The continuing failure by Sydney’s high-fee private boys schools to boost gender equality on their boards is under scrutiny amid renewed concerns about how a mix of privilege and concentrated masculinity affects schools’ culture.
There have long been calls for all-male schools to show greater leadership on gender issues. These intensified in 2021, when 22-year-old former Kambala student Chanel Contos delivered a disturbing list of allegations from young women who said they had been sexually harassed or assaulted during high school or shortly after by young men who attended nearby Sydney private boys schools.
Contos’ focus was consent education, which is now a feature of the curriculum from kindergarten to year 10.
Schools can work on boys’ perception of women in other ways, too, and one of them is embracing female leadership.
Yet a new Herald analysis shows men still outnumber women on the governing boards of most Sydney’s high-fee private boys schools. Only two have attained gender equity.
The culture of private boys schools has been put under the spotlight again after allegations that three Scots College students, all in their early teens, raped a girl in Bondi Junction. In a separate incident, three older teens – including two boys from St Gregory’s in Campbelltown – have been accused of raping a teenage girl.
Gender diversity at the top filters down to the culture of the school. Female board representatives can help schools develop strong approaches to sexual consent education, to preparing boys for working alongside women as adults, and to navigating the horrendous social media algorithms to which many are exposed.
Yet Sydney’s high-fee private boys schools have still struggled to achieve stronger female representation.
Some are hampered by tradition, others by rules. Their boards and councils are replete with old boys and male church members.
That said, some schools cast off the old church governance and have switched to corporate-style boards to take control of assets and ensure they met governance standards.
Kate Harper, an experienced consultant focusing on board search and leadership succession initiatives, said independent schools could look to the Australian Institute of Company Directors principles for not-for-profit boards.
These recommend an appropriate mix of people with a diverse set of skills, experience and backgrounds that align with the organisation’s purpose, vision and strategy. “It is hard to see how a council dominated by one gender can effectively guide the school’s executive on preparing their students to deal with the many challenges and risks associated with social media, sexual consent, as well as preparation to join an increasingly gender-equal workforce,” she said.
Many of Sydney’s high-fee private girls schools have reflected societal change and introduced equal gender or near-equal gender splits for board appointments. Boys’ schools must do the same.
The old-fashioned ideas that shaped these boys’ schools need a reboot. For the good of their students, the sector must embrace female leadership and relegate male bastion councils to the past.
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