Where Are the Girls’ Institutions?

The First Post of my new Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the first edition of the newsletter, Put Our Children First.

If you didn’t scan my bio, my qualifications for lecturing you on children’s issues include several degrees, culminating in a doctorate, in biblical-related subjects. My working background is nearly thirty years working with people with disabilities, almost entirely as a frontline Support Worker and working particularly with children, and this has been bookended with time working in child protection, both as a front line Youth Worker, and also some time working in the office liaising with case workers and the more administrative side of things.

The purpose of this newsletter is to use both my academic training and experience to provide critical commentary, opinion and research on issues relating to children, particularly child protection. Research (and the comments section) will be behind a paywall, commentary and opinion will not.

Children’s issues, particularly child protection, can be a complex, and at times, disturbing and depressing subject. I may provide trigger warnings when discussing some issues, as this is one of those times when it is not an indulgence but a necessity. Many people come from backgrounds of abuse, even if the people around them don’t know it, and can be traumatised by bringing up such issues. Remember that if casually discussing them among friends.

Full disclosure - I am not one of them. I come from a boring middle-class background, and am now happily married with kids of my own whom I try to do my best for. I don’t have any particular axe to grind in any direction, except one, and will try to avoid politics and cultural issues where I can.

The one axe I have to grind, the driving belief behind my research and desire to speak out, is this: a sane society puts its children first.

I am not a psychologist to be ‘diagnosing’ the problems of our society in such terms, a la the famous use of DSM IV’s ‘Psychopathy Checklist’ in the classic documentary The Corporation. I am simply stating an aphorism. A sane society prioritises its children, and protects them.

We see this in many ways. We also fail to see it in many ways.

Particularly, when you try to speak about children in our society, when you try to put the needs of a child first, there is always a chorus, be it from the media or academia or wherever, who will respond, “but what about this other group???” I intend to unpack this over time.

When I have published my first research-based piece, I may ask for subscriptions. Until then, please enjoy my free content. Because of the controversial nature of much of what I am saying (and the very fact that putting children first is somehow controversial, says so much…) I will be putting comments behind a paywall in time, but if you do wish to engage, please do so and provide feedback on my ideas and constructive criticism on my writing, and if I ever get carried away with this or that topic and fail to keep things child-focussed, call me out.

My first topic I want to talk about is something I heard pointed out many years ago but is not discussed in the mainstream from the particular perspective I intend to explore, and that’s this: the issue of girls being forced into boys’ spaces. This is an increasing issue - increasing despite the accomplishments of recent generations of girls, and the fact that they are well ahead of boys in many areas, indeed, in most. Rather than recognising the need to support boys, the dominant narrative continues to be that girls need to break down barriers and be given access to all things ‘boy’ for equality. Since girls have traditionally not been afforded the same opportunities that boys have, and since we all want what’s best for our daughters, there is little to no counter-argument.

What counter argument could there be to girls having the same opportunities that boys have? Phrased like this, there is no answer. And yet if we rethink the question, we can have a discussion. And a different question is this - where are the girls-only spaces? What has happened to the institutions that society historically provided to support girls? I put it to you, reader, that they have been actively abolished. Indeed, were you to think of them, you would probably giggle, as they have been ridiculed as well as removed.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me first give an example of girls being expected, as it were, to enter male spaces, and if I start with an example from the disability sector, forgive me for starting with what I know.

I am thinking firstly of the reporting around the recent power wheelchair soccer World Cup. I have some small experience of supporting participants in powerchair sports, both rugby league and soccer. These are genuinely inclusive sports, as THIS article reminds us - I have even seen ambulant people jump in a wheelchair and make up the numbers (at the local level), they are not excluded. It is not restricted to people with disabilities, albeit being for people in wheelchairs, it is understandable that people who need wheelchairs for various reasons are the players. (If you are tempted to have a go, let me also mention that those are not normal wheelchairs - low to the ground, very fast and with impact protection, they are expensive pieces of sporting equipment, not something you can get at the chemist).

Being inclusive, we see men and women, young and old, of various abilities. But, being a sport, it is mostly males. Men spend their time worrying about sport. Women often have other interests. We see this throughout society, yet when the gender disparity is mentioned, it is invariably phrased as some sort of barrier or obstacle that girls have to overcome. In THIS article, the author’s can’t just celebrate the achievements of the players, there has to be mention made of the gender disparity: after acknowledging the MVP of the last World Cup, Abdullah Karim (an amazing human being whom I have had the privilege to know - spending time with him is what hanging out with Tony Robbins must be like), the article moves immediately to the first women to represent Australia at this level as she laments, “it's still male-dominated”. We are immediately told there is “still” a gender discrepancy, despite it being an inclusive sport, and the language of “domination”, not preference, suggests this is because of discrimination or oppression.

What is not asked is in that article or the others like it is, where are the women’s sports creating these opportunities for girls? When men’s sporting organisations create such sports as wheelchair rugby, wheelchair AFL or wheelchair soccer, they create inclusive sports but unsurprisingly, they are dominated by men. Where are the women’s sports doing the same?

Particularly, where is the wheelchair netball?

You may find over time I often reference netball and let me assure you, I “pick on” netball not because there is anything wrong with it but rather, because of how much there is that it has done right. Here in Australia netball was, according to the last set of figures I saw (and for all I know continues to be), the leading participation sport in the country. That is no small achievement: on the contrary, it is spectacular in a country that is as sports-mad as we are. There is an enormous amount other sports, and social commentators, can learn from netball, but when it fails to use that advantage wisely, we have to call them out.

