Schools may offer cheaper fees to either girls or boys to even up gender imbalance.
Source: Supplied
CO-EDUCATIONAL private schools could use a discount fee website to offer cheaper enrolments to girls or boys in a bid to fix gender imbalances in their classes.
The School Places site launched in South Australia this month with three private schools offering discounts of up to 30 per cent, and for as long as four years, to fill vacancies in various year levels.
The online business says many more SA schools are showing interest and one, along with several in Victoria, has already indicated it wants to make gender-specific offers, a move that would require exemption from equal opportunity laws.
Pembroke School has previously won exemptions to preference the enrolment of either gender in primary years, used only when an imbalance is more than 55:45 in a year level, but not to offer lower fees.
Prescott College in Prospect, St Francis de Sales College at Mt Barker and St George College at Mile End are the first SA schools to appear on School Places, which launched in the eastern states last year.
“A lot of schools need to put the decision (to use the site) in front of their boards,” School Places chief executive Natalie Mactier said.
“That’s happening at the moment. I guess we’ll see the outcomes of those in the next few months.”
Ms Mactier said she did not believe it was “injust or unfair” to offer discounts based on gender.
According to the Attorney-General’s Department, schools can seek temporary exemptions from the Equal Opportunity Tribunal to “redress the effect of past discrimination”.
Or in the event of a complaint about enrolment practices, they can attempt to justify gender discrimination under the “special measures” section of the Equal Opportunity Act.
“Schools would need to demonstrate that offering discounted fees or gender specific vacancies is a scheme or undertaking intended to ensure that persons of the one sex have equal opportunities with persons of the other sex,” a spokesman said.
Prescott College principal Craig Mattner said School Places, which claims to have brokered enrolments in the eastern states worth almost $12 million, would be a good marketing tool.
Prescott would separately offer discounts to current parents who made successful enrolment referrals to ensure fairness, he said.
St Francis de Sales principal Pam Ronan said the website was “a very smart way of connecting with tech-savvy families who do a lot of research when looking for schools”.
Neither Prescott nor St Francis were interested in offering gender-specific places and St George College did not return calls.
The Association of Independent Schools expected most schools would rather help current parents with fee remissions rather than offer discounts to new ones.
The Equal Opportunity tribunal rejected an application from Pulteney Grammar School to favour enrolment of girls in 2006.
School Places website could be used to offer discounts for gender-specific school vacancies
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