Two Traditions – Two Retreats
In May 2026, families were informed that the Outdoor Education program for Years 8 to 12 would be restructured. The Friday afternoon Newington Challenge sessions — long valued as a genuine alternative pathway alongside Cadets — will no longer run. The camps element of Challenge survives, but the weekly rhythm that gave boys a real choice of how to engage with outdoor education has been quietly closed off.
Then, in June 2026, came the news that Rifle Shooting — a sport with an unbroken lineage stretching back to the founding of the AAGPS itself and even further back to the Silverwater days in the 1860’s— would no longer be offered as a winter sport. Students will still be permitted to trial for a representative team ahead of the annual GPS Rifle Shooting Premiership, but the structured program that trained and supported them throughout the season is gone. Boys wishing to keep shooting are now being told, in effect, to go and find a club.
That these retreats were announced without proper consultation and consideration of the wishes and motivations of all stakeholders once again calls into question the governance processes at the College. Are governance values sufficiently prominent to engender real confidence amongst fee-paying parents?
Individually, either change might be defensible as the outcome of an internal "review into long-term sustainability and demand." Together, they read as something else entirely: a College quietly stepping back from two of the activities most bound up with discipline, service and the traditions that once defined a Newington education.
Newington’s Retreat from Cadets and Newington Challenge.
Over recent decades it has been mandatory for Year 9 students to participate in either Cadets or Newington Challenge. Although only the Newington Challenge programme has been discontinued, the longstanding voluntary participation in Cadets has been de-emphasized, the effect being that neither Cadets nor the alternative self-directed service learning (including the Duke of Edinburgh programme) are compulsory. Instead, this actual retreat from active extra-curricular makes way for “a self-directed independent study session” for Year 9 students, who now can choose not to participate in either. This does not auger well for either extra-curricular programme.
The headmaster apparently admits that by giving students more choice (ie. not to participate in either programme) is likely to reduce the size of the Newington Army Cadet Unit (historically a voluntary unit since the early 1900’s), although he expects remaining participants will be more enthusiastic with programmes being “more targeted” (Headmaster’sNew Spaces 12 May/11 June 2026). Time will tell.
The College Cadet Unit deserves every respect. Officially founded in 1869, the NCCU followed the founding of St Marks Collegiate School cadet unit at Macquarie Fields three years earlier in 1866, which was granted royal assent to change its name to The King’s School Cadet Unit in August 1868. The Newington College Cadet Unit is amongst the handful of oldest and largest continuing cadet units in the country, with many students continuing their membership well after Year 9.
The Unit has a rich history. It has been a nursery for many notable members of the Australian Armed Services, including Brigadier John Lamrock CB VD (1873-74) - Commander of the 20th Battalion, AIF at Gallipoli; Major General Sir Iven Mackay KBE CMG DSO VD (1897-1900) Commander 2nd Division, 6th Division and South West Pacific Area World War II; and Major General Sandy Pearson AO (1932-1936) – Commander Australian Forces Vietnam War, and former Commandant Royal Military College, Duntroon.
Not afraid to get his hands dirty, Captain Oliver Woodward (1903–1904) was the soldier noted for his tunnelling activities at the Ypres Salient during the First World War and the subject of the 2010 Australian war film Beneath Hill 60.
The NCCU’s heritage should be cherished, not put at risk.
Newington's Retreat from Rifle Shooting
Few realise that Newington was a founding member of the Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools of New South Wales (AAGPS) when it was formed in 1892, and that rifle shooting competition (for the NRA Shield) was amongst the regular sports of the founding GPS schools.
However, Newington’s rifle shooters were competing even earlier than that — the College competed in the first ever recorded schools' rifle match, back in 1870. The match made news around the Australian colonies and in the UK when a team “of mere schoolboys” from the recently formed Newington Cadet Unit defeated the team from the 18th Royal Irish Regiment, soon followed by defeat of a team of British marines from HMS Galatea, a vessel commanded by Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh.