And so, while a simple Google search shows that yes, back in the 50’s some people did try playing netball in wheelchairs, a quick look through Netball Australia’s home page reveals nothing - well, nothing that I can find (it’s not a very user-friendly site). Skimming their Instagram account also suggests no shots of people in wheelchairs. I kept searching, hoping I was wrong, and finally in the NSW regional website I found a section encouraging people with disabilities to play, and even a national competition: for women 16 years and over with intellectual disabilities. Well, it’s something, but to me, it just says, “girls in wheelchairs need not apply”.

Did I mention that other wheelchair sports are played on basketball / netball courts? Netball’s grounds are basically designed for wheelchair sport?

Can I also mention that netball, a sport where you catch the ball, stop and then pass or shoot, is practically designed for wheelchair play, much more-so than basketball with its insistence on bouncing the ball?

And yet when we go to the basketball Australia home page (the grass-roots organisation that feeds into Australia’s NBL), I click ‘play’ and immediately find where to go to get a son or daughter into wheelchair basketball! So once again, the men’s sporting organisation steps in to create inclusive opportunities for girls, but there is no girls’ organisation created by women. (And no, netball is not a women-only sport, but it caters predominantly to its female base the same way men’s sporting organisations, which were technically ‘open’, catered to men. That’s why it is unsurprising that Netball Australia’s “inclusive” competition mentioned above is for women only).

Remember, men’s sport creating inclusive competitions is reported as a “barrier” to girls due to “male dominance”: something that men are doing wrong by being in them, which women have to overcome. Just this week, the ABC posted THIS article about women’s representation in disability sports, and actually blames the open nature of these sports, since there is no specific women’s division. As this article goes on, you’ll see this is exactly what I’m saying: pushing girls into boy’s spaces or organisations, rather than creating girls’ spaces, does a disservice to both. Yet the question of why women’s sporting bodies have not created separate women’s divisions or women’s organisations is never addressed. And if you are wondering why there are no divisions, either by gender or age, it’s because everyone uses the same sort of powerchair, and hence children, adults and people of both sexes can compete on an equal playing field, much like we don’t have separate sex divisions for motor racing or horse racing.

Before I come back to my second example of this - which is much bigger than women’s sports - let’s think about the various spaces that have been lost to boys, and the results, then think about the institutions lost to girls.

Indeed, it’s hard to think of any boys' spaces that remain! But as for those that have been lost, there is the Boy Scouts of course: this organisation (and I mean the main scouting organisation here, Scouts Australia, successor to the Boy Scout Association) dropped the word ‘boy’ as far back as 1971 (otherwise a very good year) and in 1973 admitted girls to the Scouts in the older Venturers and Rovers, followed by the younger Scouts and Cubs in 1988: this despite the Girl Guides being a thing since 1910, and, indeed, continuing to be a thing. If you are wondering why any of this matters, a quick look at the Girl Guide website explains it better than I ever could:

Girl Guides offer girls aged 5-17 years a unique girl-led experience - a safe, welcoming girl-only space where girls experience a great variety of activities aimed at helping girls to become a confident young woman.

Fantastic! That’s what we should have, for both genders. And we used to have a boy-only space, but now it's gone, and Scouting is in decline (albeit many of these changes were made due to it already being in decline after the 60s - not a period that encouraged flag ceremonies, citizenship, duty or khaki uniforms). There were around 120,000 Boy Scouts in 1974 when they first brought in girls, and now despite having Scouts of both sexes the number is down to 80,000. (Source). And of course the Girl Guides are in decline - only around 19000 current “youth and adult” members (past and present?) for a movement that started the year after the Boy Scouts did, but now girls have the option to join the Scouts instead. All this hasn’t arrested the decline since now there is no boy-led, boy-only space, boys aren’t interested, and everyone loses.

Another example is the Police Boys’ Club. Here in NSW this began in 1937, and quickly grew, not just thanks to policemen but also hardworking women and men associated with Rotary who made the clubs welcoming places, preferable to the streets. 

Again, this shifted in the 1970s. Again, rather than starting something similar or targeted at girls, it was changed in 1979 to the “Police Citizens Youth Club”. When I take my kids to the local branch for holiday programs, I find that it’s mostly about girls gymnastics, entirely female staff, with only the occasional police officer in sight. And this in a part of Sydney’s south west known for youth issues and crime. Now, the PCYC is still a part of the police initiatives to reduce crime, and they do good work, but I send my daughter to learn gymnastics there, and my littl’uns there for holiday programs, because that appears to be their main focus. Indeed, from their advertising (I’ll link that, rather than reproduce it, as it contains pictures of children) you might be tempted to think that it is predominantly for girls, and white boys like my (mixed-race) sons appear to be, need not apply: and while white boys may never have needed the support of something like the Police Boys’ club in the way that aboriginal or migrant boys have, they are still the majority. That the majority of boys do not seem to be the focus of what was an organisation to keep our boys out of harm - something good for all of society - is a loss for everyone. And while fitness has always been a key component of what the PCYC has done to create engagement between children and police while instilling health and discipline, surely there are areas that our girls at risk need to be served beyond becoming gymnasts? The sort of areas that a girl-specific organisation might address, rather than something designed for boys and retooled for equality? The Police Boys’ club worked because it was tailored for boys - to keep boys going off the rails, you provide something that teaches positives like discipline and confidence and team work, and maybe a much-needed male role model like a policeman, all while running the boys ragged and letting them burn off their testosterone and competitiveness and aggression in a safe environment. Is that what a program tailored to girls would look like?

