Preshil

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Preshil School, officially The Margaret Lyttle Memorial School, is an independent progressive day school in Kew, Melbourne. It was founded in 1931 by Margaret J. R. Lyttle and is Australia’s oldest progressive school. The school teaches from Kindergarten to Year 12 and is co-educational.

Two campuses serve different age groups: Arlington on Barkers Road houses the Kindergarten and Primary School, while the Secondary School is at the Blackhall Kalimna campus on Sackville Street. The primary moved to Arlington in 1937 as the school grew. Greta Lyttle and her niece Margaret Lyttle led the school for many years; after Greta’s death in 1944, Margaret became principal.

In 1975 Preshil bought Yallambee, a former home of Australia’s Chief Justice, to use for classrooms, and later sold that campus. Blackhall Kalimna became the Senior School site in 1978. In the 1980s, students and staff helped identify historical camps of explorers Burke and Wills and installed a memorial cairn at the revised Wills location.

In 2017 the school started offering the International Baccalaureate instead of the Victorian Certificate of Education. In 2022, Preshil paid $2.1 million to a former student who was abused by a teacher at the school in 1991.

Because enrolments and finances declined, the Kalimna campus was sold to Carey Baptist Grammar School in 2024; Carey will rent it back to Preshil for 42 months. Today, Preshil remains a small, independent school focused on its progressive education approach.