Turning an elite private boys’ school co-educational remains on foot after a court agreed a word written in a 150-year-old document was gender-neutral.
Newington College in Sydney’s inner west announced its intention to shift to co-education across its kindergarten-to-year 12 program in late 2023.
The school, which charges fees of up to $42,200 a year, has exclusively taught boys since it was founded in 1863.
While a group of parents launched street protests in January 2024, some backed a legal attack in the NSW Supreme Court.
That lawsuit hit a major defeat on Wednesday with Justice Guy Parker ruling that the school’s 152-year-old trust deed did not prevent girls from being admitted.
“The object of such school shall be to provide an efficient course of education for youth,” the trust deed reads.
The parents argued that the word “youth” in this document, while ambiguous, referred solely to boys because of circumstances at the time.
This stopped girls from being enrolled on the school’s Stanmore land which it had acquired in 1873 months after the deed was finalised.
The school’s council, on the other hand, said the term was gender-neutral.
Justice Parker agreed.
While the original Newington School was boys-only, and the church and government at the time had only considered single-sex schools, this did not mean the term “youth” excluded girls, he said.
“I have concluded that the word ‘youth’ in the 1873 Trust Deed was used in a gender-neutral sense, and does not mandate male-only enrolment at the College,” he wrote in his judgment.
“The claim for a declaration to the contrary … fails and must be dismissed.”
Newington’s principal welcomed the court’s decision.
“We have been steadfast in our position throughout these proceedings and we remain excited to build on our rich history and traditions by taking Newington into our next era,” Michael Parker wrote in a letter sent to the school’s community.
“We look forward now to uniting around our future vision for Newington College as a respected, modern and dynamic school for boys, girls, young men and young women from next year and into the future.”
The court case may not be over yet, however.
Justice Parker will later hear whether the parents will press claims that a male-only limitation applies to other property held by the school’s council, including later-acquired lands.
Newington’s co-ed plans come as the NSW government adjusts public school boundaries to ensure all students have guaranteed access to a co-educational school by 2027.
More than 150,000 girls and more than 130,000 boys attend single-sex schools across Australia, according to a 2023 Catholic schools discussion paper.
About five-in-six of those students are in non-government schools, like Newington.