Before I look at the lost girls’ institutions, I have one more example of a boys’ space that has been taken from them: and this time, it is to do with their spiritual needs. I am talking, of course, about altar boys. For centuries this was a means of nourishing boys’ faith, and all the positives of the Christian ethic (the origin, in part, of our liberal society, and also the origin, through the Catholic social justice philosophy, of our modern focus on social justice, though not necessarily the cause of what that has become…), as well as keeping these boys “off the street” and also, for some of the boys, a pathway to vocation. This changed in the 90’s (see Wikipedia for a very good summary) allowing anybody, not just boys, to serve at the altar, and (at least in my diocese) this quickly led to altar girls. And while I for one think this is a good thing - the early church had deaconesses (Romans 16) and I believe there should be a similar ministry for women - once this ceased to be a boys’ space, we quickly saw boys lose interest. (If any non-boys wonder why this should be, I simply ask you to re-read the Girl Guides’ focus on girl only spaces, consider the demand for women’s spaces like women-only gyms, women’s spaces at universities etc, and ask you to open your mind ever so slightly to the possibility that boys might also see the value in such things).

And where altar servers were all once boys, now I regularly go to church and there are no children serving on the altar at all, just a couple of adults, and in an ageing population in general, and in the Church in particular, this is bad for everyone.

And I must once again ask if there might not have been a girl-focused alternative: and if this seems unlikely in a genuinely patriarchal institution (and how rarely is that phrase used accurately?) like the Church, I would remind people of the great female institutions that exist within Catholicism, the religious orders, which were created for and by women, whatever people may think of them: organisations that have, I would argue, suffered from modernity’s push for equality, however laudable, as those orders who have remained true to their charisms still have a future, while those that have embraced modernity and abandoned traditional elements such as habits and rituals now face extinction... And I am not saying that a new religious order for girls was needed, but rather that women, who know best what is needed for girls, could have created something girl-centred for the spiritual development and inclusion of girls in these difficult times for the Church, rather than simply pushing girls into the boys’ space. It would have been better for everyone.

And since girls have been encouraged into these boys’ spaces, how have the boys fared? Each of these, and the many others like them, sporting clubs and social clubs and schools (yes, we will get to single-sex schools in a moment), were designed to foster boys’ growth, as citizens, spiritual beings, fully realised humans. Since we took all this from boys, how has it turned out?

The answer, as I see it, can perhaps be best summed up in the modern attitudes to men in general. Masculinity, we are told constantly - and sometimes even accurately - is under threat, confused, misguided, in crisis, or most often, flat out toxic. Were all this true, and some of it most certainly is, are we not describing a time in history when boys need their supports, their specific spaces and programs and institutions, more than ever?

Instead, we get the likes of THIS recent article, which informs us that as part of an action plan to “protect women and children”, there is now a government project aimed at boys supposedly at risk of radicalisation from the likes of Andrew Tate. This is how we have been dealing with such things here in Australia - literally blaming, and indeed demonising, boys. I’ll say it again - we “protect women and children” by blaming and attacking boys. The minister behind this idea actually says, ““Educating boys about healthy masculinity and providing them with positive role models are important steps to ending cycles of violence.” Think about that for a moment - to end the cycle of violence, you change the boys. Not the adults who damage the boys, or whose negative treatment of children transmits violence into the next generation - no, you blame the victim.

I wish I was making this up, or it was some sick outlier, but watch THIS for another example - attacking and demonising boys is the norm in Australia for how to best deal with serious problems. (You bet there is a whole article on this subject to follow).

Abolishing boys-only spaces has been bad for boys, for the men they grow into, and society as a whole. And yes, bad for the girls in whose name this mistake was made.

Let’s finally turn to the traditional girl-focussed institutions.

As I said earlier, I can no more think of a girls-only institution that has been created than I can think of a boys’ one that has been preserved. (When I asked ChatGPT for suggestions, it came up with various organisations designed to help girls into specific career paths - STEM, writing etc. That’s something). Yet once, we had social organisations and institutions just for girls. And I don’t just mean nunneries - actually, I don’t mean them at all (they are for grown women) although they are going the same way.

I am thinking of things like finishing schools. Deportment classes. Heck, even girls making their debut.

Does anyone do this for their daughters? Do such things even exist any more? And if you did say, “oh, I’m sending my girls to finishing school”, would you not be greeted with looks from quizzical to horrified to derisive? Such things have been literally ridiculed out of existence.

And perhaps these are a reasonable response to such an outdated idea. After all, aren’t these just meant to train girls to be a good wife or mother, or to develop social skills that have little use beyond snaring a husband or being an effective member of the PTA (or P&C as we say here)? In the modern world, when girls have the opportunity to do and be anything they want, why train them just to walk elegantly or speak politely when you can educate them to be leaders and effect change?

But I am not talking about such things as methods of training girls for the future - I am talking about them as girls’ spaces. The value of things like the Police Boys club or being an altar boy or a boy scout was not that it trained you for a specific profession (beyond the minority of the boys who became priests) but the impact it had on the sort of man you became, or possibly avoided becoming.

Girls’ institutions were similar. They were a female space where, while teaching girls to walk upright or learn French or master the harpsichord (I’ll be blunt, I have no idea what goes on in a deportment class beyond the trope of walking with a book on your head), the mature teacher was also imparting wisdom and life lessons for the girls in her care. Passing down the accumulated wisdom of the ages to the next generation of women, not all of whom may have learned it from mothers or aunts for one reason or another. “Secret women’s business”, as we call it here in Australia, which was as valuable for a girl who became a government minister or CEO as it was for one who became a housewife.

We may not need deportment classes or finishing schools any more, by any means, but girls certainly need that modern equivalent of a girls' space, don’t they?

Don’t they?

Will they learn anything like that in girls-only coding classes or a girls’ cricket team?

