It was money, or rather the limited supply of it, that prompted the Armidale School to break with its 120-year tradition of teaching boys exclusively on its grounds in the New England tablelands of New South Wales. The school wanted to grow. Headmaster Murray Guest told parents that co-education would not change the school’s culture. 

But he was wrong. “There is no doubt in my mind it has been a good change,” Guest says. “The social environment in the school is a better now than it was before.

“interaction between boys and girls isolates some of the less desirable aspects of single-sex groups,” he says. “So boys downplay the very macho and girls break out of the ‘girls being girls’ mould. 

“There’s certainly been a softening of the school’s culture and growing sophistication.” 

… boys downplay the very macho and girls break out of the ‘girls being girls’ mould

Macho cultures within Australian boys’ schools have come under scrutiny in recent times. It has sparked a revival of debate about whether such single-sex school environments breed hyper-masculine behaviours and raises the question: do the social benefits of educating boys and girls together outweigh the widely touted academic gains of single-sex education? 

Dylan Laver graduated from high school two years ago, having attended Sydney Grammar boys school before finishing school at the co-ed Manly public high school. His elite boys’ school did not have a substantial problem with macho or misogynistic culture, he says, but suggests that isn’t true of all such schools. 

“There’s a stereotypical male type that certain schools look for when students are applying,” he says. “They want students of their school to act and look a certain way, and they play a role – unintentionally – in developing a very masculine culture. 

“Then again, in a co-ed school guys find their own groups anyway. So elements of misogyny can occur in both situations, but I think the environment in single-sex private schools makes it more likely to happen.”

When the Armidale School began considering the move from single-sex to co-education, it conducted a literature review and found that neither school structure was inherently superior.

As Judith Gill from the University of South Australia puts it: “There are good schools and ordinary schools in both categories.”