Introduction: flexible and non-traditional schools

We have been researching the flexible and non-traditional schooling sector for at least a decade and have often asked young people what they would be doing if they had not found their alternative education provider (see for example, Mills & McGregor, 2014; McGregor et al., 2017). Responses have been consistent: ‘Doing drugs. Gaol. Crime. Nothing. Hanging out in the streets. Dead. …’ The only semi-positive reply was a simple ‘I don’t know’. These are the voices of disengaged young people who had left the mainstream schooling system, most of them from highly marginalised backgrounds. The issue of disengagement from schooling continues to be a critical one for government and education departments across the world, although the full extent of the problem is often not known due to the inability of education systems to ‘track’ students who move between, and indeed out of, schools (see for example, Watterson & O’Connell, 2022). However, it has been estimated that in Australia in 2020, 12% of 15–24-year-olds were not in employment, education or training (NEET), an increase of almost 4% since 2019. As happened with the Global Financial Crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the youngest and most vulnerable populations the hardest (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, 2021). These data, however, do not capture those young people younger than 15 who have apparently ‘disappeared’ from school rolls.

NEET data also obscure the seriousness of the issue, as employment can be precarious for young people in this age bracket who are at work but who have not completed Year 12 (or equivalent). The importance of school completion has led to the Australian Commonwealth government, in conjunction with the States, to identify school retention as a national priority, evident in the National School Reform Agreement (NSRA) of 2018. While the attainment of Year 12 or equivalent for males and females has risen approximately 4% between 2011 and 2021 [currently 79% and 88%, respectively] (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, 2021), it must be noted that such statistics do not represent retention rates in marginalised groups; for example, Indigenous rates are 66% overall, falling to 38% in very remote regions (Australian Government, 2020). The damaging impact that a failure to complete school can have on individuals and their families, including inter-generational poverty, on social cohesion and on the economic well-being and health of nations has been documented globally (OECD, no date).

The causes of disengagement and early departure from schooling systems are multiple and include factors related to both young people’s lives within and beyond school. The literature demonstrates that many of the factors affecting disengagement interconnect and include poverty, gender, Indigeneity, race, family circumstances (including family conflict, caring responsibilities, pregnancy and lack of parental resources), transience or residential mobility, experiences of trauma, mental health issues, substance abuse, homelessness, school refusal/anxiety, social dislocation and disability. At the same time several school-based factors intersect with these out-of-school factors to construct cycles of disadvantage. International literature, in accordance with our own work, indicates that these include lack of attendance and achievement, various school policies that do not take account of young people’s complex lives, curricula and pedagogical practices that fail to engage young people and poor sets of relationships between students and between students and staff (see for example, Fredricks et al., 2019; McGregor, 2009; Sharma, 2018; Tarabini et al., 2019).

While the literature on flexible and non-traditional school provision, as previously cited, provides a compelling and thorough framework for developing curricular and relational strategies that work with marginalised young people in general, particularly those of colour, there has not been a strong focus on the role played by gender in schooling disengagement (see Russell & Thomson, 2011; Keddie, 2011 for exceptions). According to Keddie (2020), ‘research considering the impacts and efficacy of … politics and theories for gender equity and justice is … ongoing and remains critical in light of the complexities of the current cultural moment’ (p. 521).

In this paper, we interrogate the data in the search for answers from founders of these schools and teachers as to why they see gender as such an important factor in educational disengagement that they have chosen to respond to the needs of young people by basing their schools upon this one difference when there are so many other shared and similar factors that oppress: poverty, racism, neglect, homelessness, mental illness and many more. Indeed, such an approach carries increased risk of adding to existing gender injustices if they encourage dominant constructions of gender that prevent some from ‘participating on a par with others, as full partners in social interaction’ (Fraser, 2009, p. 16). Thus, the impetus for this paper stems from concerns about the unintended consequences from attempts to right social injustices by reinforcing gender injustice. Thus, we contend that the separation of students on the basis of gender is out of touch with emerging fluidities in that space especially in respect of embedding gender critiques in the curriculum. The mere fact of separation sets up a binary that many young people may feel the need to challenge (Diller et al., 2018).

