EDUCATION REPORTER, D. CALCULUS

FORGET SWITZERLAND. FORGET ENGLAND. FORGET AMERICAN MILITARY COLLEGES. AND FORGET HOGWARTS. The world’s most exclusive school is actually in outback Australia.

The Outback College for Young Ladies of Good Families charges $1 million a year, not including extras. Each student has her own house, complete with servants, gym, Jacuzzi and swimming pool; her own horse and stable, and, of course, her own teacher in each subject she takes. She also has access to the school’s fleet of Lamborghini cars and ten helicopters, both of which services are extras. There is an airstrip in the school grounds and two private jets which students may also use, although most have their own.

And it’s all run by the nuns of the Sisters of Immaculate Perfection, a Catholic order devoted to raising women to the very best they can be.

“Our school only takes 100 students at a time,” says Sister Marjorie Burke Wills, Headmistress. “There is intense competition for entry. Believe me, we’ve had to refuse billionaires, princesses, internet influencers and the daughters of drug lords, because the girls are just not up to our standards. And our standards are high. We put great emphasis on physical fitness and sport. We have a Formula One track, three golf courses, twenty tennis courts and two football stadiums which can hold fifty thousand spectators. Some of our girls come from large families.”

The entry exam for the school, known as The Test, is said to be so difficult that there is a 99% failure rate. “Even Einstein would pause for breath,” an insider commented. “Our girls are bound for glory. And glory is a difficult task.”

In the final year at the school students climb Mount Everest and take a submarine to the Mariana Trench. Both are, of course, extras. It is said that they have access to Space X rockets and that an orbital retreat is obligatory in Year 10, but Sister Marjorie refused to comment on this as the agreement with Space X is confidential.

“If a child takes all of our extras the cost can be significant multiples of the basic $1 million. Of course, our girls are all given classes in share and bond trading from day one, and many exit our program considerably wealthier than they entered it. The odd one goes spectacularly bust and that is an expulsion offense. No losers allowed at O.C.”

When a girl graduates, she is fluent in at least ten languages, can run 1500 metres in four minutes and disassemble and reassemble twenty five different firearms in the dark without drawing breath. That’s on top of an academic achievement which ensures entry to any university in the world.

The school curriculum is intense.

“Our girls learn martial arts and crochet, yoga and needle work. boxing and gymnastics; woodwork and computer science; and of course rocketry. They study all the world’s faiths, including atheism. We have a Christopher Hitchens Library which has two exits, one to our chapel and the other to the desert.”

Much of the school’s curriculum is the stuff of legend, including the shark wrestle, which is said to be the final test for graduation. Sister Marjorie put her finger to her lips and whispered: “Occasionally one of our young ladies doesn’t meet the standard required.”

Rumours of classes in guerrilla warfare and strategic thinking also receive a wide berth from Sister Marjorie. “Our girls may one day find themselves at the head of their own or other countries, or other similar institutions, where lives are at stake. Sister Columba’s IED lessons and Sister Maria Jesus’s Maintenance of Power lectures give students a little more than the basics in political science and crowd control. Columba was in the IRA before she found her calling, and Sister MJ comes from a family that helped Franco to power. We like to cover all bases.”

By the time a girl graduates, she will be as tough as a commando, as intelligent as a nuclear scientist and as perfectly mannered as a high-class courtesan. “Of course, they will have their virtue. Loss of virtue is an expulsion offence, no matter the outcome,” says Sister Marjorie. “Our girls are better than that. We introduce them to young men throughout their time with us. We’re not a monastery. It’s done through well organised social events, some sporting, and the occasional week-long trip to Paris or somewhere like that. Our girls are taught to impress upon a young gentleman the limits of his animal desires. If necessary our young ladies can render a boy unconscious, or … well, dead. To date, the latter has not been necessary. But we keep a small patch at the very edge of the school’s grounds for that eventuality. Our girls do not lose.”

The location of the school is a secret so closely kept that visitors, including parents, do not know where they are going. “No one knows where exactly we are,” says Sister Marjorie. “And out here in the Australian wilderness, you could plant Belgium and lose it. We could detonate a small nuclear device and no one would notice.” At those last words, she smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Other than the camels.”