In those formative years Newington did not merely participate; it dominated. Winning most of the NRA Shield Competitions over a 30 year span between 1885 and 1913, NC shared the Shield with SGS and SIC on only a handful of occasions. By the early 1900’s, our boys won the first five official GPS competitions (1905-1910), a feat so decisive it meant at the time that the trophy was “retired to Newington for keeps”. The sport of rifle shooting is not a marginal pastime picked up in recent decades. It is one of the oldest continuous threads of Newington's co-curricular identity, older than most of the sports the College now prioritises.
It is against this backdrop that recent decisions by the College's leadership have left so many parents, students and Old Newingtonians profoundly disappointed, but not speechless.
The "Demand" Excuse Doesn't Hold Up
The College's letter to the community pointed to a review of "long-term sustainability and demand" as the rationale for pulling Rifle Shooting from the winter sport program. Yet it is understood that numerous boys who applied to take up Rifle Shooting this past winter season were turned away, told simply that there was "no room" for them. It is difficult to reconcile a program said to be struggling for demand with one that was, at the same time, turning interested boys away at the door.
If anything, this suggests the opposite problem: a program whose popularity was outstripping the resources the College was willing to commit to it. Parents are rightly asking why boys keen to take up a sport with a 156-year Newington pedigree were knocked back on capacity grounds, only for the College to then cite a lack of demand as justification for winding the program back altogether.
Told One Thing, Emailed Another
What has compounded the community's frustration is not simply the decision itself, but the way it was delivered. A number of parents report that they were assured directly — in conversation, before any formal announcement — that the Rifle Shooting team would continue in its established form. Weeks later, those same families received an email informing them the opposite was true. For a school that prides itself on communication and pastoral care, this inconsistency has done real damage to trust. Parents are left wondering which version of events was the honest one, and why a firm assurance was given at all if it could not be honoured.
Surely the consultation process that these parents deserved also falls well within the boundaries of good governance practice, a standard that should be woven through all College decisions, including these latest.
Abandoned at Their Own Premiership
Perhaps most galling of all was what happened — or rather, did not happen — at the AAGPS Rifle Shooting Premiership itself, held on 21 and 22 July 2026. This is the pinnacle event of the shooting calendar: two days of competition across the Rawson Cup, the N.R.A. Shield and the Buchanan Shield, culminating in a formal presentation of trophies and the naming of the Combined GPS team who go on to represent the Association at the Josephson Shield. It is, by any measure, an occasion that deserves the presence of school leadership.
Not a single senior member of staff from Newington attended the presentation. Boys who had trained, competed and represented their school across two full days of competition stood at the conclusion of the event without a single senior master there to acknowledge them. Parents who had travelled to support their sons were left to watch other schools' leadership teams stand alongside their students while Newington's contingent stood alone.
For a College whose stated mission speaks of caring for every boy, this absence was felt acutely. It sent a message — whether intended or not — that a sport now deemed less "sustainable" is also a sport whose participants are no longer worth a Saturday's attention from those who lead the school. Boys who have given years to this activity, following in the footsteps of Newington shooters going back to the nineteenth century, were left feeling abandoned rather than championed.
What the Community Is Asking For
Newington families are not asking for every co-curricular program to be preserved forever unchanged. Reviews, sustainability and demand are legitimate considerations for any school. What the community is asking for is straightforward: honest and consistent communication before decisions land on families' doorsteps, and visible, active support for the boys who continue to represent the College in these traditions — support that includes senior staff simply showing up.
Newington's motto speaks of faith and knowledge, but its culture has long spoken of care.
Many in the community now feel that, in the handling of Cadets and Rifle Shooting, that care has been harder to find than it should be. The hope, shared widely among parents and Old Boys alike, is that this is a moment the College chooses to reflect on — and that the boys still willing to pick up a rifle or don a Cadet uniform in the College's oldest traditions are met, from here on, with the presence and respect they have earned.
The Save Newington College Group (with contributions by parents of cadets and rifle sports participants)