The furore over exclusive, private Newington College’s plans to turn fully co-educational by 2033 was reignited this week as students returned to school.
A small group of parents and “Old Boys” (former Newington College students) formed a picket line at the school gates in protest of girls attending “their” school.
The 160-year-old institution announced the intention to admit girls over the next decade to the all-boys school in November 2023.
Mother of two boys currently attending Newington College, lawyer Victoria Phillips moved from the UK to Australia and decided on Newington College partly because of its 40-minute lessons (because she believes boys have shorter attention spans) and partly because the school had “ergonomic chairs” for her boys to sit on. Perhaps she was unaware all schools have 40-minute lessons for all students in almost every Australian school, public or private and have done for years.
Former Old Boy and father of an Old Boy, Tony Retsos, was distraught and cried when being interviewed about his plans for his yet-to-be-conceived grandson to attend the school and maintain the family tradition. “I won’t bring him to a co-ed school,” Retsos emotionally declared.
Another parent declared, “It’s all part of this sort of woke, toxic masculinity-type palaver”.
The same parent went on to say:
“I just think it’s ridiculous that after 160 years of thinking it’s a good idea to have a boys-only school for the development of boys through very developmental part of their lives without being influenced by considerations of what they should look like or how they should act in front of girls... why is that wrong after 160 years?”
The transition to co-ed is neither new nor “woke”. And for any parent to suggest that the inclusion of the girls would “influence” their boys infers that all students are heterosexual or ought to be heterosexual, a fact simply not based in reality.
This viewpoint is not dissimilar to historical arguments when previous all-boys schools turned co-ed. In an article in the Australian Women’s Weekly in April 1934 discussing co-educational schools, Dr AH Watts, representing a co-educational school said, 'Are we troubled with school romances? Not a bit!'
The same article also claimed:
'One of the arguments against co-education is that it breeds effeminacy among the boys.'
Over 50 years ago, in October 1970, the Methodist Conference of NSW advised Newington College and several other schools to become co-educational.
A parent of two former Newington College students, Kerry Maxwell, speaking to Nine News, claimed the school did not notify the parents and that parents and students had been gagged and not given a free voice despite the school having an extensive consultation process in 2022.
A letter to parents from Newington College headmaster Michael Parker reiterated that he and the whole College Executive have ‘every confidence that the co-educational decision by the Council is in the best interest of the future of the College’ and that ‘the consultation process in 2022 was very extensive’.
Former Old Boys Jack Jacobs and Hugh Piper are supporters of Newington College’s plans to go co-ed and conclude that “co-education is entirely continuous with Newington’s oldest and finest traditions” — a reference to the religious tolerance values the school was founded on and continues to uphold.
The reaction to the decision by Newington to go co-ed has exposed again how the wealthy are so accustomed to privilege that they see equality as oppression. And it illustrates how exclusive private schools form and maintain networks long after leaving school, which then infiltrate every sector of society to promote advantages to Old Boys and “Old Girls”.
Protesting Newington Old Boys are particularly resistant to change and inferring the introduction of girls to the 160-year-old same-sex school will somehow threaten the academic results of boys. There is no evidence to support this argument.
Felicity Menzies argued in 2022 that the shift to coeducation supports workplace diversity:
‘Coeducation settings, to the extent that they provide greater opportunities for boys and girls to work alongside each other as equals compared with single-sex schools, are better placed to challenge the damaging stereotypes that limit the long-term financial security of girls and the wellbeing and safety of both girls and boys over their lives. They also provide a more inclusive environment for gender non-binary students.’
This inequality in Australian education systems and the ensuing private school networks founded in those schools ensure that a class system is entrenched in Australian society that is not beneficial to children or Australia as a whole.
Every child should be given every opportunity to learn and thrive at school, irrespective of their gender, postcode or wealth to make Australia achieve its potential now and into the future.
You can follow Belinda Jones on Twitter @belindajones68.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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