The only place that comes to mind in the modern world where someone will try to impart women’s wisdom to girls - and I use that term loosely - is the gender studies class where, sadly, the privileged few girls who can attend university will be encouraged to see themselves as victims, and trained to fight battles that previous generations have already won against a patriarchy that no longer exists. All while going into debt to earn a degree that will make the recipients essentially the opposite of employable.

Any wonder girls have been getting more unhappy, not less, each decade as the world has opened up to them? More pressure and more choice means more support needed, not less, and not just co-opting that which was designed for boys.

Which brings us to my final example, which is of course the push for same-sex schools to be abolished in favour of co-ed. 

Full disclosure - since starting to write this article, this years’ HSC results (year 12 leaving exams) have come out in NSW, and I have made only occasional reference to the coverage of these as I am not yet across them completely.

I am reliably informed that around 95% of schools in Australia are or have gone co-ed, and the few standouts are private schools of various types (parochial, religious or just non-government) - but this is lazy journalism, and the exact number of single-sex schools, 304 out of 9614, is closer to 3.16%, and falling at that. (Always check the numbers!) That same source tells us that single-sex state schools are so rare as to only exist in three Australian states (SA, NSW and Vic). Same-sex schools have been, if not completely eradicated, at the very least marginalised to be the domain of either the wealthy who can afford the private ones (or who can afford to choose their housing location to match their children’s educational intentions, and not circumstance or affordability), or those who find themselves in the catchment areas of the few state schools by luck.

Before we delve into this, let’s be clear: we live in an age where girls outperform boys across essentially all levels of education, the direct result of changes made to the educational system to assist girls to overcome what was once a gender gap going in the other direction. HERE is a look at the situation in Australia, and for my international readers, HERE are stats for the UK, and HERE for the US. As with some of the other issues I have touched on, this is an article by itself, if not a subject for lifetime study.

The change to co-ed schooling played a major part in this: which is not to say co-ed schooling is some recent invention, as it has played a central role in schooling for centuries. The small 19th century school of literary works such as Tom Sawyer, where Tom and Becky learned side by side, was matched by the reality of Australian education cultivated by St Mary Mackillop and can be traced, one way or another, at least back to the educational writings of Erasmus who espoused that the education of girls was as necessary as that of boys. At the same time in England, the Education Act of 1870 and the Elementary Education Act affirmed both the duty of parents to educate their children in the three Rs, and government to provide schooling opportunities in every district. In practice this often meant single-sex schools, but co-ed was not unknown.

Single-sex schooling certainly benefited boys, as great institutions like Eton provided, at least (again) for a privileged few, a quality of education that girls could only get, even more rarely, through private tutoring. To provide opportunities for girls, it is understandable that girls’ schools also arose: Sydney Girls High in 1883, PLC Melbourne in 1875, and earlier in the US (Emma Willard School 1814, Mount Holyoke College 1837) and UK (Cheltenham 1853, Queen Margaret College 1883). These were schools that rightly focussed on providing an academic education to match that given to boys, not just to prepare young ladies for polite society: indeed, Queen Margaret College was a medical school for girls, so don’t trust anyone alive who tells you they were from, “the first generation of female doctors”.

As society in general opened up more for girls through-out the 20th century - again, rightly so - the benefits of co-ed schools were espoused not just for equality but for better social fostering of children, being more reflective of the real world where both genders interact, developing communication skills, respect, cooperation, and broader approaches to education that could suit the different needs of both boys and girls. These are all legitimate points: but the values of single-sex schools are also very real - teaching methods more specifically aimed at the specific children (yes, boys and girls learn differently, due to having different brain structure and growth patterns), fostering a culture of success among that gender, removing the distractions of the opposite sex, better classroom dynamics, and removing the impact of gender stereotypes. As one commenter put it: “Creative boys interested in music, drama and the arts tend to succeed in an all boys school. Girls get all the good roles/opportunities in a coed school.” A school with no gender distinctions means no “boys” or “girls” subjects, so girls at a girls’ school can choose to go into STEM subjects, for instance, without worrying that the classes are going to be mainly boys or that the boys will react negatively to them in some ways, as we are constantly assured is a major problem. (Indeed, sadly, the lack of dominance of girls in STEM is seen as one of if not the biggest problem in modern education by many, eg THIS study which leads off with the comment, “Cross-country studies reveal two consistent gender gaps in education—underachievement in school by boys and low rates of participation in STEM studies by girls”, as those these are somehow equal or comparable problems). This is a very sad reflection on the priorities of the modern schooling system, as the struggles of an entire generation of boys is downplayed in favour of questioning the choices of girls who prefer to go into the high-paying fields of medicine and law, or the many traditionally female-dominated areas from admin to aged care, rather than science. Don’t these girls know that when they have the world at their feet, they have to choose a certain way???)

Happily, according to the International Coalition of Girls’ Schools, “Graduates of girls’ schools are six times more likely to consider majoring in math, science, and technology and three times more likely to consider engineering compared to girls who attended coed schools.” This is supported by THIS analysis by a not-for-profit that found that boys’ schools scored better at maths and girls’ schools scored better at reading than co-ed, though in the manner of such organisations they had to report it as the opposite.

And yet - when I review the Australian literature for people historically who pushed for co-educational schooling, I find only female names: Dame Enid Lyons, Beryl Henderson, 

Dame Doris Fitton, Margaret Hendry, Dr. Constance D'Arcy. Women who themselves made huge advances in the education of girls in a variety of fields (Dame Doris founded the Independent Theatre here in Sydney) and even advanced the girls’ schools I mentioned earlier, were apparently more in favour of co-ed environments.

