Why Girls' Schools Are More Important Than Ever Before

Welcome to Dare to Be More, the podcast from MLC School in Bowwood, Sydney. Today we're exploring why girls schools are more important than ever before with our special guests, Daniel Sandrel, the head of the junior school and Joanna Graffin, the head of the senior school. In this episode you'll discover how single sex education eliminates gender-based stereotypes and expectations, the unique benefits of girls schools across different developmental stages and why creating safe spaces for confidence-building remains vital in today's society. MLC School is committed to empowering young women to become confident, compassionate and courageous leaders who dare to be more. I'm your host Anthony Pearl, let's begin today's conversation. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Dare to Be More and we have a very fascinating question to ask both of our guests today but before we ask that question, ask them both to introduce themselves. So firstly Joanna and Daniel, welcome to the program. Joanna, what do you kick things off and introduce yourself to the audience please? Hello, so I'm Joanna Graffin, I'm the head of senior school here at MLC so I look after the girls from year 7 to 12 and I work very closely with our other guest, Daniel. I'm so sorry, I'm almost a counterpart, I'm Daniel Sandal, I'm the head of the junior school which is from pre-K, we have a pre-school through to year 6 and obviously I work hand in hand with Joe because obviously our students continue on into our senior school. So we have this question that's dangling in front of us. Why girls schools are more important than ever before than there's multi layers to this one? And I'm fascinated even as a starting point if there's a different answer to that simple question between the two different schools so Daniel, why don't you kick us off? What's the answer to that question? Oh, it's multi layered and look here I am a boy in an old girl's environment talking about this topic and I'm really passionate to do so. I've been around for a long time now, I've worked in many, many different schools and many contexts I've worked and visit boy schools, I've certainly worked in many, many co-educational schools and I have worked now into all girls schools and there is a difference and that difference is all around the well-being of that girl. I'm going to be honest boys, we're different. You walk into a primary school into a kindergarten class and you just sit back and watch and listen and you'll see why girls schools are so important. Boys bow in age to dominate. If you do a survey of who gets the teacher's attention most of the time, it's a boy, who answers most of the questions, it's a boy. Who manipulates most of the materials in the equipment, it's boys. This is not a criticism of boys, I'm a boy myself. It's just for very nature of boys and the way that they engage in an our educational context. What is absolutely so inspiring about an all girls school and in my context, no girls primary school is that right from the very, very beginning, our girls get the full teacher attention. They get to take risk where sometimes the boys may have dominated. They don't have any gender-based expectations placed upon them and like or not, those things do happen in a co-educational environment. What I have seen in my experience as an educator over time is how girls really actually get to thrive in an all girls environment. There's a lot to unpack in that. Joanna, what about from your perspective, particularly dealing with girls as they start to mature and we know that that's going to be a factor as well? Yeah, I think some of the things are very similar and some are different. I think the most important thing in a senior school context that I see is the empowerment and the confidence. The confidence to be themselves, the confidence to develop those really strong peer relationships without that competing factor of the boys in that environment. I think Daniel said something about those gender-based stereotypes and that's something that's really important to me in a senior school context. We have full physics classes, full participation in chemistry and we've got engineering here at MLC school and if you look in many co-ed schools, they're often considered boys subjects. Even now in 2025, you'll see that those subjects are often dominated by boys. You walk into a university, lecture hall and engineering is still dominated by boys. Here, these girls are leaving in Year 12 and knowing that they can go and do engineering, they can go and do science, they can go and be whoever they want to be because that confidence has been instilled in them here, that all of these opportunities are for girls and they can take it and do great things. So that's what I love about a girls school. Joanna, is there a strength in being able to know what it's like to be a leader and to make those own choices and then how ready are they to walk into an environment where a bit university or into a workforce where it's definitely a co-ed environment in the majority of cases? Yeah, I think MLC, we have very strong female leadership. Our principal is a woman. We've got a female dominated executive team, sorry Daniel. And the girls see that it's really normal for women to lead. We have a really strong old girls union. We have many events in which their mothers are invited to come in and speak about their workplaces. And I think for a lot of the girls, it doesn't really occur to them that they would step behind a boy. So because it's just so normal for them to step forward and take the lead in a school context. When they come back after they leave, they often say, "Oh, it just didn't occur to me that there would be any gender disparity because they're ready." So that's something that's pretty great about a girl's school. And Daniel, particularly from early on in the piece, having girls being treated just as girls and not having to worry about boys, how big an influence, positive influences that. Oh, look, we kind of estimate how significant that is. And what else? We probably don't see the true benefit of that until they leave us and as Joe was expressing go out into the workplace. But look, let