never given me a job. Why? Because Preshil is where all the misfits went. He was joking, I think. But in a sense he was right. The sort of student Preshil aimed to create would’ve been a misfit at many other schools. On my first day at kindergarten, the teacher asked us to draw a picture, of anything. She then pinned them up and explained that in the same way each of the drawings were unique, so were we. And just as each drawing had something uniquely good about it, so did we. No one was better than anyone else. It was a message overtly and covertly repeated throughout the years.

While many outsiders saw the involvement of students in major school decisions as soppy liberalism, it was acknowledgement that what we thought mattered. And so plans for new classrooms were altered to save a favourite climbing tree. School plays were written, directed and performed by us. We debated, then voted on destinations for excursions. We were involved in punishment of wayward students and encouraged to speak up if we thought a teacher was wrong. Our grounds resembled a Third World shantytown with cubbies in various stages of construction, or disrepair, perched in trees or pressed against the wall of a classroom. It was a potential public liability disaster, but the injuries we got from building our cubbies were cheerfully accepted as a small price for creating a mini-empire.

Organised sport was non-existent, a function, perhaps, of the view that everyone should achieve at their own pace and in their own way. At first we assumed this was normal, but when we heard that other schools in the area had official footy and cricket teams, we marched into our headmistress’s house and used her phone to organise matches against them. To his credit, the sportsmaster at Carey never seemed surprised to be negotiating with seven-year-olds. And we never felt unwelcome when our ragtag team spilled onto Carey’s immaculate oval. It was only when Preshil opened a secondary campus that we started to appreciate our school was truly different.

As the senior campus grew, we began to attract students who’d been unable to cope at more traditional schools. Some flourished; others exploited their sudden freedom. Our small community was scandalised when a group of new Year 11s not only brought beer to school but smashed the empty bottles on our makeshift soccer pitch. The ringleaders failed to materialise next term, and for us, at least, it was clear Preshil wasn’t the answer for everyone. Recently, benchmarking, letter grades and national comparisons of students have been championed as the best way to extract the best from children. And yet again, Preshil is swimming against the educational tide. May it do so for the next 75 years.

Contact Information

Main Campus and Junior Campus

Preshil, The Margaret Lyttle Memorial School, 395 Barkers Road Kew, Victoria Australia 3101

Telephone: +61 3 9817 6135
Fax: +61 3 9816 7943
Email: preshil@preshil.vic.edu.au
Map: Visit Google Maps for Directions

Senior Campus

12—26 Sackville Street Kew, Victoria Australia 3101

Telephone: +61 3 9817 6135
Fax: +61 3 9816 7943
Email: preshil@preshil.vic.edu.au
Map: Visit Google Maps for Directions

Locality Map

Parking: Parking is available on Kildare Street off Barkers Road (opposite the Junior School).

Melway Reference: Map 45 H8

Design Credits

This web site was proudly designed and developed by Grant Day James