Kate Emery: Private schools and the co-ed debate. Why it should be a no-brainer

The best cure for sexism is teaching men and women to like each other.

Not romantically — if we needed instructions to fancy one another, the human race would never have evolved past bacteria — but to relate as humans.

It’s why this week I found myself in a place no journalist feels entirely comfortable: in furious agreement with a politician.

Specifically, I was nodding along with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as he backed the decision by his former school, St Mary’s Cathedral College, to go co-ed.

“There’s something healthy about boys and girls not being separated until they hit uni, is my personal view,” he said on ABC radio. “I remember that there would be a bit of craziness when we’d have school dances with St Bridget’s at Marrickville or Holy Cross at Woollahra, and that probably wasn’t ideal.

“My son (who went co-ed) has friends, both young men and young women, now that he’s in his early 20s, who he went through school with, and that’s fantastic.”

If you’re wondering why the Prime Minister was being asked about co-education instead of whether working from home is really every worker’s right, blame Newington College.

That’s the private boy’s school that moved at least one “old boy” to tears after announcing plans to admit girls, igniting a debate about single-sex education.

The principal of an all-girls school, Sydney’s Presbyterian Ladies’ College, intervened to suggest it wasn’t a huge deal to let boys and girls exist alongside each other.

Just kidding! He poured kero on the flames, declaring PLC girls would never play sport or music with Newington girls.

“Pubescent girls benefit from being able to practice and play hard and freely, without an awareness of watching eyes,’’ Paul Burgis wrote to parents. He didn’t add “PS: Boys have cooties”, but it was implied.

Sydney is particularly weird about its private school culture, but it exists elsewhere, where in certain circles the question “Where did you go to school” is as reliable as a Range Rover at the school gates.

Some schools are switching to co-ed. Others have said they have no plans to do so. That’s their right, just as it’s the right of parents to decide what school is best for their kid.

But I think the future of education will be increasingly co-ed. Not because of any reductive belief that all-boys schools breed toxic masculinity and all-girls schools are bitchy breeding grounds for future eating disorders.

But because, while school is a place for children to learn enough poetry to impress at parties, enough maths to balance a budget and enough physics to pretend to understand the film Tenet, it’s also a place to learn how to survive and thrive in the world.

And the world, unless you’re reading this from prison, a convent or possibly the front three rows of a Taylor Swift concert, is co-ed.

School doesn’t have to mirror society — if my co-workers and I started dressing identically or knocking off at 3pm I suspect my boss would have questions — but it should prepare you for it.

The science on whether boys or girls learn better in single-sex schools isn’t settled. Among other things, single-sex schools are overwhelmingly private, making it more likely that students come from high socio-economic backgrounds — the best predictor of academic success.

More importantly, I’m not convinced prioritising academic performance over learning how to get along with one-half of the population is the right call.

Growing up understanding that men and women are just people — not bogeymen, prizes or a homogenous group at all — matters more, long-term, than getting an 85 or a 75 on that econs exam. Combating sexism at a young age can’t help but have a knock-on effect for sexual violence, family violence and affinity bias (our tendency to favour the familiar).

When former schoolboys (who need to let go of the school they attended 30 years ago) declare their grandsons will no longer be able to attend their alma mater, they’re sending a message. When the principal of a girls’ school rejects the idea of single-sex students interacting with co-ed students, the message is reaffirmed.

That message is that the differences between men and women matter more than the similarities. When, in reality, the exact opposite is true.