The " Co-Ed " Question ?

It seems that Sydney's eastern suburbs has a peculiar problem that is fast becoming a divisive political issue for the coming state election.  The education department is juggling numbers in that areas state schools to try and achieve a balance and running into that thorny issue of single gender schools or whether to embrace co-education.

The eastern suburbs is homed to several prestigious  private schools, all of which have strict same sex policies and at present it is served by two state high schools - Randwick Boys High and Randwick Girls High which both observe that same sex intake of pupils.

The problem emerges when numbers are taken into account.   Randwick Girls High is bursting at the seams while Randwick Boys High has many student vacancies.  Logical thinking suggests that this could be solved by making Randwick Boys High school co-educational.  That suggestion has created a furore and it seems that there is a deep division in parents minds.  What has emerged is that many parents prefer a single sex education for their daughters, but prefer that their sons be educated where the genders are mixed.

Most of the fight seems to be coming from Randwick Girls High which has inundated the suburb with a letter campaign opposing the change, probably thinking that their own school may be forced to go co-ed in the long term if that happens.  The political dimension widens with the Labor party promising an entirely new school for the suburb if it wins office.

There is no suggestion of imposing Co-ed status on Randwick Girls High but if Randwick Boys High goes Co-ed then obviously excess girl students will be turned away from the girls school. It is evident that many parents believe that girls attain a better education when they are separated from the distraction of nearby boys.

Co-ed supporters see that differently.  Concentrating males in a same sex educational establishment tends to heighten the division between the genders.  Social mobility is enhanced when the mix of girls and boys is seen as natural and not something that happens suddenly when both enter the work force.  The move towards gender equality is not enhanced by a sharp division in the school system.

In many ways, single gender high schools are an anomaly that has been preserved from an earlier age.  Primary schools are overwhelmingly Co-ed, and when students end their formal education and go on to university that form of higher learning is also Co-ed.  In earlier times we seem to have had a distraction about separating the genders in their teenage years, and perhaps we are paying a price for that in the resistance to equality as women claim career opportunities that were once closed to their gender.

It is unfortunate that this problem has emerged in proximity to an election.  The outcome that emerges will have more to do with political reality than with either school economics or the task of easing the relationship change between the genders in our emerging equal society.