All change: Trinity School will start taking girl pupils in Year 6 and 7 from September 2027
EXCLUSIVE: Almost two years since the Whitgift Foundation shocked the Croydon community by deciding to close its fee-paying girls’ school, Old Palace, the charity has decided to re-balance its education provision by converting one of its other large independent schools to become co-educational. By STEVEN DOWNES
Trinity School, the (mostly) boys’ fee-paying school in Shirley Park, is to go co-educational in a multi-million-pound expansion that will see it open its gates to girls aged 10 and 11 from September 2027.
Net gain: Trinity’s sixth formers already play netball, which seems likely to become a key part of the sporting offer when the school becomes co-ed
The move was confirmed to the school at morning assembly today by Trinity’s headmaster, Alasdair Kennedy, although it has been among Croydon’s worst-kept secrets for 18 months.
There has been speculation of Trinity going co-ed since late 2023, following the announcement of the closure of Old Palace girls’ school by the Whitgift Foundation, the large charity which operates almshouses, care homes and, for now, three independent schools.
Old Palace’s senior school, based in listed Elizabethan era buildings in Croydon’s Old Town, will finally close at the end of the summer term this July. Its prep school and nursery, on Melville Avenue in South Croydon, closed last summer, and that site has since been sold for £7.5million.
The change at Trinity, sources at the Foundation confirm, is a direct response to the closure of Old Palace, but the decision was only made after the outcry from angry parents of daughters who felt badly let down by the removal of the girls’ school.
Making Trinity co-ed was agreed “unanimously” by senior staff at the school, governors and the Foundation, and has been in discussion for the past year, according to a letter sent today to parents.
“We now have an opportunity to extend co-education to our younger year groups, and I personally am very much looking forward to leading this development of the school,” Kennedy wrote to parents, promising “a significant investment in our facilities for the benefit of all current and future generations of students”.
Growth plan: Alasdair Kennedy, left, Trinity’s head, says he is looking forward to extending the school’s co-educational offer beyond its Sixth Form
Kennedy, who has been head at Trinity since 2016, says that he will soon be hosting information events for current and prospective parents to explain the plans, which will take six years to fully implement a top-to-bottom co-educational school.
Trinity has had girl pupils since 2011, in its Sixth Form, so the adjustments on its Shirley Park site won’t be a complete culture shock.
But the changes will be far-reaching, and will see significant expansion of pupil numbers – from the current 1,000 to closer to 1,400, with eight forms of entry for boys and girls, aged from 10 to 18.
The school will also be employing additional staff to cope with the larger roll numbers, at a school where class sizes tend to be no bigger than 24 for pupils up to GCSE age.
The expansion will require some building work, but this will be within the 27 acres of the current school grounds that have been home to Trinity since 1965, when they moved from a Gothic Victorian building in central Croydon which was bulldozed to make way for the Whitgift Centre.
The entry of girls will begin with Years 6 and 7 in September 2027, and the school expects to be fully co-ed by 2031.
Fees at the school are currently £27,000 per year, including VAT, and Trinity says that it is still oversubscribed for entry in September 2025. Figures from the Whitgift Foundation suggest that, before the closure of Old Palace, close to half of pupils at the girls’ school and Trinity and Whitgift were in receipt of some bursary or fees subsidy.
Research among existing Trinity parents, the school says, has encountered only very modest opposition to the idea of going co-ed, and has generally been welcomed.
Sources at the Foundation have stressed that the expansion plans will not be paid for out of school fees paid by parents, but are being met from the charity’s resources – which include a multi-million-pound loan taken out in 2022 when it had the intention of building a new girls’ school on the Melville Avenue site.
Trinity School of John Whitgift, to give it its full title, was founded in 1882, when it was known as Whitgift Middle School. It was a direct grant grammar school from 1945 until 1968. It adopted its present name in 1954, to avoid confusion with Whitgift School in South Croydon, the other independent school operated by the Foundation.
Noted for high academic achievement, it has trophy-winning sports teams – at cricket and rugby, and at water-polo, for boys and Sixth Former girls – as well as its world-renowned Trinity Boys’ Choir.
Headmaster Kennedy told Inside Croydon, “This is a really exciting new chapter for our school and the wider community. Extending our co-education provision reflects our longstanding commitment to nurturing outstanding young people and preparing them for their future.
“By expanding what we have been doing for older students since 2011, we are building an even more diverse learning environment that benefits everyone. From cognitive skills and critical thinking to creativity and cultures, the greater the range of perspectives and experiences that students are exposed to, the better their learning and personal development outcomes.”
Kennedy said that the school is looking forward “to extending diversity through co-education across all year groups”.
David Seymour, the chair of the Trinity School committee, said: “Staff at the school have worked very hard throughout the planning stage to ensure that there will be a smooth and measured transition to achieve this over the next few years, and we are confident that there is a strong team in place to take this project forward.
“The governors are determined to ensure that… the fundamental character of the school will not change and that it will continue to nurture outstanding young people from all backgrounds in an environment where pastoral care is strong, academic achievement is high, and students develop the values and character which will help them enjoy fulfilled and valuable lives in the future.”
Read more: Old Palace closure brought on by shaky Foundation finances
Read more: Falling rolls and rising fees: how Old Palace got squeezed
Read more: Trinity School’s Steinway festival is hitting all the right notes
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So the Whitgift Foundation can adapt to new realities, but really they should have been doing this in response to the social changes in the world occurring during the last century rather than have their hand forced by the financial catastrophe created by their own choice in following the guidance of their old boy Gavin Barwell and Board Member of the time.
Their simple rapacious greed in attempting a Stratford Olympic redevelopment of an area without the Olympic Games stimulating the major State investment required to acheive this (by following the hopeless Barwell) must be seen as the source calamity in causing the blight that has now taken place for the best part of two decades and with no seeming end.
Old Palace closes July 2025. Trinity opens to girls in September 2027. Where does the Whitgift Foundation expect these females to go in the school years 2025-2026 and 2026-2027? That’s sex discrimination combined with a complete absence of joined up thinking
So tough luck to the large numbers of girls that were made to leave in 2023/24 , this decision could have easily been made then and they would of had a ready made set of girls and staff , absolutely disgraceful
Which choir at Trinity School is world-renowned?
As the article states, the Trinity Boys’ Choir.