With their gorgeous grounds and enviable waiting lists, Melbourne’s most expensive boys’ schools are mostly doing very nicely, thank you very much.
Still, of the seven boys’ schools charging more than $30,000 a year – Brighton Grammar, Melbourne Grammar, Scotch College, St Kevin’s, Camberwell Grammar, Trinity Grammar and Xavier College – one stands out.
Xavier College in 2021. The school’s enrolments have dropped almost 20 per cent in five years.Credit: Joe Armao
Xavier is the only pricey boys’ school to have lost enrolments. Its student numbers have dropped 19.5 per cent over the past five years, according to MySchool data.
At the other end of the spectrum, Brighton Grammar has increased enrolments by 12.3 per cent over the same period.
Now, not every school wants or needs to increase student numbers. But a 20 per cent fall – to 1558 students last year – is sizeable and comes after some big years for the Catholic school.
In 2020, Xavier announced it would shut its Brighton campus, home to about 220 students from early years to year 8, because of insufficient enrolments. It later sold the bayside land for $100 million and poured big money into its Kew campuses.
Xavier College’s former Kostka Hall campus was sold after enrolments fell. Credit: Jason South
There have also been negative headlines regarding historic sexual abuse cases and a cyberattack that led to the theft of personal information relating to students or their families.
A well-connected education source, not keen to be identified talking about the sector, suggested some parents were rattled by the school’s new model of putting year 7 and 8 students with secondary students rather than with primary students nearby.
Not so, a Xavier spokesman says. The school has not heard that that feedback, is not worried by the enrolment decline, and, in fact, claims student numbers are healthier than the school had forecast when it exited Brighton.
The school has added an extra year 3 and 4 class this year, he says, and its new buildings are perhaps Australia’s finest.
All the better to vote with
Australian Christians’ catchphrase is “There’s only one!” party that will “defend Life, Faith, Family and Freedom”.
The West Australian micro party has high hopes for this election, putting forward 14 candidates to champion its anti-abortion, low-tax and pro-Christian-school agenda.
“Just imagine what would happen if the 2,500,000 Australians who reportedly attend church, took seriously their mission to be salt and light to their nation,” it says on its website. “They would seek to be well-informed about candidates before election day and consult Christian websites, not just the secular media.”
An AI-generated picture from the Australian Christians website which has since been taken down.
We at CBD are secular media. We also have five fingers on each hand.
But over at the Australian Christians website, their beautiful model father-figure has six fingers wrapped around a beautiful model mother-figure.
Perhaps “There’s only one!” refers to extra fingers. CBD asked Australian Christians where the extra finger man came from.
“Thank you for pointing out that image. We hadn’t noticed the extra finger and have removed it now,” the party politely responded.
“Yes, the image was AI-generated. As a small party, we occasionally utilise AI tools to generate images for our content, especially when traditional stock libraries are either too expensive, impose restrictive usage conditions, or fail to meet our expectations.”
Water woes go west
It’s been 11 months since Greater Western Water went live with a new billing and payment system that was so dysfunctional, the water corporation is now being investigated by the Essential Services Commission, the Energy Water Ombudsman and the government.
And it’s been seven months since ministerial diaries show former water minister Harriet Shing met Greater Western Water chairman David Middleton and managing director Maree Lang to discuss the billing system snafu.
The latest news is that Greater Western Water’s plan to resume direct debit payments this week has hit a snag because of “technical issues”.
Greater Western Water’s billing woes continue.Credit: Adobe stock
CBD can also reveal that chief operating officer Michael Wootten will depart the business, following in the footsteps of Middleton, who is leaving this week. Lang has told staff the company will “commence the process of recruitment for a new COO shortly”.
We understand that former Victorian police and water minister Lisa Neville has been appointed interim chair.
Readers with long memories will recall this is the business’s second financial blunder in 10 years. Greater Western Water was formed via a merger of Western Water and City West Water five years ago.
City West Water’s IT upgrade was singled out by the Victorian auditor-general in 2016 for being over budget and four years behind schedule.
For what it’s worth, Greater Western Water is sticking by its promise to have billing back to normal by the middle of this year.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.