End of an educational experiment as LLV embraces old school ties

Lindfield Learning Village, the upper north shore educational experiment with the dated nickname “that hippie school”, has indeed proved out of step with community expectations and is to be rebooted as a traditional government school.

It will be renamed Lindfield College. School uniforms will be mandatory, so too will parent-teacher nights, report cards for all and lunchtime and recess will no longer be called KitKat and Picnic.

The public kindergarten-to-year 12 facility on the old University of Technology site at Ku-ring-gai was opened in 2019 by the former Liberal-National government and drew on concepts from futurist David Thornburg, who identified three archetypal learning spaces – the campfire, cave and watering hole – that schools could use as physical and virtual spaces.

It was marketed as a radical, alternative educational setting in which pupils were responsible for their learning, uniform and timetables and called teachers by their first name.

Parents rushed to enrol, and when the school first opened it attracted students from all over the world and had more than 3000 children on its waitlist.

But almost from the beginning there were troubles.

The school grew out of a need to take pressure off nearby high schools such as Killara, Turramurra and Chatswood. However, over its five years of operation, interest in LLV has fallen. The situation was exacerbated by confusion over catchment zones, with a decision to rezone the school pushed out to 2028 after some families complained of being forced to buy homes in the affluent area to access Killara High’s zone.

Fears about the teaching of “ideologies” such as gender fluidity and Indigenous history reignited an education culture war in 2021, attracting the wrath of parliamentarians David Elliott and Mark Latham and talkback host Ray Hadley.

Then, in the winter of 2024, parents were blindsided after the sudden departure of the entire leadership team, including the principal and two deputies.

The NSW Education Department assured the school community that the innovative educational model would continue, but the writing was on the wall.

The department last year surveyed 1016 community members, including 439 current and 255 prospective parents and students, about the school’s strengths and weaknesses.

Respondents said the main reason parents were hesitant to choose LLV was because of its teaching style, structure, discipline and lack of uniform.

The school has achieved strong academic results, ranking fifth among public comprehensive schools in 2025, up from 10th the previous year. Last year, a quarter of its HSC students achieved Band 6 results, and its NAPLAN outcomes sat above the state average across all year levels.

Nonetheless, it is overhauling its public image, shedding many of the visible hallmarks of its experimental past and adopting the trappings of a more conventional comprehensive school.

While non-government schools that once embraced this type of education are also reverting to a more traditional model, parents who seek unorthodox schooling still have plenty of options in the private sector.

The public school system is the default for many families across the state, and its focus should be on teaching methods backed by strong evidence.

LLV was a controversial approach to education more akin to a Montessori school, but as the Education Department scrambles to attract people back into public education, this surely is the end of the experimental era.

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