Westminster School is an independent

Independent school

An independent school is a school that is independent in its finances and governance; it is not dependent upon national or local government for financing its operations, nor reliant on taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of tuition charges, gifts, and in some cases the...

, Uniting Church, Early Learning to Year 12, coeducational, day and boarding school located at Marion

Marion, South Australia

Marion is a suburb located in the City of Marion in Adelaide around 10 km south-west from the CBD. Founded as a rural village in 1838 on the banks of the Sturt River, Marion was found to have rich soil and the population expanded rapidly...

, South Australia

South Australia

South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...

, 12 km south of Adelaide. Founded as a Methodist

Methodist Church of Australasia

The Methodist Church of Australasia was a Methodist denomination based in Australia.It ceased to exist in 1977 when most of its congregations joined with the many congregations of the Congregational Union of Australia and the Presbyterian Church of Australia to form the Uniting Church in...

 day and boarding school for boys, the school was opened by the Prime Minister Robert Menzies

Robert Menzies

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, , Australian politician, was the 12th and longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia....

 in 1961 and is named after Westminster School

Westminster School

The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...

 in London. The school became co-educational in 1978, and has a current enrolment of over 1200 students.
Westminster School was born out of a perceived need by the Methodist Church in South Australia for a day and boarding school in Adelaide to accommodate demand additional to that satisfied by the long-established Methodist-based school Prince Alfred College

Prince Alfred College

Prince Alfred College is an independent, day and boarding school for boys, located on Dequetteville Terrace, Kent Town, near the centre of Adelaide, South Australia...

.

Planning for Westminster began with a meeting on 7 June 1957, although at that stage it was not known where or when the school would be built, or indeed what it would be named.