Private co-ed schools trying to entice more female students

The battle for female students at Melbourne’s most prestigious schools is heating up with some offering inducements to secure enrolments.

Private co-ed schools are trying to win over girls with promises of leadership roles, scholarships and targeted facilities in a battle against boutique single sex girls’ schools.

Melbourne has a large number of girl only schools, leaving co-ed schools struggling to enrol equal numbers of girls and boys.

A number of prestigious schools have exemptions to favour girls in their enrolment process, arguing they can’t have a genuine co-ed offering if numbers are too skewed towards boys.

Others are turning to measures like fee support, female-friendly sports and scholarships to entice more girls to enrol.

Carey Grammar has been allowed to favour girls in their enrolment process. Picture: David Crosling

Casey won the exemption from equal opportunity rules despite protests from nearby schools like Genazzano. Picture: Mark Stewart

Some of those enticements include:

STRUCTURING waiting lists to favour girls.

RUNNING separate waiting lists for boys and girls.

OFFERING bursaries and scholarships for girls.

UPGRADING facilities to target girls.

ADDING subjects that might be more attractive to girls.

GIVING girls leadership roles.

Education consultant Paul O’Shannassy said the issue was compounded by a shortage of single sex boys’ schools in Melbourne with many boys’

schools going co-ed.

He said there were only about seven all boys schools charging fees of $20,000-plus.

But there were as many as 23 single sex girls’ schools as well as another dozen quality co-ed private schools.

“Girls have about 40 options when it comes to choosing a school,” he said.

“As a result, what you find is that parents are often using their daughter to get their sons in. They will send a daughter to a co-ed school to get a son in

because he can’t get in anywhere else.”

Mr O’Shannassy, who runs Regent Consulting which helps parents choose the right school for their child, said in the longer term he could see closures

or mergers of some of the smaller girls’ schools.

Carey Grammar, which has enjoyed an exemption from Equal Opportunity provisions to favour girls for more than 20 years, appears to have finally cracked the perfect gender split.

Latest MySchool data shows them sitting at 50/50 girls and boys at the school which has campuses in Kew and Donvale.

The school won a further five year exemption – which expires in June 2023 – despite protests from nearby girls’ schools – Ruyton, MLC and Camberwell Girls’ Grammar.

Co-ed schools are battling with girls only colleges like Strathcona Girls Grammar School for students. Picture: Mark Stewart

In addition to the three schools opposing the extension, the leafy Camberwell, Kew and Hawthorn environs is home to Strathcona, Genazanno,

Fintona and two popular single sex girls’ government schools.

Former Carey principal Philip Grutzner, when arguing for the extension at

VCAT, said there were 22 independent schools within 9km of Carey, hence

the need for the exemption.

Recently retired Deakin University academic Susan Bennett authored a paper in

2015 which looked at three co-ed private school and challenged assumptions that

girls were at risk in co-ed schools.

She concluded that while “gender relations continued to be complex, boys and

girls worked together as colleagues and friends and the traditional gender

hierarchies disrupted at many points”.

“I have argued that this unevenness (in enrolments) probably results from middle-class parents’ investment in choosing the ‘best school’ for their daughters, combined with the widely held view that coeducational settings are ‘risky’ for girls.”

Dr Bennett said that while many parents believed their sons benefited from a co-ed environment they wanted their daughters to go to single sex schools.

“In a sense families would like other people’s daughters to civilise their sons in a co-ed setting,” she said.

Dr Bennett said schools battled to sign up students, lots of research had been commissioned to champion the benefits of various types of schools.

While many girls only school boasted of teaching girls to lead and achieve, Dr Bennett suggested that if they were learning to lead in a girls only

environment, they did not have the opportunity to lead both boys and girls and problematically boys had no chance to experience girls in leadership positions.

Other schools who have enjoyed exemptions include Wesley, Cornish, Woodleigh, Ivanhoe Grammar, Caulfield Grammar, Peninsula Grammar,

Geelong Grammar and St Michael’s Grammar.