More co-ed private schools seeking to discriminate against boys

This college is the latest in a growing list of Victorian co-ed private schools seeking to discriminate against boys.

Cornish College is the latest in a growing list of Victorian private schools to be granted VCAT enrolment exemptions.

A growing number of co-ed private schools are discriminating against boys and preferencing the enrolment of girls.

Recent exemptions to equal opportunity laws which prohibit gender-based bias have been granted to Cornish College, Emmanuel College, Woodleigh School, Westbourne College, Ivanhoe Grammar and Carey Baptist Grammar.

The five-year exemptions allow the schools to pick girls over boys on the waiting lists in a bid to keep a fair gender balance among the students.

The latest, Cornish College, was granted an exemption in VCAT last week to select either boys or girls as needed, but it has traditionally had a higher number of boys than girls.

The VCAT application from the school notes the term “girl” includes females and people whose gender identity is female, and the term “boy” includes males and people whose gender identity is male.

A VCAT exemption granted to Ivanhoe Grammar in 2021 was opposed by a number of families.

Emmanuel College was granted a similar exemption in August for its coeducational Point Cook campus, which has always received more applications from boys than girls.

Principal Christopher Stock said a gender balance of 57 per cent male to 43 per cent female, that meant there were 250 more male than female students at the college which “risked the ability of the College to provide a coeducational experience for their students”.

However, VCAT ruled that the school could not target girls in enrolment advertising or offer scholarships to girls only. But the school is allowed to structure waiting lists and offer enrolments based on gender.

Westbourne Grammar applied for a similar exemption in March, which attracted two objections opposing student preference on gender grounds.

In recent years the Truganina school has had around 100 more boys than girls but aimed for a 45 per cent to 55 per cent gender balance.

Westbourne Grammar was granted an exemption in March this year.

VCAT member Christopher Thwaites concluded that “without an exemption the proportion of male students would increase rapidly, compounding the risk that students seeking a coeducational experience would not enrol or would leave”.

Woodleigh School has also been granted a five-year legal exemption enabling it to select female students over males in order to achieve a gender balance in the school.

The application was opposed by a parent who said the gender exemption “disadvantaged boys”.

A similar exemption granted to Ivanhoe Grammar in 2021 was opposed by a number of families expressing concern about the impact of the discrimination on the gender identity of boys who were overlooked.

Carey Grammar was also given a three-year gender exemption in 2018, despite the objection of three nearby girls’ schools all within two kilometres – Ruyton Girls’ School, Camberwell Anglican Girls’ School and Methodist Ladies’ College.