Gender and schooling: snapshot Australia

In Australia, policy recognition of gender injustice for girls at school began in 1975 with a major report by the Australian Schools Commission, Girls, School and Society. This study engendered ongoing concern within state education departments with follow-up support and rolling inquiries during the 1980s and 1990s (see for example, Commonwealth Schools Commission, 1984, 1987; Australian Education Council, 1993; Milligan et al., 1992). State governments, who hold constitutional responsibility for education in Australia, were leaders around gender equality (Ailwood & Lingard, 2001). However, in 1997, the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA, 1997), released a new report, Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools that positioned boys and girls as ‘differently but equally’ disadvantaged. Ignoring the dominance of hegemonic masculinities inherent in society, the gender focus shifted to include both boys and girls.

Gender equity in schooling is based on understanding that differences in experiences and outcomes in education for girls and boys arise from the impact of gender on the expectations, interests and behaviours of both sexes. It acknowledges that the impact is often one which constrains and limits, rather than expands, options and possibilities for girls and women, and boys and men. (MCEETYA, 1997, pp. 4–5)

This policy shift was linked to the change of the Australian commonwealth government from Labour to a conservative one. However, the policy has been heavily critiqued by gender scholars as further entrenching educational inequality between boys and girls (see for example, Ailwood & Lingard, 2001; Keddie, 2009; Gannon & Robinson, 2021) and a narrowing focus on boys’ education at the expense of girls (see for example, Mills et al., 2007, 2009).

In the decades following this shift, constructions of boys’ and girls’ ‘inherent’ differences (Sax, 2009) have been popularised and entrenched by the media (Eate et al., 2017). Biological essentialist understandings of boys and girls have homogenised all boys and all girls as needing gender-specific curricula and pedagogy. Worse still is the ‘boys-as-victims’ scenario, described by Connell (2002, p. 131) as ‘a troubling feature of the debate about masculinities…[with]… the loudest voices in education …[being] those that describe the success of girls as a threat to boys’. Contentious ‘scientific’ claims about boys’ and girls’ divergent brain development (James, 2007, 2009) and differing psychological needs for learning (Biddulph, 1997) have been circulated repeatedly, extending into accusations of the ‘feminisation’ of schooling, ‘privileging’ of girls and ‘a lack of male role models’ culminating in a perceived ‘crisis’ of masculinity (Mills, 2003). Among a media hysteria, commentary such as the following has fuelled an emotional debate about ‘lost’ boys (Eate et al., 2017): ‘the boys just don’t know how to fit into this new female-dominated world order—and they just should’ (Shanahan, 2012, p.14). Unfortunately, there seems to be little progress in having a more informed and a more nuanced discussion about gender and schooling. This special report in 2020 in the Sydney Morning Herald confirms all the biases that have been building in the ‘boys’ debate’ since 1997:

Boys' education: How to get boys to engage, at school and at home

Boys have not been doing well in school this century. International PISA tests of 15-year-olds show that both Australian boys and girls are slipping in relation to other countries, however boys’ scientific literacy is decreasing faster than that of girls, and their reading levels are one school year behind that of girls. I work with [a] college which has intentionally built in experiential learning for the last 30 years, by taking Year 9 boys out for a six-month program [in the] bush. There, boys have no internet access, eat healthily and exercise daily and go on outdoor adventure trips every weekend. (Mann, 2020)

This story draws upon notions of male role models and ‘Iron John’Footnote 1 style retreats to the wilderness to ‘rediscover’ their ‘true’ masculinity by channelling their physicality as recommended by one side of the boys’ debate that continues to emphasise gender differences as inherent rather than socially constructed (see Biddulph, 2018; for critique of such approaches, see Mills, 2003). How girls are viewed and treated at school reflects how they are later positioned in society and the fight for gender justice continues world-wide (Francis & Paechter, 2015).

The United Nations continues to document global examples of injustices against women in all countries (UNWOMEN, no date). These range from the denial of the most basic of human rights to more subtle forms of discrimination in the Global North. According to Eaton (2016, p. 330):

Theorists have realized that the observable issues are only a part of well-established cultural gender asymmetries. It is not straightforward to determine the causes of systematic gender injustice. Deep-seated values are embedded in diverse social practices entangled in ideological, domestic, social, economic, political, and religious affairs that promote ideas that women are inferior to, or complementary to, heterosexual men: men being the human norm. Complex ideological substructures saturate cultural and religious symbols connected to myriad patterns of domination.

Thus, although while girls and women in these countries have more freedoms and life choices, their social, educational and economic potentials are still circumscribed by hegemonic masculinities that influence the ways in which girls see themselves and the adult world sees them. In particular, teenage pregnancy when combined with factors of marginalisation due to race and poverty has many long-term adverse consequences for the health, well-being and life chances of young women (Johansen et al., 2020). Consider this in the context of gendered injustice when noting that according to the Australian Journal of General Practice, ‘rates of teenage fatherhood are not collected’ (Mann et al., 2020, p. 310—emphasis added).

