The School’s city location provides Middle School students with an ideal environment to engage with the city, mature in the context of a diverse community, develop their unique gifts and make a significant contribution beyond our school community.
Our classrooms are modern, spacious and light-filled; intentionally designed to support learning.
Glass walls throughout the School make learning visible, and flexible furniture allows teachers to switch modes of learning and cater to the different learning needs of students. We use Chapter House for assemblies, chapels, and performing arts. It has the largest seating capacity in the School and features gallery level and floor level seating.
Specialist classrooms
The Music Department contains modern classrooms with first-class audio technology, specialist instrumental and vocal ensemble teaching areas, as well as sound-treated practice. These facilities form the centrepiece of the department. Also, a recording studio is integrated into the main rehearsal space, fitted out with the latest software and hardware components. Music technology is further enhanced by mobile audio recording equipment that can be moved to any music teaching space.
We have architect-designed visual art facilities, a multi-media/digital studio, a design centre and specialist science labs.
Middle School Library
Our beautiful, purpose-built Library in the heart of the Middle School, is a vibrant, welcoming space. It is open before school from 8am, recess, Lunch and after school until 4pm (3:30pm on Wednesday).
Support for lessons include online resources and databases, subject specific research lessons booked in the library with Teacher Librarians, as well as Year 7-9 English lessons (Let’s Read programme) once a fortnight for literacy skills and reading time.
Students can read, relax, eat, play board games, join library clubs and participate in various events throughout the year.
Our collection of books, ebooks, audiobooks and magazines aims to meet the changing needs and interests of the school community.
Performance spaces
In 2020, a major renovation of Chapter House created a fabulous space for assemblies, chapels and performing arts. It has the largest seating capacity in the School and features gallery level and floor level seating.
St Andrew’s Cathedral, Chapter House, the dedicated Fairfax Music Room, the BBC Auditorium and our Heath Centre, are the major internal performance spaces utilised by the Music department.
The School’s city location also gives students the opportunity to perform at the City Recital Hall Angel Place, the Concourse Theatre, the NIDA Parade Theatre, and Sydney’s magnificent Town Hall for events such as the annual Showcase Performing Arts concert, the biennial school musical, and the annual end-of-year Evening of Celebration and Prize-giving.
Our Drama students also perform in the School’s in-house Black Box Theatre, recently updated with a professional lighting rig, in our newly renovated Chapter House theatre space, as well as in professional venues across the city, such as the Enmore Theatre, Lend Lease Darling Quarter Theatre, and NIDA. The School also has a sprung floor dance studio and dedicated drama teaching room.
Kirrikee Outdoor Education Centre
The school‘s own property, Kirrikee, in the Southern Highlands of NSW is a purpose built outdoor education centre on 120 acres of rolling, cleared grazing country, bushland and wetlands, bordered by Paddy’s River. It is located on the traditional lands of the Gundungurra people (but quite near the lands of the Tharawal people).
Kirrikee provides the opportunity to take learning beyond the classroom and Middle School students are offered a variety of trips including a range of hikes in NSW and beyond, mountain biking and sea kayaking.
The school’s outdoor education programme is physically and mentally challenging, and is often referred to as one of the highlights of a student’s time at St Andrew’s. The school employs its own highly skilled and trained staff for these programmes.
The name Kirrikee is a derivation of the Indigenous word ‘kirrkie’ for a Whistling Kite, the bird that is pictured in our logo.
Discover what our Middle School students experience at Kirrikee as part of our Outdoor Education programme here.
For a full list of all of the School’s facilities
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