St Aloysius College welcomes boys as trends, enrolments change
Melbourne Catholic girls’ school St Aloysius College will enrol boys from 2023 in a bid to keep up with demand in the inner city.
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Girls’ only secondary school St Aloysius College, in North Melbourne, will enrol boys from 2023.
It is the second inner-city Catholic school to announce it will go co-ed as schools strive for viability and meet unmet demand in the inner city.
Opened in 1887 and operated by the Mercy Sisters, St Aloysius College said it would enrol year 7 boys in 2023 as part of a six-year plan to be fully coeducational by 2028.
It comes after CBC St Kilda decided to take in girls from Presentation College Windsor, which announced its closure due to dwindling enrolments.
CBC St Kilda has been rebadged as St Mary’s College.
St Aloysius families were notified of the decision on Wednesday, following a two-year research project by Catholic Education Melbourne, Mercy Education and the school. The announcement was delayed as the school focused on delivery of education during lockdown.
VCE students in 2021 and 2022 will complete their schooling as a single sex-school. The school currently has 453 girls in 2019, according to MySchool, dropping from 500 in 2018. It expects to have an enrolment up to 800 by 2028.
Principal Mary Farah said the shift to co-ed was a natural next step for the school.
“Today we live in a very different world, with very different attitudes regarding the roles of men and women, compared to those held by our school founders,” she said.
“As a girls’ school, St Aloysius College addressed the many challenges that faced women in the twentieth century and as a coeducational college we will continue to address the increasingly complex challenges facing the whole Australian community, with Mercy as our crux and guide.”
Ms Farah said the 2019 VCE result placed it among the “best-performing all-girls, inner-city Catholic schools”.
St Aloysius will be one of thirteen schools across VIC, SA and WA governed by Mercy Education.
It is a lower fee paying school, made up of 56 nationalities and some of the students are drawn from public housing estates or are the children of city workers.
The co-ed school will look to educate students in the growing Docklands, city and inner northwest.
“We recognised a need in the St Aloysius North Melbourne community from families seeking a faith-based coeducational option for their sons and daughters in their secondary years,” Mercy Education chief executive Christopher Houlihan said.
The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, the Most Reverend Peter A Comensoli congratulated the Sisters of Mercy on their long standing commitment to education in the past and in the future as a co-ed school.
The school will consult with students, parents, alumni and stakeholders over the next two years to shape the new look St Aloysius.
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