me give you a really simple example and just one that just happened during the last school holidays. We as a school competed in the National Robo Cup competition. So it's nationwide. And both in our senior school and in our junior school, we got placed third in the country and a couple of different divisions. Now I truly believe if those students, if those girls and young women were in a co-educational environment, it is far, far less likely that those girls only had that opportunity, but had the opportunity through their schooling to participate at such a high level in a STEM subject, to actually engage with those skills and work with those skills. And we see the benefit of that in that great achievement that the girls made. And from when they're very, very young, there's no inhibitions. There's no stereotypes. And what I find fascinating for a lot of young women when they leave us and go out to university study into the workplace is they may actually go into careers and pursuits, but they are truly really passionate about. It may be STEM, it may be sport, it might be other areas. They're in a co-educational environment, they may have had those opportunities. And that starts from when they are very, very young. And I imagine Joanna, that's something that you pick up on. Is it creating safer spaces by having an all girls environment? And how important is that as well in that development? Yeah, I think having a safe space to be confident and be themselves is really key. I think it's important to go back to what Daniel said earlier about, "There's nothing wrong with boys. There's a fantastic." And these girls have really strong relationships with boys in other things that they do. They have family friends that are boys. They, a lot of their girls do co-curricular activities with boys. We have mock trial events against boys and debating. And the girls do musical pursuits and own bands with boys. I think all of those things are really good. But I think we can't shy away from the fact that being a teenager is really hard. And that social emotional development in those times when they're 13, 14, 15, all of us as parents know that is a really tough time. And we see that as teachers as well. And sometimes it's just good to give them a little bit of a reprieve from that mess when they're with girls. And look, girls' relationships are hard to in terms of their friendships and navigating that. But having that sort of safe space to develop those really strong relationships with their peers can make it a really safe space so that they can work on the ways in which that they relate to the boys as well. How do you put this in the context of today's society as well? Because what I wanted to ask about is the fact that as we've talked about another episode, or we'll talk about another episode so the podcast is that the school has had a legacy of various generations. There are kids in the school that have had their mothers and their grandmothers that have gone through the school. And so how much of a role does all of that play as well in the strength that you can give to women and the expectation that they might have in going through the school? I think we're very proud of the fact that MLC School was one of the first to have women graduate and go to university. Some of the first graduates went and studied physics at University of Sydney. So that's something that really is strong in our history. We have our sapphires lunch, it's this really beautiful occasion where the women who have graduated more than 50 years ago invited back to the school to celebrate, to be with each other. They have a chopping service and they have this lunch where they hear from the school captains of today and they talk about what MLC School did for them. And I think it's that sense of community. It's that sense of pride that they grew at this school and that they can be who they want to be and be really strong women and in leadership. But I think what you said about today, yes, we're feminists and things have changed and the girls are dealing with a different world but they know that there's this safety in this community and they'll always belong to this community and that's something that they can always look back on and fall back on. And Daniel bringing you back to you as well. The premise originally of the question that was posed is more important than ever before. Has that changed over the years? Is it becoming more important that we keep girls schools separated? I look at this. It's a very interesting question because at the moment at a cross-found nation, we're seeing a lot of schools change a lot and some of our boys' schools are becoming co-educational and merging. We've got some schools combining that we've been single six schools before. And look, I've been put out there too that for many families, they don't have this choice. Many families don't have the choice between co-education or all boys or all girls. They're all education. So our families that can come to us are very privileged in that regard. And there's a lot of research out there and one of the things is it's not for academic reasons that we send our daughters to an all-girls school. It's for all those other reasons that we've spoken about before, about the sense of not placing any stereotypes upon our students, really empowering them in terms of a leadership and in a school seeing that women can be leaders and in my context, while some are leader, they see me also responding and working with leaders that are seeing you towards me and how that's done respectfully. It's about the girls getting more than ever having opportunities to break through into areas that they really truly are passionate about and not something that they might be locked into because of their gender. Because they do exist and the reality is there's truly a gender gap in our society. There is not equality in our society whether it be evident or whether it be underlined in our thinking, it's more important than ever. And I was upset before this doesn't start for young people when they're in their teenage years. It literally starts in the early years of their learning where they start to learn and develop and think about who am I. And so that's why it's so important