While the Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] (2018) has documented a drop in the number of teenage pregnancies in Australia overall, one must look more closely at social groups to gain a more accurate picture. ABS (2018) data show that in 2015 the rate of teen pregnancies for non-Indigenous girls (15–19)Footnote 2 was 9 per 1000 compared with 53 per 1000 for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander girls, and which was even higher for those living in remote areas (99 per 1000). Such statistics run parallel to other factors such as increasing socioeconomic and educational disadvantage in the more remote areas of Australia.

Thus, with much of the debate and publicity still focussed upon boys-as-different/-as-victims (many sites—see for example, Australian Men’s Health Forum, 2019; First Five Years, 2020); and the ongoing failure of successive Australian Governments to address Indigenous disadvantage (Equity Rights Alliance, 2022; Closing the Gap, no date) and gender inequality, we looked with interest at the ways in which gender and cultural injustices were being tackled at Fernvale Education Centre. The school provided a comprehensive program of curricular, pedagogical, material and relational supports framed by social justice viewed through a feminist lens. Similarly, we were interested in the ways in which Lorem as an all-boys’ school for highly marginalised students worked to address issues of masculinity and disadvantage and why it was deemed necessary to do so without the presence of girls.

The research

The data on which this paper is based were derived from an Australian Research Council (ARC)-funded Linkage projectFootnote 3 centred upon the practices and philosophies of flexible and non-traditional schools in the State of Queensland that cater to young people who have been expelled from or who have dropped out of mainstream schools. All relevant ethical approvals from relevant universities, participants and gatekeepers were obtained. Our overarching aim was to investigate and document their pedagogical, curricular and relational approaches with a view to influencing policy and practices in the mainstream sector.

Data from a smaller pilot study previously conducted with our ARC youth advocacy partner had indicated that these non-conventional schools were making a great difference in the lives of their students. Through the extensive networks across Queensland of our ARC partner, we were able to contact and recruit our participant schools. There were nine structurally and geographically divergent schools in this qualitative study. We interviewed 70 teachers and workers and 80 students. Where possible we observed lessons and other activities. Data were transcribed and then analysed for themes and patterns, comparisons and contrasts. During these processes, two schools stood out from the rest for being single sex, Fernvale EC and Lorem School. The data show that this difference demonstrated subtle differences in the ways in which teachers and workers at these schools constructed the ‘needs’ of their students. Curricular, pedagogical and pastoral approaches were viewed through a gendered lens that shaped schooling responses. A brief overview of each school follows. Lorem School: 2016 when the data were gathered, we interviewed: the principal (M); 3 youth workers (2 M, 1 F); 5 teachers (1 × Special Education (M); 1 × Maori Science & Sport (M); 1 × focus on “disengagement” (F); 1 × Samoan teacher working primarily as a youth worker (M); and 1 × 10 + years in low SES schools (F). The male-to-female ratio of staff was 6/3. The number of students attending that year was 75, all boys, with 12% identifying as Indigenous. We interviewed 6 of the students who were aged between 12 and 14.

Fernvale EC participants included: The Assistant Principal (F), 1 medical practitioner (F); 5 teachers (1 × male and 4 females). This school was staffed at 8.5 FTE but had considerable numbers of volunteers and non-FTE – 12.3%.

The number of students attending in 2016 was 118, all girls, with 36% identifying as Indigenous. We interviewed 8 of the students including some who had babies at the school’s crèche. The ratio of female to male teachers was 7/1.

As per our approach for the larger study appropriate interview protocols were adhered to. Interviews were semi-structured, and we used questions as prompts to encourage authentic responses particularly with the students. Students at the schools were informed about the project and were then given the opportunity to volunteer to be interviewed. While Fernvale Education had a higher proportion of Indigenous students (36%) compared to Lorem School (12%) our data do not reveal a focus on the intersectionality of race and gender; rather they seemed to be approached separately.

