Caulfield Grammar School is a private, co-educational, Anglican, International Baccalaureate, day and boarding school, located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1881 as a boys' school, Caulfield Grammar began admitting girls exactly one hundred years later. The school amalgamated with Malvern Memorial Grammar School (MMGS) in 1961, with the MMGS campus becoming Malvern Campus.
Caulfield Grammar has three-day campuses in Victoria, Caulfield (Years 7–12), Wheelers Hill (Kindergarten–Year 12), and Malvern House (Kindergarten–Year 6). It has an outdoor education campus at Yarra Junction, and a student centre in Nanjing, China where the Year 9 internationalism programme is conducted. Caulfield Grammar is the only Melbourne-based APS school to provide boarding for both boys and girls, with 95 boarding students, and is the second largest school in Victoria, currently catering for 3,315 students.
History
Foundation and Early Years
Joseph Henry Davies, who had served as a missionary in southern India, purchased the site for the school — it was adjacent to the Elsternwick railway station, and had been a small lolly shop — for £25 on 16 April and employed his sister and two brothers as teachers. Davies' aim was "that the School should be a thoroughly Christian one" that looked to render "Christian service".
Although the school was originally located in Elsternwick, it is thought to have been named Caulfield Grammar School because Caulfield was the regional locality — and the geographical boundaries of Melbourne's suburban areas were not strictly defined or precisely named at the time — also, it is significant that the vicar of St Mary's Anglican Church in Caulfield had provided Davies with support when opening the school.
Caulfield Grammar School was founded on 25 April 1881, by Davies, with just nine pupils. Davies' original intention was to commence classes on Wednesday, 20 April 1881; however, due to circumstances that were never clearly explained, Davies postponed the school's opening, at the last minute, until Monday, 25 April 1881.
A year after opening, the school had 32 students enrolled. To house the growing student body, the school then moved to a nearby small building, later destroyed in a fire in 1890. In 1896, the school subsumed Hawksburn Grammar School, a smaller local Christian school, situated in Wynnstay Road, Prahran, after Hawksburn's headmaster, Walter Murray Buntine, was appointed as headmaster at Caulfield Grammar. Hawksburn's 55 students subsequently transferred to Caulfield Grammar. The current site, a property near Sir Frederick Sargood's Rippon Lea Estate on what is now Glen Eira Road, St Kilda East was purchased in 1909. Classes began on the site on 9 February 1909 and the school's boarding house opened in 1912.
By 1931, the school's 50th anniversary, attendance had grown to 500 students but Caulfield Grammar was still considered small compared to schools such as Scotch College, Melbourne, Wesley College Melbourne and Melbourne Grammar School. To celebrate the Golden Jubilee, a Jubilee Fair was held at the school in May. In the same year, the school moved from private ownership to a registered company governed by a School Council, an organisational structure still used today, with formal affiliation with the Church of England.
Post WWII history
The school was renamed Malvern Memorial Grammar School in 1948 to honour old boys who had fought in World Wars I and II. Malvern Memorial Grammar School amalgamated with Shaw House in 1971 and became the Malvern Campus, a primary school located in the Valentine's Mansion, and its students began to wear the Caulfield Grammar School uniform. From 1949 to 1979, Caulfield Grammar had operated Shaw House, its primary school located in Mayfield Street, St Kilda East, offering kindergarten and schooling from Years 1 to 3.
In 1958 Caulfield Grammar joined the Associated Public Schools of Victoria school sporting competition. Caulfield Grammar was Victoria's fifth largest school in 1959, with over 800 students.
In 1961, Caulfield Grammar School affiliated with Malvern Memorial Grammar School. Malvern Grammar School opened in 1890 as a boys-only secondary school and in 1924 moved into the Valentine's Mansion, formerly the home of Sir John Mark Davies (no relation to the school's founder), a Victorian Cabinet minister. The mansion was built in 1892 and contains a large ballroom. Valentine's Mansion has been listed as a place of historical and architecture significance by both the Victorian Heritage Register and the Register of the National Estate.