that we here at MLC school start from a very young age. And Joanna, I imagine you don't get many people saying, well, why aren't you allowing boys into the school? I imagine it's more about girls being embraced as being a singular sex school which probably points to the factors to why it's important for it to continue. Yeah, I think there's definitely an appetite. I think there are many families can see the value in their daughters being embraced in their single sex school that having the opportunity to be themselves be seen to find their place, I guess. Find the thing that they're good at and really go with that. And I think that's what our school in particular does really well is that there are so many opportunities for girls to find their niche. Daniel mentioned RoboCarp. The fact that these girls are going to another state to build robots and code them and it's just amazing what they do. The girls just find their niche in music or playing sport, but there is just nothing that they can't have a go at. And I think that's what families are looking for when they choose a school like ours. I mean, sports are fascinating one because sport is kept separated all the way through. You know, we see men's and women's teams in whatever sport you care to bring up. So it's really interesting to keep that separated in a school sense as well. So they're not feeling as though they're competing with one another because they're not expected to compete with one another when they get older as well. Yeah, absolutely. I think we've got the independent girls school association for our sport as well and allows them to establish really good relationships with students in other schools as well and have that healthy competition and sense of team and school spirit. We're seeing girls stay in sport much longer in that context in a girls school environment because often when they hit those teenage years, if parents are taking them to play club sport, it becomes a little bit harder. But when they're at school and training straight after school, their friends are all doing it. So they're going to stay in sport longer. And for me, that's an absolute win because the longer that we can keep girls active and involved in team sport, the better it is both for their health, but also for their social and social wellbeing because they're busy. They're off their phones. I hate to bring up the phones, but they're off TikTok. They're out of the group chat. They're running around and having a great time. They also then have relationships with girls in a different context than the playground. So it might be different to their social group. You know, they've got that friend from netball or that friend from water polo or that friend from athletics that they can go chat to if things are hard with their friends at school. I always think sport and co-curricular involvement is such a win for that development. Daniel, just to wrap things up on your side of things, boys and girls mature at different rates. And even in those early years, there's a significant difference in their for a great value in keeping girls with girls. Absolutely. And Joe mentioned earlier how we'd go to boys schools and your question immediately brings a memory up to me where my year six students always have a social adance with some of our other local boys schools. And it's so evident there when he's being them together, you can see the emotional and social growth difference between the girls and the boys. And we know that boys and girls mature differently. And it's just another further advantage of having an all girls environment here where we are able to work with the girls when they grow and mature throughout their ages and stages appropriately. Because where that disconnect does come between the boys and the girls certainly can be a challenge in co-educational environment. But that's something that we can really harness here as we work with our girls as they mature together. We take advantage of that. We take advantage of that in terms of what we can do in terms of the teaching that we do in the class. We take advantage of that in terms of the academic demands that we can challenge our girls in class. So it's just another further advantage. So just to wrap things up with both of you, the question of dare to be more and how that relates to this whole idea of being a singular sex girl school, being more important than ever before. How do you think that interplay between dare to be more comes in? Joanna, I can ask you first. I think that it's not even dare to be more because they know they can be more. They're not being daring because they just think it's part of who they are. And I think that's what we build in a girl's school is that absolute confidence. They're not breaking down barriers. They're just being who they know they can be. So I think that's what we do really well in this context is just say you can be a leader. You can pursue whatever it is that you want to pursue if you work hard and if you're a good person. So yeah, that's what it is for me. And what about you Daniel? All see girls are more because they are in an all girl's school. The all girl's school environment here allows them to be more in so many different pursuits where they've had hindered opportunities in other contexts. And so they are daring in that sense because we have many more opportunities and what I love in particular about MLC school and Joe alluded to this too. It's not just in our academic. It's in all facets of life here. As for our music in the drama, in the creative arts, in the practical arts, there have so many opportunities to be more and to be more and to develop in the most strong, resilient young women which they become. Thank you for joining us on Dare to Be More. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. Like, comment, help more families discover these valuable conversations. For more information about MLC school and their approach to girls education, visit their website at mlcc.nsw.edu.au. Check out the show notes for more information. The Dare to Be More podcast is produced by podcast done for you. I'm your host Anthony Purl and we invite you to join us next time as we continue to explore what it means to Dare to Be More. [Music]