‘Overwhelmed with boys’: Wesley College applies to discriminate based on gender

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A private school in inner Melbourne has applied for an exemption to the Equal Opportunity Act to enroll more girls, saying if it’s not granted it could end up a boys’ school.

Wesley College, an independent co-educational school, currently operates under an exemption, granted in 2018, which expires in mid-December.

Kate Evans and daughter Riley, who attends Wesley College.Credit: Joe Armao

In the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal on Thursday the school asked for a five-year extension, with principal Nick Evans saying that without it, Wesley “would not be a co-educational school in the sense we understand it”.

“We believe true education requires a balance between the genders. As a result, if we weren’t given the exemption, we would be overwhelmed by boys,” he told the hearing.

“There comes a point where the parents of girls who chose a co-educational experience decide they weren’t getting one. There would come a tipping point where it would become a boys’ school with a few girls in it.”

Wesley College, which next year will charge $40,053 a year for senior students, was originally a boys’ school but became co-educational in 1978.

Wesley College is one of Melbourne’s most prestigious schools.Credit: Penny Stephens

Evans said they aimed for a one-to-one ratio of girls to boys, and that the tipping point would come when that surpassed one girl to 1.5 boys. He said the school was “very welcoming of non-binary students”, including having LGBTQI+ groups on each campus.

“I would argue the co-educational nature of the college allows us to cater for non-binary students, of whom we have quite a few across the college,” he said.

If the school’s application is granted, they would be able to advertise for students, structure waiting lists, allocate placements and offer enrolments and scholarships based on gender across the entire school.

Wesley College director of community engagement Fiona Dickson told the tribunal that the school started engaging students on waitlists two to three years before they would start at the school and conduct interviews with students and families, considering the students’ relationship with the college and if they were children of old collegians.

Dickson said there were more girls’ schools in Melbourne than boys’ schools, and parents of boys anecdotally had more urgency to get on waiting lists when they were born.

Dickson said boys made up 65 per cent of their applications.

“There comes a point where that’s overwhelming and parents of girls feel, and girls feel, they are not heard, not visible, not able to be part of a classroom situation without some balance,” she said.

Evans said Wesley rejected the notion that either gender benefited from excluding the other – in a single gender school setting – at an important time developmentally.

“We feel that the genders do as well academically together as they do separately with all the benefits of growing up together as friends, that’s why we believe coeducation is important,” he said.

HWL Ebsworth partner Philip Battye, for the school, told the tribunal the exemption Wesley was seeking involved significantly less discrimination than in single-gender schools.

The tribunal heard some parents had lodged concerns about the impact of waitlists on their children but they had been resolved.

Wesley College alumni relations manager and former collegian Kate Evans said one of the key reasons she sent her six-year-old daughter Riley to the school was for its co-educational setting and holistic approach.

“Diversity is one of the strongest attributes that Wesley offers. In the world today it’s more important than ever and to be learning from a wide variety of perspectives and voices, I feel that can only come from coeducation,” she said.

Regent Consulting’s Paul O’Shannassy, who advises parents on school choice, said the gender issue arose because of the lack of all-boys schools.

“There are seven all-boys independent schools in Melbourne, [and] as a result you have more boys vying for places,” he said.

He said there was more than 20 independent all-girls schools, with fees over $20,000. He said over the last 20 or 30 years a lot of boys schools had become co-ed.

“If we had a normal distribution of boys’ schools, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

It’s not uncommon for co-educational private schools to apply for exemptions to the Equal Opportunity Act to maintain gender balance.

St Michael’s Grammar School in St Kilda applied, and was granted, exemptions to the Act in 2007, 2010 and 2013 and again in 2018, where it outlined that achieving gender equality was recognised as a critical issue.

“This exemption is a standard procedure that we, along with many other independent schools, follow to assist us to achieve and maintain gender balance between students,” the school said in a notice in 2018.

Caulfield Grammar School was granted an exemption, set to expire this year, to structure waiting and enrolment lists to target prospective students of either gender, as was Geelong Grammar, one of Victoria’s most expensive private schools, whose exemption is in place until 2024.

VCAT member Christopher Thwaites has reserved his decision.

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