We used the same approach of thematic analysis as for the broader study of the practices on flexible/non-traditional schools but this time we foregrounded constructions of gender that were both implicit and explicit in the interviews and practices. Beginning with Fernvale EC, we explore discourses of ‘empowerment’ and relational support situated within a feminist world view. In contrast, the boys at Lorem School were alternately described as ‘victims’ and/or ‘perpetrators’ of violence. Their data contain discourses that depict the boys as having traditional masculine behaviours (broadly misogynistic) and thus unsuitable for the company of girls. Although the school had begun as coeducational, it was decided that girls’ ‘poor behaviours’ (implicitly linked to sexuality) were also deemed to have problematic effects on the behaviour of boys. Thus, in the move to a single-sex non-traditional school, Lorem was subscribing to traditional concepts of ‘boys as louts’ (Walker, 1988) and girls as ‘provocative’ (Taylor, 2020). In responding to pregnancy as one of the main reasons for the dropping out/exclusion of teenage girls Fernvale EC adopted a more therapeutic approach to strengthen the girls who were faced with another life to care for. However, it could be argued that, by excluding teenage fathers, Fernvale EC was also adhering to traditional notions of females as primary caregivers. While catering to the disenfranchisement and educational disengagement of young people, it appears that both schools viewed gender as a ‘danger’ to the work they were doing with their students. Both approaches were founded upon notions of ‘protecting’ boys and girls from each other.

Separating boys and girls at school has long been used as a panacea for various forms of perceived educational disengagement (Pahlke & Hyde, 2016) and as a means of control over young people transitioning through the so-called ‘risk-taking’ teenage years (Willoughby et al., 2014), yet there is no conclusive evidence that this makes a long-term difference to career trajectories (Law & Sikora, 2020). Moreover, there is increasing public and policy recognition that ideas of gender as a binary are outdated. Single-sex schools also do not make sense in an era of recognition of the LGBT[Q]I[A+] communities, in particular transgender and non-binary communities. While both schools operated outside the mainstream to provide much needed support to marginalised young people, their constructions of gender need to be problematised with regard to the breadth and depth of understanding of current youthful identities.

Single-sex schools: Fernvale Education Centre and Lorem School

Pseudoynms are used for both schools and all particpants.

Fernvale EC and Lorem School provide case study examples of attempts to address the issues of educational disengagement via the provision of single-sex education in the flexible and non-traditional schooling sector. The focus of the ‘case studies is gender’ as it plays out in two different sites. It was not our intention to develop ‘thick’ analyses of each site but to problematise the issues around gender in schools that have been set up with the best intentions, i.e. supporting disenfranchised young people. Here, we stress once more that this is a sector that provides access to free, usually coeducational learning to marginalised and disadvantaged young people. Fernvale EC is a girls’ school and Lorem School, while starting as coeducational, is now reserved for boys.

Fernvale EC commenced in a house in a suburb of an Australian capital city as an initiative of a Christian organisation. The program was designed originally to provide a range of services, including education, to young women who were in Care and Protection or who were at risk of coming into care of the Department of Families. The program started with seven young women, a teacher and a part time youth worker. The young women were enrolled in distance education programs. About five years later the school relocated to larger accommodation and with the help of the Christian organisation it continued to expand its facilities and educational provision. At the time of the research, Fernvale EC provided for the full suite of age groups in both junior and senior secondary school (i.e. 12–17 years of age) with enrolments averaging 100 students with 12 full-time equivalent teachers and 13 full-time equivalent non-teaching staff.

Lorem School had its origins in the work of a philanthropist and businessperson, who with the help of two clinical psychologists established a registered charity in the early 90s. This charity aimed to provide residential care to young teenagers considered to be at risk of homelessness. The school campus used a restored heritage-listed Queensland house. Enrolments have varied over the years (approximately 50–100) with 4 full-time equivalent teachers and 18 full-time equivalent non-teaching staff. Lorem School catered to boys from Years 3 to 10, who had been excluded or who had dropped out of the mainstream due to anxiety, severe bullying or because they needed specialised small group teaching.

While both schools worked to provide extensive wraparound material, emotional, curricular and relational support to their students, they delivered this through a gendered lens. For Fernvale EC, the ‘gender lens’ was one of ‘gender justice’ for girls whose education journeys had been interrupted by early motherhood. Thus, for the girls at Fernvale, the ‘uniqueness’ of their flexi-school lay with the focus on a ‘uniquely female’ challenge of early pregnancy. Interviews with students indicated that pregnancy usually signalled the end of their formal education. The founders of the school started with practical responses to that need but built upon it by adding layers of feminist teachings that counteracted the social stigma usually associated with teen pregnancy (Smithbattle, 2020). The additional needs of Indigenous students also evolved as part of the school’s growth due to the school’s growing reputation as a safe place for pregnant girls and the provision of practical supports such as the crèche. Additionally, at the time of this research 24% of teenage mothers in Australia were Indigenous with a range of health issues stemming from low SES and access to good health information and healthcare (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, 2021).

