Carey Baptist Grammar, Kew, allowed to continue favouring girl enrolments
A TOP Melbourne private school has been given another exemption from anti-discrimination laws so it can recruit more girls. But it has also been given a warning.
Education
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A TOP private co-educational school has been warned it may have to consider dumping its policy of recruiting more girls.
Kew’s Carey Baptist Grammar has been given yet another exemption from discrimination laws so it can keep trying to achieve gender balance.
But the move was opposed by nearby private girls’ schools, which are locked in a fierce battle for female students.
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Carey, which went co-ed in 1979, has been allowed to discriminate against boy applicants for more than 20 years through exemptions granted by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
In 2017, 49 per cent of senior school and 48 per cent of middle school students were female, but at the Donvale campus only 37 per cent of year one students were girls.
Carey recently applied for a further five-year exemption from anti-discrimination laws, arguing that, without one, an immediate gender imbalance would result, making proper co-educational teaching difficult.
“(This is) because there are more males than females on the waiting list and because females accept enrolment offers at a lower rate than males,” said Carey principal Philip Grutzner in evidence.
Mr Grutzner said Carey operated in a highly competitive market, with 22 independent schools within 9km of the school, but only seven of them were boys’ schools.
Nearby girls’ schools Camberwell Girls Grammar, Ruyton and MLC objected to the exemption being renewed.
The schools also pointed out that, in 2012, Carey had been given permission to expand its total student numbers by 364 to 2364, which Mr Grutzner agreed had “exacerbated the challenge in achieving gender balance”.
However, VCAT senior member Bernadette Steele ruled in favour of Carey, saying she was satisfied that, without an exemption, the proportion of male students would rise rapidly.
But Ms Steele warned Carey not to assume renewals would be granted forever.
“The school or college must think carefully and realistically about whether co-education will ever be ultimately possible without the underpinning of an exemption, and if this is the case, whether the co-educational model should be changed or even discontinued, or whether some new set of initiatives should be tried,” she said.
The exemption applies to June 2023.
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