Adelaide High School's divide between boys' and girls' schools ends in 1979 at West Terrace; specialises in languages
Adelaide High School's West Terrace, Adelaide, campus was first used from 1951 as Adelaide Boys High School.
Adelaide High School became a coeducational single campus in 1979 with students Adelaide Girls’ High School in Grote Street, Adelaide, joining Adelaide Boys’ High School on West Terrace, Adelaide. The original Adelaide High – South Australia’s first public coeducational school – opened in 1908 in Grote Street, Adelaide, for boys and also girls from nearby the Advanced School.
By 1927, Adelaide High had an enrolment of 1,067 students, making it the largest school of its kind in Australia. Two years later, with enrolments still rising, the school was split into Grote Street and another at Currie Street (later the Adelaide Remand Centre). More enrolments forced the need for a new building on a West Terrace, Adelaide, site. This site had been set aside for an army barracks in 1849 but, from1859, Charles Todd , South Australian government astronomer, had it for his observatory – later becoming the bureau of meteorology in 1939.
Based on an award-winning 1940 design, the West Terrace building was completed 1947-51 for what became Adelaide Boys High School, while Adelaide Girls High School remained in the Grote Street buildings. Enrolments at both schools dropped with area zoning introduced for other metropolitan high schools from 1976, forcing them to amalgamate at West Terrace in 1979.
Also with zoning to other metropolitan high schools, Adelaide High School lost its prestige as first choice for middle class students. It became multicultural and switched to the state’s only special interest language school, with students choosing two of French, German, Latin, modern Greek, Chinese, Spanish and Italian as the original offerings, with Latin replaced by Japanese in 2004. Auslan was added as the eighth language in 2018.
Adelaide High also offered special interest rowing and cricket programmes. Adelaide High had longest-running sporting exchanges with Melbourne High School and Mac.Robertson High School in Melbourne. In 2021, Adelaide High had 1500 students from years 8 -12 (with year 7s to join it in 2022).
Among the notable former Adelaide High School students were: Don Anderson, civil aviation department director general (1917-75); Lynn Arnold, South Australian premier; Nick Bolkus, South Australian senator and federal cabinet member; Shaun Burgoyne, AFL footballer; Jogn Stuart Dowie, artist; Sia Furler, pop singer and song writer; Margaret Hubbard, first woman to Hentford scholarhsip for Latin at Oxford; Tom Kousantonis, South Australian government treasurer; Brian Martin, Northern Territory chief justice; Mark Oliphant, South Australian governor and nuclear physicist; Greig Pickhaver a.k.a. H.G.Nelson, actor, comedian, writer; Christian Sumner, South Austrian attorney general.