And so, as mentioned earlier, this became the norm, such that only 3.16% of schools are now single-sex. And those 3.16% are very much under threat.

But - and here’s the kicker - those 3.16% dominate academically. Here are the results of a quick Google search for the top 10 schools in NSW: (source may be behind paywall)

1 James Ruse Agricultural High School

2 North Sydney Boys High School

3 Baulkham Hills High School

4 North Sydney Girls High School

5 Reddam House

6 Sydney Grammar School

7 Abbotsleigh

8 Normanhurst Boys High School

9 Hornsby Girls High School

10 SCEGGS

And for those of you not familiar with the illustrious names on that list, Abbotsleigh and SCEGGS are both girls’ schools, while Sydney Grammar is a boys school. So that’s 7 of the top 10. Nor is this confined to NSW - a look at Brisbane co-ed vs single-sex schools shows the latter is the place to send your kids if you want them to go to university (albeit these are all private schools).

And while much of that dominance comes from the extraordinary levels of funding some of these prestigious private schools achieve - (James Ruse was the only properly selective school in the state in my day and quite literally skims off the best students, but is otherwise an underfunded public school) - the success of the single-sex model cannot be denied. Much like charter schools in the states, whose children are chosen randomly and who sometimes use the same facilities - the same classrooms - as the state schools that they outperform, so a better educational system will outperform a lesser one. The advantage given to single-sex schools by their higher funding means we cannot declare this model better, but the failure of co-ed schools to overtake them also means we cannot say that model is better, either. Therefore, there is no reason not to have both, and to allow parents the choice.

And yet, the push to eradicate single-sex boys schools continues. Just recently, the education editor of the Fin Review, in an article critical of the negative reaction to the closing of yet another boys-school, wrote, “Are single-sex schools – no, make that boys-only schools – deserving of the bad rap they get? Are they hotbeds of toxic masculinity? Are girls better off without boys disrupting their classes and smashing their self-confidence?” And while this is a question, not a statement - and yes, there is a touch of tongue-in-cheek exaggeration to it - it is also a framing device as subtle as asking if Trump’s fascism is now shifting from Mussolini to Franco. Yet in that same article - kudos for providing balance, even while pushing a biassed position, yes it can be done - a representative of Catholic schools made the point that the loss of so many single-sex schools means only the privileged ones survive, which means the average parent is priced out of that choice. And again, the choice is the point, not the specific model. A girl who grows up with five brothers might thrive in a co-ed environment while a girl with only sisters might prefer single-sex - or, the opposite may be the case, as the girl without brothers may benefit socially from a co-ed school, while another may find it easier to focus on academic subjects away from the distraction of boys. The latter avoids, as one Mrs Coady put it, the children, "in years 11 and 12… concentrating on social life rather than academics.”

The repeated use of the word “hysteria” in the Fin Review to describe objections to a boys’ school going co-ed, also found in THIS article (again, apologies if there is a paywall), reveals the bias. Because as recently as September, Randwick Boys and Randwick Girls schools have announced they will amalgamate from 2026, losing both as single-sex schools, as well as Penshurst Girls and Hurstville Boys schools further south in the same region. These are interesting, as they are local single-sex schools in a region where parents feel there are not enough co-ed options, so the issue is more complex than just one versus the other: again, it has to be about the choice. But when canvassing the negatives, the media response has, predictably, focussed entirely on the loss of a girls school, perhaps best summed up by the opening line of THIS article: “A sudden decision to merge two single-sex schools in the eastern suburbs has blindsided current and former students who say the move will benefit boys’ educational outcomes at the expense of girls.”

The Fin Review did not call that response “hysterical” - the Fin Review did not seem to cover it at all.

And yet the language to describe the loss of a historied girls’ school like Randwick is almost identical to that reported derisively about Newington Boys: THIS article in the SMH sympathetically tells us, 

Teachers and staff at Randwick Girls’ were especially concerned about “losing the sense of community” at the school if it were to merge.

Parent Joel Gibson, whose daughter attends the girls’ high school, said some families felt switching to co-ed was a “major breach of trust” for those who enrolled because it was single-sex.

“Parents are in shock today. Not only did we find out second-hand because they told the girls at school hours before they emailed parents, but there was widespread opposition to a full merger during the focus groups I attended,” Gibson said.

This is not called “hysterical” because it is not hysterical - these are genuine concerns. The problem arises from importing gender arguments and imposing them on the needs of our children. The loss of a boys’ school being seen as some sort of win, but the loss of a girls’ school being a tragedy, merely shows that those who hold such views need to rethink what “equality” means, and ask whose interest they have at heart? Not our children’s. (Dare I mention, contra the Fin Review, that articles about schooling choice generally don’t veer off to rant about gender make-up of cherry-picked corporate boards?)

For a pleasantly alternate viewpoint in the Herald on this subject, read THIS. Again, kudos for balance, albeit this is also a pro-merger article. That is fine, but where is the “keep Randwick Boys” voice? There is none to be found, it seems. (There was one article at least promoting boys’ schools in the wake of the Newington change).

Randwick Girls is bigger, and academically performs better, than Randwick Boys, which perhaps explains some of this backlash. And yet it is only one example of an increasing voice against closing girls-only schools in the name of pursuing co-ed. It is based on the academic numbers I posted earlier, and can be summed up in this assertion from the petition started to oppose this school merger: “It has been statistically proven that girls perform better in single sex education”.

