Families in some parts of Sydney where all the local high schools are single-sex will have the option of a co-educational school from 2025, the state government has announced, while others will have to wait until 2027.
Parents have been lobbying for change for years, and in the lead-up to this year’s state election, Chris Minns pledged parents would have guaranteed access to co-educational public schools within Labor’s first term of government.
“We can’t be in a situation in modern Australia where you’ve only got the choice of single-sex schools for your children,” Minns said in November.
On Friday, the education department confirmed families in some single-sex school intake areas in parts of the inner west and south-west of Sydney would be able to enrol their children into a co-educational public high school in 2025, while all NSW students would have guaranteed access by 2027.
School communities will be communicated with prior to enrolments opening, with proposed 2025 changes to intake areas expected to be confirmed by term 1 of 2024, focusing on suburbs with a high concentration of single-sex high schools.
Fifteen schools are under consideration, including Ashfield Boys, Burwood Girls, Canterbury Boys, Canterbury Girls, Homebush Boys, Strathfield Girls, Birrong Girls, Birrong Boys, Granville Boys, Auburn Girls, Punchbowl Boys, Bankstown Girls, Beverly Hills Girls, Belmore Boys and Wiley Park Girls.
The change will come too late for Claire Lowrie, who wants her son, who is now in year six, to go to a co-ed high school next year.
Lowrie’s family live in Earlwood, one of 34 school catchments in Sydney where the only public high schools are single-sex.
“We are not parents who are shopping around for a school with the best Atars or Naplan results,” Lowrie said.
“We simply want to send our son to the local comprehensive co-ed public high school.”
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Their area is zoned for Canterbury Boys high school – a single-sex school under consideration by the department.
Under the state’s catchment system, parents can apply to out-of-area co-educational schools but are refused if the schools are full or near capacity.
Lowrie and her partner applied for all the nearest co-educational schools but were rejected for out-of-area enrolment by Marrickville, Dulwich Hill and Kingsgrove North high schools.
Lowrie is stumped as to why co-educational schooling remains a right afforded in parts of Sydney to the privileged who can pay for private education.
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“In making the choice to move to Earlwood, we were encouraged by the strong statements that Labor made in the lead-up to the last election,” Lowrie said.
“We love everything about the place – except that we are zoned for a single-sex school. We are now looking at moving house to avoid this form of gender segregation being imposed on our son.”
The NSW education minister, Prue Car, said the government was “working hard on the plan to roll out what is a complex reform, including planning the expansion of co-ed catchments”.
She noted parents in the inner and south-west would be “among the first to be informed” next year about options for students starting year 7 in 2025.
A spokesperson for the department of education said it was “committed to providing guaranteed access to a coeducational public high school for all students in NSW” within this term of government.
According to the Good Schools Guide, only NSW, Victoria and Tasmania continue to have single-sex public high schools.
NSW has 131 single-sex schools, 21 of which are public, compared with eight in Victoria and two in Tasmania.
About 35,000 students are enrolled in single-sex schools at NSW public high schools this year compared with 272,361 in co-educational schools.
Research into educational outcomes at single-sex versus co-educational schools is inconclusive. But there has been a growing trend of legacy single-sex boys and girls schools announcing they will open their doors to the opposite sex amid a shift in societal values.