Why schools going co-ed is so controversial
Sam Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal land. This is ABC News Daily. When one of the oldest or boys schools in the country declared it would be enrolling girls, it irked some old boys and parents so much, legal action has been threatened to try and stop the move. So why is there so much controversy when single sex schools decide to go co-ed? Today, an expert in girls and boys schooling, Judith Gill on the widely held misconceptions in the debate and what the research shows us about which system works best.
Judith, before you moved into research, you spent a few years as a school teacher. What was it that you saw in the classroom that led you to want to look into gender in schools?
Dr Judith Gill: Okay, it was the simple fact that I had a majority of boys in my senior maths class, and girls in my senior French class are a huge majority. There was a huge difference and I didn’t worry about that. I thought, oh, that was what they’ve chosen. It’s because they like those subjects that way et cetera, et cetera. It was only after I read a lot of the stuff coming out when I was in the States in the 1970s, propounding everywhere that girls are getting a bad time in schools. I thought, oh, maybe there’s worth a look. And that’s why I returned to Australia and chose to research gender differences in classrooms.
Sam Hawley: And that’s when you started to realise that it might be a bit more of a cultural issue, rather than a choice.
Dr Judith Gill: Exactly.
Sam Hawley: Yeah. So that’s why we’ve decided to talk to you about the culture of girls and boys in education. And we’ve decided to talk about that now because one of the oldest boys school in the country, Newington College in Sydney, which was founded back in 1863, has decided to go co-ed. And wow, Judith, it’s causing a fair bit of controversy.
ABC News clip: For 160 years, Newington College has educated boys and young men. Now it’s planning to become co-ed. But a group of parents, some of them old boys, has threatened legal action. A letter to the school challenges its legal right to enrol girls. An online petition has also been signed by more than 1800 people.
Dr Judith Gill: Yes, I’ve read about that and it reminded me very strongly of what had happened with Melbourne Grammar 30 years ago. The 1990s, when Melbourne Grammar wanted to explore the idea of coeducation.
ABC News archival clip: We’re thinking about what the world is going to be like in 10, 20 years time and saying, what should our students be doing at school to better prepare them for that world? And it’s the view of the council and myself that they’re better prepared for that world in a co-educational environment…
Dr Judith Gill: And I’d been invited to give a talk to the combined staff about how I saw coeducation would would be able to work. But the reaction of the old boys was huge. They produced a booklet called Grammar Under Threat, and they said the things that worried them was if the school were to take girls, there would be boys who were disallowed, and that was unthinkable.
Sam Hawley: Hmm. It sounds similar to the debate that’s happening at Newington. A group of parents and old boys has even threatened legal action against the school’s decision to turn co-ed. Publisher and grazier Ian Webster, who’s a former president of the Old Boys Union, says the change will be costly and disruptive. And he says it’s going to threaten bequest to the school from donors. And according to him, it has no educational advantage.
Ian Webster, Newington Old Boy: It’s speculative. The reality is that the boys education right now involves interaction with females. It involves study and inquiry into the into the importance of gender diversity, into the importance of gender balance that happens now. There’s no reason why the massive risks associated with a complete conversion to co-ed should be taken on. When there’s no real or actual need that’s visible at the present time.
Sam Hawley: Before we get any further into this debate, I just want you to unpack for me, Judith, the history of boys and girls schooling, because why did we start doing that in the first place?
Dr Judith Gill: Australian schools were modelled on the British tradition of boys schools, and their charge was to prepare the boys for entering into the professional schools of medicine and law and along with, you know, the general sciences more widely. But girls were hard pressed to find an academic pathway to school because they didn’t exist. Their pathway was understood to need things like domestic science and child minding, rather more than the more academic subjects. It was only in the latter half of the 20th century that middle class parents gradually became aware that their daughters were just as bright as their sons, and deserved a worthy education.
Sam Hawley: Hmm. Yes. Okay. Well, luckily things have changed somewhat since then.
Dr Judith Gill: Absolutely.
Sam Hawley: Let’s now go back to that case of Newington. It’s not just Newington, because there’s other independent schools around the country that are making the same decision. What else have the studies showed when it comes to co-education, how it benefits the girls, how it benefits the boys, for instance?
