Inside Christ Church Grammar
Christ Church Grammar School was founded in 1910 by Canon William McClemans, who started the school with a handful of day boys in a single classroom on the corner of Queenslea Drive and Stirling Highway, before its move to the current Claremont site overlooking Freshwater Bay on the Swan River. The campus has since grown into one of Perth's most recognisable schools: chapel-centred, with a 50-metre heated pool, a substantial visual arts and design and technology centre, and direct river frontage that has become inseparable from the school's identity.
The motto, Deus Dux Doctrina Lux (God is our leader, learning is our light), tells you most of what you need to know about the school's character: Anglican by foundation, broadly academic by emphasis, and committed to character formation alongside results. Around 1,750 boys attend across Pre-Kindergarten to Year 12, with day and boarding options, and unlike Perth Modern or Shenton's selective streams, entry is non-selective.
Christ Church sits directly next door to Methodist Ladies' College (MLC), sharing a boundary fence, and the two schools run shared programs including a combined choir, co-ed debating and some senior courses. (CCGS's formal sister school is St Hilda's; the MLC link is a next-door partnership.) That relationship shapes the social rhythm of senior years for many CCGS boys.