Ravenswood

Ravenswood School for Girls (often referred to as Ravenswood or Ravo) is an independent, Uniting Church, day and boarding school for Prep - Year 12 girls, situated in Gordon, an Upper North Shore suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Ravenswood School for Girls (often referred to as Ravenswood or Ravo) is an independent, Uniting Church, day and boarding school for Prep - Year 12 girls, situated in Gordon, an Upper North Shore suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Established in 1901 by Mabel Fidler (1871–1960), Ravenswood currently caters for approximately 1100 students from Prep to Year 12, including 20 boarders from Years 10 to 12. The school has been an IB World School since June 2004, and is authorised to offer the IB Diploma Programme.Ravenswood is affiliated with the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA), the Independent Primary School Heads of Australia (IPSHA), the Australian Boarding Schools' Association, the Alliance of Girls' Schools Australasia, and is a member of the Association of Heads of Independent Girls' Schools (AHIGS).

Ravenswood was established with eight students on 28 January 1901 by the first Headmistress, Mabel Fidler, as a non-sectarian private day school for girls, with preparatory classes for boys. The first classes took place in a schoolroom erected on the block adjacent to Fidler's home, "Ravenswood", in Henry Street, Gordon. The school remains on this site.Fidler retired from Ravenswood in 1925, a year after the school was purchased by the Methodist Ladies' College, Burwood, thus becoming a school of the Methodist Church. Subsequently, the school name was changed to Ravenswood Methodist Ladies' College. At this time, Ravenswood was the largest non-residential, private secondary school in Sydney, with an enrolment of 180, and was highly regarded for the quality of its teaching and its achievements in sport. Ravenswood became a day and boarding school in 1935, with the enrolment of the first two boarders.The 1960s saw the introduction of the school anthem, Kindle the Flame and a fourth school House, all houses being named by the students after Royal Houses of Britain: Stuart, Tudor, Windsor and York. In 1977, as the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational churches came together to form the Uniting Church, the school name changed to the current Ravenswood School for Girls. The royal blue and gold uniform was also introduced at this time.In 2015, the Head Girl of the school used her end-of-term speech to accuse the school of peddling an "unrealistic image of perfection", and providing some students with more opportunities than others because "schools are being run more and more like businesses, where everything becomes financially motivated, where more value is placed on those who provide good publicity or financial benefits." She also alleged that the school had attempted to censor her speech by requiring prior copies. Her parents later sued the Uniting Church, which runs the school, because of disciplinary action taken against their younger daughter.