As time goes on, the disadvantage that has been done to girls by denying them the benefits of single-sex schools is becoming apparent. A previous attempt to turn Randwick Boys into a co-ed school, despite being the smaller of the two (think about that for a moment) was not greeted as a win-win - “we get rid of the boys’ school, keep the girls’ school, and there is co-ed choice - everyone wins except the boys, yay!” - but scuppered in part by a campaign from the Girls school, that turning the Boys’ school co-ed would see a fall in enrollments and potential loss of resources. This also reminds us that no, Randwick Girls’ wasn’t blindsided by anything recently, it’s been an idea canvassed by successive governments and with a lot of community consultation. What is most significant is that the current parents and students of Randwick Girls mostly opposed both plans. Yes, it would remove a supposed bastion of the patriarchy, but that didn’t mean girls would come out ahead.

But has that ever been the point? There is, I will again contend, an increasing realisation that in abolishing single-sex girls’ schools in favour of co-ed, some girls are being disadvantaged. We cannot state categorically that one way or the other is better, since, apart from the truisms that, “every child is different”, there is the reality that the benefits being espoused are different in each case: single-sex schools are certainly better academically (THIS article grudgingly finishes on that point, but note it is again concerned only with the value for girls, not boys or even children in general) but co-ed make a strong case for better socialisation and preparation for the co-ed world we live in. To labour the point, what matters is that the choice is available, and this is not the case where single-sex girls’ schools are closed, or a local single-sex boys’ school is turned co-ed and that is thought to suffice for everyone.

Part of the reason I chose to write this particular piece was a growing awareness of media attitudes changing toward supporting girls’ schools and questioning whether they’re loss was indeed the best thing for girls, coupled with an increasing demand among parents for access to (single-sex) girls’ schools. Articles such as THIS where a principal says that in her experience girls’ schools, unlike co-ed ones, provide the focus on pastoral care and girls’ wellbeing that I was speaking about earlier as being lost elsewhere in the declines of other girls’ institutions. (And it was timely written, as that school, Shelford, is now merging with a co-ed neighbour).

Or articles like THIS, THIS, and THIS, which consider the value of single-sex schooling for girls and why they should be kept in the mix (a far cry from the triumphalist attitude with which boys’ schools going co-ed is reported.)

While researching, I found that in fact one person seems to be behind much of what I had been picking up on - Loren Bridge. She is not some outlying nutter, but rather the Executive Officer of “The Alliance of Girls’ Schools Australasia”, and if she is obviously biassed on this issue, at least she has done her research. Her numerous articles in the mainstream engage with the arguments against single-sex schools, effectively defend the value of single-sex schooling for girls (and in some cases, for boys too), all while asserting that none of this means co-ed schools are bad, it just means we need both, and to leave it to parents to decide what is best for their children.

Why not, then, just scrap boys’ schools and keep girls’ schools, since the point of so much of this is to remove the perceived advantages boys have? This comes down to simple numbers, so simple even a feminist can understand them - yes, some of these issues are simple mathematics, and feminists tend to be genuinely bad at this - and these numbers are the reason why Randwick Girls’ High previously opposed Randwick Boys’ becoming co-ed: if the boys’ schools go co-ed, then resources will have to be be diverted from the girls’ schools, because their enrolments will inevitably fall as some girls go to the new co-ed schools. Moreover, if, say, half the girls go to single sex schools and half go co-ed, but all the boys are in co-ed, then boys will out number girls in these co-ed schools roughly 2-1 and will dominate, and no-one apparently wants to risk that. This is not just common-sense mathematical probabilities, but is the experience of some co-ed schools, such Wesley College, of what happens when boys outnumber girls. Ditto HERE, as other colleges demand exemptions to stop co-ed schools becoming boy-dominant due to girls having so many other options, with the answer, in some cases, being that boys have to bring a sister along to get enrolled, to keep up the numbers. As it is, there is a feeling that co-ed schools tend to be “boys’ schools with girls in them”, something that Loren Bridge has said on occasion and which is also a sentiment that I have seen from parents in the comments section of these various articles.

And preventing boys doing well is ultimately what this is all about, as we see when we turn to the final issue, selective schools.

In 2017 the NSW government held a review into selective schools and opportunity classes designed to provide a path to success for “gifted students”, and released a summary of findings and an action plan in 2018. I have linked to this, which is a good read if you are genuinely interested in schooling issues and only 26 pages, and also contain plenty of amusingly ridiculous bureaucratic thinking, such as reporting that children from low-education households are less likely to be accepted into selective schools: this is reported as though it is some sort of oppression, but the reality is, if your parents didn’t go far in education, you are less likely to be gifted. A cycle of disadvantage worth breaking, to be sure, but hardly one due to this group oppressing that one.

The review gives us the numbers on boys and girls applying to, being accepted by and choosing to go on to selective schools. (For those who don’t know what ‘opportunity classes’ are, they are a primary school initiative to allow gifted students to study at a higher level. ‘Selective schools’ are high schools for gifted students. If the term, ‘gifted students’ grates on you like it does on me, I only use it because it is the term generally used). The numbers are close, only 1% difference in applications by gender, but boys get better results (46% vs 42%), and this in turn is blown out by the difference in uptake rate: 77% of boys accept their place at a selective school, compared to only 71% of girls (pg 20).

Action 10, which deals specifically with this ‘gender gap’, acknowledges that there are around 3% more places for boys than girls in selective schools, on account of a selective boys’ school existing that doesn’t have a sister school. Another 0.75% is explained by higher “profile scores” by boys, which apparently means boys score ever-so-slightly higher than girls, on average - again, less than a percentage point, but every little bit counts at this level. So when you take into account that boys make up more students - 51-49 - then add this 3.75% in, and you get an expected outcome of around 55-45. The reality at the TOR was 59-41, not in my opinion terribly different, but still a gender gap worth thinking about.