For Lorem the unique focus of its foundations appeared to be with ‘fixing’ students’ mental and social issues which they considered was best approached without (as the principal said) ‘the distraction of girls’ especially with strong male role models.

Fernvale education centre

Fernvale EC aimed to re-engage girls for whom mainstream education had not worked for various reasons, for example: pregnancy and parenthood; economic circumstances; and personal challenges such as mental illness. Roughly one-third of the students identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, alongside a variety of other cultural backgrounds and, as a result, there was a strong focus on Indigenous perspectives and cultural inclusivity at the school. The school afforded whatever assistance the girls needed to overcome barriers to education, including a crèche, childcare education, access to medical care, meals, a flexible curriculum and individual learning pathways. This school had a very strong philosophical base that was derived from an ethos of care and democratic principles: According to its founding school principal, Nancy:

We drew on an eclectic mix of research. Democratic Education Theory and the Community Access School concepts were central to our approach. All students at the school are treated with unconditional positive regard. The success of this model is based on the development of trusting relationships with these young people who have been let down so often by other significant adults in their lives. Our challenge was to create a democratic school with a warm and friendly atmosphere where young people felt welcome and where their input into curriculum development and school organisation was valued.

Noting the difficult life experiences of the girls, Janice connected them to the health and welfare services that they needed:

I think mental health issues, so anxiety, depression, feelings of disengagement from society in general in young people; lack of motivation, loss of focus of where they are going, that sort of thing. These are increasing. Also, substance abuse, which has always been a problem but now we are seeing the 12/13-year-olds that are being affected by substances.

A focus on community had been fostered through Fernvale EC’s inclusive policy towards past students, parents, carers, family members and especially Indigenous Elders. Such people were welcome visitors with many (e.g. Elders) contributing to the cultural life of the school. Flexibility in respect of attendance and dress rules meant that the students could focus on finding solutions to any personal issues and thus engage in their learning:

Megan (student): it’s okay - even if you come into a lesson halfway through because you’ve been doing something with the counsellor or you had to talk to the principal or something - (and) it doesn’t matter what you look like as long as you do your work.

The support received by students included raising their levels of personal expectation. As Nancy stated:

For some of our students, it's a bit more about giving them a sense of ‘it's real; we are a community; we work together; we support one another’ - ‘Yes, you can achieve, and you can do it’.

What made this school extremely special in the eyes of the young women was that they found acceptance and assistance after confronting the challenges of early pregnancy and experiencing the rejection of mainstream providers who we were told were unable or simply unwilling to accommodate pregnant schoolgirls.

Embedding gender justice at school

At Fernvale EC, the young women who were pregnant or already mothers were welcomed and supported in non-judgemental ways in contrast to students’ previous experiences. Megan explained:

I was going into Grade Twelve and they wouldn’t take my re-enrolment because I was pregnant. They said that I’d start a fad for the younger children to all come to school pregnant!

But here [Fernvale EC] I was pregnant, and everyone (here) was going, ‘oh look you’re pregnant, look at that little bump’ whereas at [my previous school] it [was shameful].

We also heard stories of Fernvale EC providing practical assistance to the young women in their preparations for their babies. As Megan went on to tell us:

They actually gave me a list of everything I’m gonna need to buy before the baby comes and it was just like, ‘whoa this is a massive list’ but I got it all.

Just down the road from the main campus was the school crèche and it was viewed as a perfectly normal aspect of the school. In describing Fernvale EC, one of the students, Sienna, said: ‘I think it’s like basically a normal everyday school, but you’ve got mums mixing with the young ones as well’. This crèche and all the parenting support that went with it were key material supports for many Fernvale students. Pregnancy and childcare support were core features of their philosophy of ‘clearing the path for learning’. Nancy contended that this was not happening in other schools; indeed, she suggested that the opposite was the case. She told us that many of the girls indicated that they had been asked to leave their previous schools. For her this was an injustice: ‘It's not a disease; it's quite a natural thing. To me, that is discrimination’.

As we delved into the ethos of ‘unconditional positive regard’ we spoke to a First Nations teacher, Nerissa, who made explicit the feminist and cultural underpinnings of the school’s philosophy:

I’ve always had a passion for women’s, advocate for women’s rights and women’s issues. I worked at a place… in Cairns where we looked after pregnant women from The Cape and looked after the little people when they came out and getting mums and bubs back to the community safety. So, I’ve always had that involvement with our elderly women as mentors.

