By Jordan Baker
Primary schoolmates Charlotte Coady and Lucas Laraghy have been friends since they were born; few people understand Lucas' osteoporosis as well as Charlotte does, beyond the boy's parents and doctors. The pair are in the same composite class – Lucas in year six and Charlotte in year five – but they will be separated next year when Lucas starts high school.
They want to go to the same school but are both zoned for single-sex public secondary schools. Charlotte's parents fear a recent enrolment crackdown means an out-of-area co-ed place is doubtful. “She will miss him,” said her mother Peita Coady.
Best friends Charlotte Coady and Lucas Laraghy will have to go to different high schools because Charlotte is in a single-sex catchment.Credit: Sam Mooy
The Coadys live in the catchment for Georges River College Penshurst Girls’ Campus, but do not want to send Charlotte to a single-sex school.
Lucas is zoned for the Hurstville Boys' campus but will attend the college's Peakhurst co-ed campus because it has a support unit. While Charlotte will get priority for an out-of-area place, there is no guarantee she will be able to join him.
The Coadys have joined hundreds of other parents to call for Penshurst Girls and Hurstville Boys, both part of Georges River College, to be made co-ed. Some parents say they will move house rather than send their child to a single-sex high school.
Similar calls are coming from families in single-sex catchments in Randwick, the inner west, Hornsby and Kogarah.
A survey of parents with children at primary schools in the Georges River catchment - mostly Mortdale, Oatley and Oatley West Public Schools - found 72 per cent of the 218 respondents wanted Penshurst Girls and Hurstville Boys to become mixed-gender schools.
If Penshurst and Hurstville remain single sex, three quarters of parents will look for an alternative, with half of those intending to apply out-of-area, 32 per cent planning to move into another catchment, and the rest opting for private schools, the survey found.
But there are concerns an out-of-area place at the co-ed Peakhurst campus of Georges River College will no longer be an option after a Department of Education crackdown on non-local enrolments at schools near or at capacity.
It will probably make us move house, to an area with a school that we want to go to.
Nicolas Portios, P&C president, Oatley West Public School
“For many years, we have known that those are the local high schools, but people have been getting around that by applying to schools around the [Sutherland] Shire,” said Sandy Grekas, member and former president of Oatley Public School P&C.
Nearby boys' Catholic school, Marist Brothers at Penshurst, became co-ed in 2014 and its numbers more than doubled over four years. Other popular Shire high schools are also over-subscribed. Ms Grekas fears students rejected from them will pour into Peakhurst High and push it to capacity, too, giving families no option but to send their children to either Penshurst Girls’ or Hurstville Boys’.
“People are freaking out in this area, they're talking about moving, they're talking about how it's going to impact house prices,” Ms Grekas said.
Mrs Coady, the P&C President at Mortdale Public School, was also worried. “All these kids who would have been going [to schools] in the Shire are now going to have to come to schools here. It is going to make it very hard [to get a non-local enrolment],” she said.
“The whole single sex thing is so archaic, especially within the network.”
P&C president of Oatley West Public School, Nicolas Portios, said limiting the in-area choice to single-sex school was unfair. "It will probably make us move house, to an area with a school that we want to go to," he said.
Parents are also concerned that the Georges River College schools are only single-sex between years seven and 10. The students move to a co-ed senior campus in years 11 and 12, when they are not used to sharing a classroom with the opposite sex.
"In years 11 and 12 they are concentrating on social life rather than academics,” said Mrs Coady.
There are 34 single-sex public high schools in Sydney. Parents in the eastern suburbs are pushing for a co-ed alternative to Randwick Boys’ and Girls’, and there have been similar calls in the Canterbury Boys’ and Girls’ catchment.
The Kogarah community has raised the possibility of merging Moorefield Girls’ and James Cook Boys’ High, while the government is running a feasibility study into opening a co-ed alternative to Asquith Boys’ and Girls’ in the Hornsby area.
A spokesman for the NSW Department of Education said schools that could accommodate non-local enrolments would continue to do so. He said the combination of single-sex and co-ed campuses in the Georges River Network worked together to offer "many opportunities to ensure students reach their full potential".