Reddam House’s North Shore campus is celebrating its first anniversary, marking a successful inaugural year for the school’s third Sydney location. Principal David Pitcairn sat down with the Sun to reflect on the launch and the culture established in its first twelve months.
The campus officially opened on Monday, 17 February, welcoming its first cohort from Kindergarten to Year 10. After sixteen years as principal of Reddam’s Bondi campus, Pitcairn and his wife and co-principal Dee took on the challenge of building a new school from the ground up.
Starting entirely from scratch brought both challenges and opportunities, with a completely new staff and student body. “The challenge has been getting teachers who’ve come from different schools, and students who’ve come from multiple different schools, all realising that we are now one new school with one ethos, one philosophy about what we are, who we are,” Pitcairn said. He described the rapid alignment as a “wonderful challenge to have”, achieved through focused staff development and a consistent, reinforced philosophy: a culture of kindness and cleverness.
Pitcairn believes students and staff have embraced those values, reflected in the school’s motto: “It’s cool to be clever and cool to be kind.”
The focus, he said, is on collaboration and shared success rather than individual rivalry. “What success looks like here is that we all succeed — not me versus you,” he explained, crediting this approach for the strong HSC results at the Bondi campus.
The North Sydney campus occupies a converted office block at 41 McLaren Street. As a purpose-designed modern school, it features advanced science laboratories and a dedicated Metaverse room for virtual reality and robotics, which will receive greater emphasis next year now that the facilities have been fully explored.
A highlight for Pitcairn has been the Maths department’s success in fostering a culture where students are “prepared to fail”. He pointed to an annual student survey in which “80% of the kids in the school said they want to do more maths in their free time”. “They’ve created a culture where it’s cool to do maths,” he said. “It’s fun to challenge yourself with difficult things — and I’ve never seen that before.”
The school’s location is also a major draw. “The Metro is a game changer,” Pitcairn noted, with 80% of senior students using it to commute. Senior students are granted off-campus privileges at lunch and during free periods within a set boundary. “If you treat your senior students as adults and have high expectations of them, they tend to live up to that,” he said, describing North Sydney as an ideal setting thanks to its natural beauty, public spaces and amenity.
Pitcairn and Dee have even moved to the area, living in North Sydney during the school week.
As the school moves into its second year, it expects to grow beyond the initial 500-student cap. The priority, however, will be maintaining its culture. “It’s really about keeping the culture constant,” Pitcairn said, acknowledging that growth and the addition of around thirty new teachers will require dedicated work. “We are going to have to get this new group, this new cohort of students up to speed… and reinforce that kindness and academic rigour.”
The school is also expanding its holiday excursion program. Next year’s planned trips include community service in Nepal, an art tour in Italy, a history tour of Europe and, most notably, what is believed to be the first-ever school trip to Antarctica in December.
After its first year, Reddam has firmly established itself in North Sydney—further cementing the region’s status as one of the country’s leading education destinations.