One of the youth workers, Francine, alluded to the dominance of male violence in the lives of many of the girls:

Maybe the fact that there’s not guys here like as in men teaching and stuff because they probably don’t have, a lot of them don’t live with their dads and they may have poor images of men…

Thus, underpinning the outward similarities to wraparound services typically provided by flexible and non-traditional schools [e.g. material, curricular, pedagogical, relational, medical support] (see McGregor et al., 2017; Mills & McGregor, 2014), the data story that emerged from Fernvale EC demonstrated intentional strategies for supporting, strengthening and empowering young women in the face of systemic gender discrimination. For young people of colour experiencing poverty, homelessness and abuse, being female added the potential for sexual exploitation and pregnancy leading to lack of access to education and employment; various forms of familial and social rejection; mental and physical health vulnerabilities; and short- and long-term challenges as a single parent (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2017; Ruedinger & Cox, 2012). Clearly, the young women who attended Fernvale EC required the material, relational, medical and emotional support provided to enable them to continue their education, especially those preparing for the birth of their babies and caring for them afterwards. The additional connection to culture for Indigenous girls helped with their healing and connection to community. We acknowledge the importance of safe places for young women and girls who have had negative experiences with fathers and boyfriends. This was underpinned at Fernvale EC by a sense of ‘protecting the girls’, as noted by Francine:

So, there’s a softer [side here], and if there’s like issues with abuse and all that kind of thing [violence] then just having women it, I guess, is less threatening.

However, we would also contend that there is a need to provide positive and alternative models of masculinity to the girls. The roles of young males in nurturing babies and children were not explored so despite being pro-feminist, there were underlying discourses of the mother being the primary (only?) caregiver. We would suggest that there are benefits for both boys and girls in being in a school environment underpinned by feminist discourses that challenge dominant forms of hypermasculinity and present ‘other ways of being a man’.

We now turn to Lorem School which aimed to support young boys from primary school through to junior secondary. They too claimed that a single-sex environment was best for the students but for quite different reasons.

Lorem school

Lorem School began operating in 1998. The school campus consisted of a restored heritage-listed 'Queenslander' situated in the middle of horse paddocks on land near a major regional city. The school employs a largely therapeutic approach to supporting the boys’ education. It operates on a philosophy called ‘Educare’, which according to school documents, derives from Greek and means ‘to bring forth’. It is used as an indication of the school focus:

By emphasising good character above all else, we at Lorem endeavour to develop inside the hearts and minds of our students an understanding of their own needs … the teaching of character via human values and virtues provides the rationale and language so students can share what they learn with classmates, families and communities.

The principal, Graham, said they had adopted the philosophy from a school in Devon, England, and ‘it comes from “educaro”, which means to “draw forth from without”’. The basis of the philosophy is that ‘you take care of the character, before you take care of the academic stuff, so it is always the heart before the brain’. To this end, each teacher was required to be a role model for students in respect of: Love, Peace, Truth, Non-violence and Right-conduct. The whole school community engaged in daily meditation, reflections and affirmations around these values.

In respect of gender and staffing, the school provided a balance of male and female staff to create a sense of ‘family’. According to documents, ‘while the boys identify with the males (staff), they need to relate to the female staff with respect’. The students brought with them a variety of issues: some had been categorised as bullies while others were the bullied; some had anxiety, depression; others were diagnosed with learning and behavioural challenges such as ADHD or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)—or any combination of these (see Graham et al., 2019). Harriet, one of the youth workers, spoke of how some categorised the young people as ‘sad’, ‘mad’ and/or ‘bad’. She indicated that of late there had been a tendency to cater to those with mental health issues,

…we are trying to get away from the more violent kids, towards the more ‘sad’, I suppose. That includes some of the ASD kids; because they can be so violent as well.

The personal histories of the following 12–13-year-old students illustrate some of these issues:

Thomas: I was kicked out of my first mainstream school when I was 11 years old …

Charlie: I was kicked out of my high school because I was bullied a lot …

[Q.] So they kicked you out?

Charlie: Yeah, because I was bullied a lot and I beat them up. And I got here, like, last term, near the start of the year.

Larry: I got kicked - expelled out of [previous school] twice...once for a term and then got expelled for kicking this guy's head in. Been here for about two/three months.

Sid: I moved to this school because at my old school, I used to get bullied way too much. People used to bash me and some guy threatened to stab me. So I come here and it's actually the best high school or, like, school ever, I reckon. It's awesome.