The education department rushed into action. Did they build that much-needed girls’ school? No, they rewrote the rules to make it easier for girls to get in. Pg 21 tells us, “As an immediate response, the department has adjusted the test design process for 2019 to reduce gender effects in the assessment process”. Apparently, reading and writing, the areas where girls excel, are “under-weighted” compared to maths and general ability - areas where boys excel, in part allegedly because of the maths-focussed element of the general ability questions - since the latter count for 50%. Does that mean the reading and writing also count for 50%, and it’s balanced as all things should be? The review doesn’t say, and you can’t assume because you are dealing with bureaucrats, who will hide as much as they reveal in these sorts of publications if it suits them: that 50% may be “English scores + the School Assessment Score”, it doesn’t say.

Is the fact that problems posed in words, not numbers, require good reading and comprehension skills to understand them before using your mathematics skills to solve them, favour girls? Doesn’t say.

Does the ⅓ of the child’s score contributed by the ‘School Assessment Score’ - a number the school provides based on its particular measures - bias toward girls, in the manner of modern schooling with its focus on sitting quietly, following rules, displaying “emotional intelligence”, homework over testing etc? Doesn’t say.

At one point (pg 16) we are told, “The test data reflect the achievement pattern evident in the broader student population – for example, boys score slightly higher in maths while girls score slightly higher in English in NAPLAN at this educational stage. There is no evidence that boys are better at maths or girls are better at English, but this is a common belief in society.” “NAPLAN testing” - that’s national standardised testing every child is forced to go through at specific moments in their schooling to get a snapshot of how our kids are doing - “shows boys do better at maths and girls do better at English, but there is no evidence that boys are better at maths or girls are better at English”. Yes there is evidence, you just acknowledged that, and you are proceeding as though it is true by weighting things toward English to close the gender gap.

I love bureaucratic thinking. I love it to tears. I especially love that since these strengths do not mean boys can’t excel at English or girls can’t be superb at maths - both can and do happen - a recent Herald headline tells us that in this year’s HSC, a girl from Pymble Ladies’ College topped maths and boys from all-boy or recently co-ed private schools dominated English.

Getting back to the review, one genuine bias in favour of boys is revealed in Action 5: that there are maths questions which are harder, and that presumably allow the boys to shine, but no similar harder English questions that let the girls have their moment. Let’s even that out by all means.

Anyway, they immediately changed the tests to favour girls, but here we are a few years later and surprise, the most recent numbers suggest it has not made anything better if the goal is equality by any means necessary. The reason is, as I mentioned when we looked at those original figures, there was one glaring standout: the number of girls taking up offers. Only 71% of girls take up the offer given them at a selective school, compared to 77% of boys. That has not changed: the number of girls being offered places has indeed increased, up to 44% from the 42% in the review findings, so the “weighting” in girls favour has worked, but the number of girls accepting these offered places has fallen (the Herald article referenced puts it at 42%: what relation this is meant to bear to the 71% of the review discussed above I am not sure, as it is almost certainly a different metric, and we have to take their word it has fallen from the 45% of 2019). Whatever the case - less girls than boys still choose to apply, and even when they get in, less are choosing to accept.

This may cause you to suspect that girls are afraid of selective schools, that they are intimidated by the competitiveness of it all, that they are discriminated against or some such negative possibility. But in fact, if you think about it, there really is only one main reason someone would knock back a coveted spot at a selective school after they have gone to the trouble of applying and have scored well enough to get in - and that’s if they get a better offer.

And that’s what the review itself says: “It is possible that families of girls may prefer single-sex schools, while families of boys may more often prefer co-educational

schools. This preference is supported by the review’s analysis, which showed that girls nominate single-sex schools at higher rates than boys. This preference may be responsible for the higher rates of girls declining offers, perhaps motivated instead to enrol in all-girls schools in the comprehensive public system or the private system.” (pg 21).

Move forward 5 years and this is the same result that the Herald found when they investigated the ongoing disparity, despite the changes in girls’ favour. They highlighted the example of one 6th grader, Bonnie, who chose to knock back an offer to a selective school - she did so because she also had been offered a scholarship at a prestigious private school, which she chose to take up instead. Who could blame her?

If this is the driver behind why girls don’t go to selective schools at the same rate as boys - because they choose to go to single-sex private schools instead - then what is the problem? Whether the girl succeeds at the selective school, or whether she succeeds at the single-sex school, surely all that matters is that our girls have a chance to succeed?

Apparently not. And here we get to my depressing conclusion. There is one clear difference between those two outcomes.

And it is the same difference - the same thinking, the same reason - that girls are being pushed into boys’ spaces instead of having their own.

And it is the same reason they want to scrap single-sex schools and push all girls into co-ed, even though it is patently clear that some girls benefit from single-sex schooling.

And it is the same reason that boys’ institutions like the Police Boys club are forced to go co-ed and girls’ institutions are left to die out.

And it is this: a girl who succeeds at a single-sex school simply succeeds, but a girl who succeeds in a selective school not only gets ahead herself, by taking the spot at the selective school she also prevents a boy from having that same opportunity.

But, if girls continue to knock back these selective school places and go to single-sex schools instead - well, we better shut down those single sex schools. Because the aim isn’t to help a girl, it’s to disadvantage a boy.

To demonstrate why I would say such a thing I have to turn to The Guardian, an outlet that makes no secret of its agenda.

In a 2019 analysis of the value of single-sex schooling in the Education section (a previous 2016 account was in the Gender section) the sub-heading states the problem bluntly: “Do all-boys’ schools breed hypermasculine behaviour? Are all-girl schools better for girls?”, which is to say, the starting point is, “are boys’ schools bad, but could girls’ schools be good?” The same framing device as we saw with the Financial Review above, but it is more than this: it is the very lens through which a loud and powerful minority address all such concerns. Let’s just call them, “Guardian Readers”.

