Preshil

Preshil, or The Margaret Lyttle Memorial School, is an independent, co-educational, non-denominational, Progressive, school located in Kew, an eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. There are two campuses at Preshil, Arlington (Junior Campus) and Blackhall (Senior Campus).

Founded in the early 1930s by Margaret J. R. Lyttle, Preshil states that it "aims to fit itself to the needs of the child rather than forcing the child to fit into the needs of the school". At Preshil, students work at their level of cognitive and emotional development. Preshil offers classes for students from Pre-School to Year 12 (Victorian Certificate of Education).

In 2014, the school was one of the first to test the School Stream app, notifying parents of school events, news and other important information via their smartphone.

Notable alumni

Preshil (Junior Campus)

Coordinates: 37°48′48″S 145°2′58″E / 37.81333°S 145.04944°E / -37.81333; 145.04944

The Margaret Lyttle Memorial School Junior Campus is the junior campus of Preshil. It was designed by Kevin Borland. The buildings that Kevin Borland designed at the Preshil School are experimental in design and uses triangular and hexagonal geometries together with diagonals in both plan and section. This creates a variety of internal and external spaces, irregular forms and buildings that strongly deviates from the conventional school buildings of that time. The precise forme of each building and its detailing is counteracted by the use of raw timber posts and beams.

The campus size is not much bigger than a large residential block in the area, which creates a lively density of play spaces, trees and buildings. The buildings are laid out in a labyrinthine, non-hierarchical and non-institutional way, integrating the new buildings with the existing 1930s cottage and the landscape on the site. The buildings were designed to accommodate the school’s approach to active learning, embodied in the child-scaled and multi-purpose buildings.