Principally the school catered to young people aged 9–13, but at the time we were visiting one boy had just turned 8 and there were some 16-year-olds. Graham the principal had worked for the State Department of Education for 30 years. He spoke about how the perception of the school is that ‘it is the last bus stop for dregs’. The students were predominantly white working class, but at the time of our visit there were five Aboriginal boys, ‘quite a few Māori students’ and some Pacific Islanders. Nobody seemed to have accurate figures. However, most of the staff were silent on issues of race and ethnicity.

Lorem School began as a coeducational institution but according to Graham, tensions among the boys and girls led to the change to boys only.

They stopped that a few years after they started … I think they just found 14/15-year-olds, the girls were just playing the boys off against each other. The boys were fighting each other for affection of the girls. So, they just dropped it to boys.

Most staff and young people we spoke to were clearly in favour of it being a boys only school. The reasons for this included essentialist assumptions about gender that treated these boys as having specialist needs that were not conducive to a mixed gender environment, that regarded girls as needing protection from these boys’ behaviours and language, and that saw girls as troublemakers, either by design or just by their very presence.

Meeting boys’ needs

There was a claim by many teachers that these boys had a set of needs that derived from their anxiety, other mental health issues, experiences of violence and abuse in the home (and sometimes out of it). Milan, who had a Samoan background and was qualified in both teaching and youth work, expressed the boys’ needs in this way:

They have got a whole lot of needs already. They are young people/kids trying to address their own needs as well as the male/female difference. I think having all boys is beneficial.

Across the interviews with the teachers and other workers at the school, a lack of fathers came up a lot. Graham stated that:

When they start hitting puberty, they want dad. You know, [but] dad is a drop-kick. He's been in gaol for most of his life and they think he's a nice man because grandma said, ‘No, he's not bad. He's a nice man. It is those evil people from the Department of Child Safety’.

As such, and in alignment with much of the popular literature on boys’ education, there was a concern with ensuring that the boys had appropriate male role models. One of the teachers, David, described how they were supposed to be role models for the boys who would say, ‘I don't know how to be a man’. In response they often took them camping and fishing, ‘just basic stuff’. According to David, many of the boys had been bullied at school and as such felt inadequate as ‘male’. Further, he went on to argue that many of them felt that they had ‘let their mother down because they weren't strong enough to protect her’ from violent fathers and stepfathers.

However, some workers and teachers at the school also noted the value of involving women in the education of the boys. For example, Linda (youth worker) argued that being female enabled her to give the boys insights into what females were thinking and feeling in relation to particular situations. She stated that, ‘If they are swearing, I would be like—I always give them that girl point of view, “If I was your girlfriend, I wouldn't like that”’. This example reflects the very traditional roles across the school. Here, Linda notes how the male and female staff complemented each other:

…in our room we have a perfect structure because we have got a teacher; she's female. You have got a male youth worker and a female youth worker. Marshall, a man of little words; when he speaks, they listen. Then we have got me, the nurturing - you know, it is a perfect balance.

Anne, one of the teachers, described some of the programs that they were involved with. These included one at the PCYC (Police Citizens Youth Club) where they team up with a police officer and ‘go down there and they wrestle, and they do all these team-based programs’. She then went on to say that they do sport every day and that is followed by meditation.

The teachers and other workers in the school often indicated that they had a better sense of boys’ needs that they did girls’ needs. For example, Marshall, a teacher who had been working at the school for a year and had come from a high school special education unit, argued that his ‘skill set’ was best suited to boys and that he did not have ‘the empathy or understanding for the females… Whereas I can understand the boys’. He then spoke of the ways in which the presence of girls would ‘escalate’ boys’ poor behaviours because of their ‘hormones’.

Protecting girls

Working with a very narrow view of femininity and a perception that these boys, not all of whom had a history of violent behaviour, were dangerous, many suggested that the boys would pose a threat to girls. Some of these perceptions were grounded in biological determinism. For example, Marshal was of the view that ‘their hormones go crazy when we have female staff in the room’. In some instances, not having girls in the school was seen as a way of both protecting girls and some boys. Linda stated:

Imagine having girls in here; that would be a nightmare. In my class, you have got the very socially advanced, the boys that are having sex and smoking and drinking and partying; and then you have also got the other end of the scale, of your ‘sads’, your more bullied kids that haven't even held a girl's hand. So in that room you have got the two extremes. I couldn't even imagine putting a girl in that.

