By Alex Crowe
Boys at single-sex private schools have been outperformed by their peers at all-girls and co-education schools in Victoria in the past decade, data from the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority shows, despite charging some of the highest fees.
Melbourne High School was ranked 10th for performance in 2021, the only medium-sized all-boys school to have a high proportion of students achieve a study score of 40 or above (out of 50) in the past five years.
Melbourne High School VCE students Vraj Shah (left), Aaron Zhang and Harry Hermann are among the school’s high-achieving cohort.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Students typically sit an exam to gain year 9 entry to the highly competitive selective government school in South Yarra, which does not charge fees to attend.
Principal Tony Mordini said Melbourne High students achieved a median ATAR of 94.7 in 2023, with 53 students achieving a score of 99 or above.
Excluding English as a subject, Melbourne High students were most likely to achieve a study score of 40 or above in mathematical methods in 2023, followed by chemistry and general mathematics.
The school recently announced it would require year 11 students to take a VCE humanities subject from next year, but the plan has been met with resistance from some students.
Almost 200 people have signed a petition opposing the change and say it infringes on students’ freedom to choose.
As for single-sex schools, Mordini said parents valued the option for various cultural and personal reasons.
“It might be a boys’ school, but it’s got a really unique culture ... it’s a place where every boy can find their tribe,” he said.
From the private all-boys sector, St Kevin’s College most recently made the top 10 list for VCE performance in 2018, when using the study score metric.
Fees for year 12 students at the independent school in Toorak were $25,625 in 2023, putting it at the lower end of the fee scale for all-boys schools.
The fees for year 12 students at Brighton Grammar School, the top-performing all-boys school in 2023 – although it was behind 15 all-girls and co-ed schools – are $38,342.
Melbourne Grammar School, which is single-sex after primary, was the next best-performing all-boys school in 2023 (in 19th place overall). Year 12 fees were more than $41,640 in 2023.
High-fee co-ed and all-girls schools in Melbourne dominated VCE performance in Victoria over the past decade, apart from one regional outlier.
Ballarat Clarendon College, a non-government co-ed school charging more than $22,470 for year 12 students, topped the list the past two years.
Almost 46 per cent of the school’s 266 students enrolled in VCE achieved a study score of 40 or above in 2023 and 35.5 per cent did in 2022.
Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School, a selective all-girls school, was the only other government school on the list of high performers the past 10 years.
More than 29 per cent of the school’s 562-strong cohort achieved a study score of 40 or above in 2023, which gave the school a median study score of 36.
Co-ed non-government schools Bialik College in Hawthorn, where fees for year 12 students are $29,290, and Mount Scopus Memorial College in Burwood, which charges $43,555, have consistently made the list of top 10 performing schools for several years.
Professor Helen Proctor, an education expert from the University of Sydney, said there was no conclusive evidence that single-sex or co-educational schooling yielded better academic outcomes than the other.
Proctor, who studies education through a historical prism, said debates on the benefits of single-sex or co-educational schools often neglected social class as a driver of academic performance.
“There’s no real logical or rational reason for single-sex education, but people have really strong emotional attachment, particularly to sending their girls to girls’ schools,” she said.
Proctor said it was surprising Australia’s single-sex schools had survived this long.
Geelong Grammar School, Caulfield Grammar and Wesley College are among the Victorian co-ed schools that began as all-boys schools. All three now seek exemptions from the Equal Opportunity Act to allow them to structure waiting and enrolment lists to achieve gender balance.
Wesley College won the right to enrol more girls next year when it was granted an exemption from the act by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, after arguing it might otherwise turn into a boys’ school.
The decision has enabled Wesley to advertise for students, structure waiting lists, allocate placements and offer enrolments and scholarships based on gender.
*Yesodei HaTorah College, whose seven year 12 students helped it achieve a ranking of sixth for study scores in 2023, was excluded due to its small size.
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