Dr Judith Gill: In both cases, girls and boys, I believe that it provides optimal preparation for working in a world in which some of them will be bosses and some of them will be workers, and in the case of boys, they may be in charge of girls, or they may be needing to work with a female boss. And you can see the way the business world is divided by gender. Still, in this country, quite significantly.
ABC News clip: The gender pay gap is slowly closing, but on average, women workers are still thousands of dollars a year poorer than their male counterparts…
Dr Judith Gill: So I think in terms of fitting young people to participate in our amazingly wonderful, diverse and inclusive world, you are working with perhaps a better component if you have boys and girls together.
Sam Hawley: So that comes back to culture again. And of course, some boys schools have appeared. Judith in the headlines for various controversies over the years. One elite Melbourne boys school – St Kevin’s – it made the headlines in recent years when some students were filmed singing sexist chants on a public tram…
ABC News clip: On a packed Melbourne tram. A group of school boys from Saint Kevin’s College are being loud and obnoxious. “Today is Thursday, today is Thursday…” And then the lyrics take a nasty turn. “I wish that all the ladies – I wish that all the ladies – were holes in the road – were holes in the road”…
Sam Hawley: If it was a co-ed school instead. Saint Kevin’s, for instance. Are you less likely to have those sorts of issues? Sexism, the cultural issues?
Dr Judith Gill: Sam, we can never know. You know, I think personally that the boys would not have behaved as they did had there been girls among them. But I would not want to push girls as the sort of moral guardians of the boys. That would be just not good at all. I do think, however, that more open conversations, better education to understand what consent means has been a huge undertaking by many really great educators in the last five years that I believe was probably lacking in the preparation that the boys that we talked about had. The other thing and Kevin’s has done is to have appointed a female principal, which I think is a very interesting development. And so I thought, oh, that was really quite cunning of Saint Kevin’s. And I believe the outlook is very positive and continues positive.
Sam Hawley: And Judith, what does the research tell us in terms of learning rather than culture? A co-ed schools, a better learning environment. I hear sometimes that boys thrive in co-ed schools when it comes to study learning, and girls thrive in all girls schools. Is that true? What do we know about that?
Dr Judith Gill: What we really do know is that the large studies, the large surface statistical studies done in the UK and the US have not been able to find a clear advantage of either one or the other type of school. The advantage is that some schools produce or seem to develop comes from the quality of the education in the schools, comes from the degree of academic culture that the school maintains, rather than whether or not they’re co-ed or single sex. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop those myths that you’ve just described. There are very many single sex schools who are prone to claim these are the only ways that girls can learn. That is profoundly untrue.
Sam Hawley: But surely, Judith, there are some benefits of single sex schools because some pretty impressive Australians have come out of those schools, haven’t they?
Dr Judith Gill: Well, yes, but that’s that’s an issue too, isn’t it? I mean, I went to a single sex school myself, and when I went to Melbourne University, where in the 1960s there was a four males to every one female, all the other young women I met had come the same route from single sex girls schools, because I think at the time they were probably much more academically oriented. And so indeed, we have many wonderfully successful Australian women whose path has been through or initiated in a single sex girls school. But that was at a different time. And culture, as we keep saying, has changed.
Sam Hawley: So tell me then, Judith, do you think this is the beginning of the end of single sex schooling in this country?
Dr Judith Gill: That’s a hard one to say because as I’ve said, there are some excellent single sex schools as indeed there are some excellent co-ed schools. But it’s not because they’re being single sex or because of being co-ed that they are excellent. They are. They are places where there is good, clear leadership, where the teachers are expertly trained and love teaching and work at teaching as what they really want to do in life. Obviously, the outcomes matter. The results matter, but also do the impressions of the staff and the students.
Sam Hawley: Mhm. And go on, tell me then what’s your message for the old boys of Newington College?
Dr Judith Gill: I think they are a long way beyond the frame of the young men they’re talking about. Schooling today embraces a much more difficult concept of talking about being a fully developed human being. To participate in social life, civilian world. Not just making the man I am, but making somebody who is socially developed and considerate and good at getting on with other people.
Sam Hawley: Dr. Judith Gill is an adjunct professor at the University of South Australia. Newington says girls will join the senior campus in 2028 in year seven and year 11, with the college becoming fully co-educational by 2033. This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald, Nell Whitehead and Sam Dunn, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I’m Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