The serious issue of the value of single-sex schools continues to be viewed through this narrow lens, and so we get sections like this (I am quoting such a lengthy section under fair use to ensure I capture context and not just an isolated “gotcha” moment): 

Macho cultures within boys’ schools have come under scrutiny this week, with video of boys from elite Melbourne Catholic boys school St Kevin’s chorusing misogynistic chants on a tram, prompting widespread condemnation from the public and the school’s headmaster, who said the misogynistic culture at the school was worse than he thought.

It has sparked a revival of debate about whether such single-sex school environments breed hypermasculine behaviours, and raises the question: do the social effects of educating boys and girls together outweigh the widely touted academic gains of single-sex education?

Dylan Laver graduated from high school two years ago, having attended Sydney Grammar boys school before finishing school at the co-ed Manly public high school. His elite boys’ school did not have a substantial problem with macho or misogynistic culture, he says, but he suggests that isn’t true of all such schools.

“There’s a stereotypical male type that certain schools look for when students are applying,” he says. “They want students of their school to act and look a certain way, and they play a role – unintentionally – in developing a very masculine culture.”

“Then again, in a co-ed school guys find their own groups anyway. I think there are definitely elements of misogyny that can occur in both situations, but I think probably the environment in single-sex private schools makes it just a little more likely to happen.”

Chris Hickey, professor of health and physical education at Deakin University, says boys’ schools can incubate hypermasculine or misogynistic cultures.

“History tells us there is a propensity for those cultures to flourish if unchecked,” he says. “But these cultures are not a given. They’re not ‘unchallengeable’. And they’re not specific to boys’ schools, either. It can happen anywhere, but there is a higher propensity for it when you have boys en masse who are left unchecked.”

Hickey recalls looking at a study of an independent Catholic boys’ school which embarked on proactive measures to address its hypermasculinity problem, including hiring more female senior professional staff, foregrounding the arts, changing the physical environment and valorising the rugby archetype less. It found that culture not only changed for the better, but even boys who had benefited from the previous macho culture also benefited from the culture change.

Addressing negative elements of male behaviour while in childhood and helping boys grow into better men is certainly a valuable thing - but then, all the various negative elements of female culture, which some call “Toxic Femininity” (which is unhelpful) would be better addressed in childhood too, but this is not any sort of stated or pursued goal, though hopefully a side-effect at least of co-education: in one article emphasising the horrors of an all-male environment they can’t help including that, ““There were proper cat fights, with hair pulling and scratching,” says one Sydney woman about the all-girls school she attended in the 1980s.”

Changing the underlying social drivers, not doing what is best for boys, or girls either, is the focus of “Guardian readers”,whom, as I said, have a disproportionate voice in these sorts of discussions: the reason failing boys are ignored in favour of pushing girls into STEM, and the reason for the “bureaucratic” example I gave above of a conclusion that utterly contradicts the facts just stated, something terrifyingly common if the facts don’t fit the narrative. And the narrative is spelled out not simply in the framing device of saying, “boys’ schools bad? Girls’ schools good?” but in the process they then follow, each of those articles from the Guardian and the ABC and the Herald and the many more like it you will quickly find if you do your own research: they focus far more on the problems of boys’ schools, and they question the value of girls’ schools, and they conclude that single-sex schools are a relic of a bygone era that will soon be gone.

Because this is the ultimate goal of “Guardian readers”: a progressive world free of toxic masculinity, patriarchy, gender discrimination. This is what Guardian readers worry about, and to them, schooling is a way to overcome these things. It is not a place to assist boys and girls to learn and grow into their best selves: it is a place to overcome “the patriarchy” and dismantle all the supposed advantages men have over women, not simply in schools but all throughout society, notwithstanding the figures we saw at the start that show that girls are now ahead of boys in almost all areas of education, and this is, unsurprisingly, starting to manifest as a gender pay gap among young professionals.

Yes, yes, I get the irony of that. My point is, boys do not need to be any more disadvantaged, any more than girls need the playing field weighted further in their favour. Both can succeed, and excel, by playing to their strengths. But this is not the goal of people who want to eradicate boys’ spaces: because male strengths, competitiveness and logic and being prepared to work longer hours and, yes, being bigger and louder and more forceful, these horrify Guardian readers because they believe male behaviour can only be toxic. Even positive male traits are seen by such people as problematic - if a man is the one to run into a burning building it's because he’s macho, or a risk-taker, while if a man physically defends a woman, or a nation, it's just more evidence men are violent. Masculinity is to be suppressed and eradicated. Boys’ spaces are to be feminised wherever possible.

When you are in the sort of fight to “smash the patriarchy” that they believe themselves to be in, every other issue, like schooling or child-rearing or Boy Scouts vs Girl Guides, becomes a battlezone (or at least a skirmish site) in the wider war, and you have to be prepared to make sacrifices. And hence, they are willing to sacrifice girls. It doesn’t matter if girls' schools are better for many girls - single-sex schools have to be abolished, and education has to be feminised by making every school co-ed. Every male space has to be feminised - and to do so, girl’s spaces have to be largely allowed to die off, or girls might just go and do their own thing, leaving boys to do their own thing, and that’s what they fear above all.

It was never about helping the girls, lifting them up or supporting their success. They are trying to abolish western society, not have an equal share in it. Whiteness, colonialism, misogyny - why would you support a society that has these things at its roots? Why would you want an equal share of it? 

It's not about building up the girls. It's about tearing down the boys.

It always was.