Newington College

Founded in 1863, Newington College is among Sydney's oldest independent schools and a founding member of the Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools of NSW (AAGPS). Its principal campus sits in Stanmore in the Inner West, with a preparatory campus at Lindfield on the Upper North Shore, a rowing boatshed at Abbotsford, and a service-learning campus at Eungai Creek. The school is affiliated with the Uniting Church, carrying forward a Wesleyan/Methodist heritage and the motto In Fide Scientiam ('To Faith Add Knowledge').

Academically, Newington is unusual among traditional GPS schools in offering a true dual senior pathway. Students can sit the NSW HSC or the IB Diploma, and the school holds Cambridge International accreditation as well. This breadth is the key reason it suits internationally-mobile families: the IB Diploma travels globally, while the HSC keeps strong local university pathways open. The school publishes both result sets each year and has been an IB World School since 2007.

The school's published 2025 outcomes are strong on both tracks. The IB cohort returned a median of 40/45 (around a 97 ATAR equivalent) with four perfect scores of 45, while the HSC cohort produced 108 Distinguished Achievers, seven state rankings and three first-in-state placements, with 68% of results in the top two bands. These are school-reported figures, not inspection bands.

Newington enrols around 2,000 students from early learning to Year 12 and offers boarding for a relatively small cohort (~50 at secondary level). The defining institutional change of this decade is co-education: a boys' school for most of its history, it began admitting girls into Kindergarten and Year 5 in 2026, will open Years 7 and 11 in 2028, and intends to be fully co-educational by 2033 — so the gender mix of any given year group is in flux. Australia has no graded national inspectorate, so the tier reflects accreditation + curriculum depth — capped at A.