Tony Rae (the familiar form was part of his persona) was educated at The Scots College and graduated from the University of Sydney with a Master of Arts and Diploma of Education. He completed a Master of Education at the University of New England.
Rae began his teaching career as a schoolmaster in 1948 at his alma mater, Scots, and spent four years there before teaching English in England and Canada. He returned to Scots in 1956 and in 1959 he was appointed Deputy at Toowoomba Grammar School. In 1964 he moved to Trinity Grammar School, Summer Hill as a housemaster and later served as Senior Master from 1966 until 1968.
James Wilson Hogg Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, then the of Trinity, wrote of him: "He was of formidable stature, tall and striking looking, a headmasterly figure long before headmastership.
He habitually moved with a measured pace, gravely and with dignity." Albury Grammar School (now The Scots School Albury) appointed him as Head in 1969. In 1972, Rae returned to Sydney as of Newington College.
In Our Proper Concerns: A History of the s" Conference of the Independent Schools of Australia, Wilson Hogg says that, "His was an imaginative appointment. Despite the fine qualities of such headmasters as Lawrence Pyke and Douglas Trathen, the school had been passing through a protracted period of uncertainty and difficulty.. a decade before Tony Rae"s assumption of office no one would have suspected that Newington would emerge in the eighties as a leading school in the arts
Notably in drama, and pre-eminently in music
lieutenant was not just the arts that prospered during Rae"s leadership. Rae retired from Newington in 1993.