Marshall was also concerned about having girls at the school. He gave the example of how if a girl walked past their classroom they ‘would run to the window, yell stuff out, and they are very, very inappropriate around females’. He went on to say:

We have tried to explain to them what that actually is and how you actually talk around women differently…. And even that concept alone - and again, addressing their access to the Internet [and pornography] … they have actually got a completely different understanding of what a female's purpose is to be on this planet.

Another staff member, David, echoed Marshall’s points about the boys’ conduct being inappropriate as their way of engaging with women was learnt from pornography. However, at the same time he argued, it would be good for the boys to ‘normalise being around females of their own age’.

Linda indicated that ‘discussion time’, a regular feature of the daily curriculum following their mediation session, would often lead to conversations about gender and sexuality. In these sessions, she stated, the adults were open to any topic and willing to share their life experiences. Some of the topics she said they had discussed included ‘sexting’, how one staff member ‘gets his muscles’, ‘How to get a girlfriend’. In one discussion they raised the question would they rather have ‘sex or a girlfriend?’ She noted that in this discussion, ‘Every single one of them said “girlfriend”’.

Girls as troublemakers

There is often a stereotype of the naughty girl which suggests that they are harder to deal with than boys and that they like to foster trouble. This view was demonstrated in comments by Anne, the Head of Curriculum:

I find the teenage girls, for me, are harder to deal with… I find them a little bit more disrespectful, I suppose…it is just going to be traumatic for them, for the boys.

Ironically, in contrast to the ‘protecting girls’ discourse, here the view is that the ‘poor boys’ will suffer from the presence of girls. It was not clear why it would be ‘traumatic’ for the boys to have girls in the classroom.

Boys’ education at Lorem

While we can see some of the benefits of Lorem for the boys attending, as one indicated it was ‘awesome’, we also had concerns. In seeking to meet boys’ needs there was an homogenous construction of ‘boys’. There was a perception that all boys would like, typically ‘masculine activities’ such as ‘fishing’, ‘crabbing’ and ‘wrestling’. Such a construction fails to recognise the multiplicity of masculinities that exist, including the impacts of class, race, ethnicity and sexualities on performances of masculinity, and that this dominant construction of masculinity is one that underpins notions of ‘toxic masculinity’. It also fails to grasp the possibility that some of these students’ experiences of bullying had been the product of ‘gender policing’ (Davies et al., 2019; Jackson, 2010) and what was needed was a greater focus on challenging dominant constructions of masculinity (Mills, 2001). However, it is worth noting that the meditation and horse riding were designed to bring out other sides, for example, more thoughtful and caring masculinities, to the boys’ behaviours.

The assumption that the boys needed male role models also bought into traditional notions of masculinity and what are sometimes referred to as mythopoetic masculinity politics (see Mills, 2003 for critique). Such a politics works with the assumption that for boys to transition into a healthy manhood they require the leadership of appropriate men. The importance of male role models for boys has been heavily critiqued for the way in which it assumes that boys can select masculinities as if they are selecting from a smorgasbord that ignores race, class, sexuality, physical abilities and personal agency (see Martino, 2015). This discourse has been heavily implicated in calls for more male teachers in schools to ensure that boys have a ‘boy-centred’ education. This works to negate the work of female teachers and mothers, and to undermine female leadership practices.

There was a view within Lorem that boys did need to be exposed to female role models. However, the ways in which this was expressed at the school also worked to reinforce traditional gender constructions. There seemed to be an assumption that certain behaviours, for example, swearing, by the boys might be acceptable in a male only environment, but not in the presence of women (or girls). Not only did the male teachers seek to emphasise ‘chivalry’, which can also be interpreted as patronising, as with the term ‘ladies’, but the female teachers also encouraged boys to see women as essentially ‘nurturing’. Comments about behaviour also tied into a heteronormative discourse which assumed that the boys would want a ‘girlfriend’ and that if they continued to display certain behaviours that they would be alienating potential female partners. Again, while we are concerned about the ways in which the boys were being encouraged to work with normalised constructions of gender, we acknowledge that there were attempts to disrupt the most toxic forms of masculinity being performed by some boys.

While there was a focus on girls’ safety within a boys’ school, the homogenisation of boys also failed to acknowledge that for some boys, a male only environment also feels unsafe. Indeed, one of the boys was a little unsure about the male only environment of the school. He recounted how at his previous school the girls had only been ‘silly and stuff, trying to embarrass me’, whereas with the boys, ‘they used to have lots of fight with me’. The focus on girls’ safety was also contrasted with the construction of girls as being more problematic than boys when it came to disruptive behaviours.

Conclusion

The justification for single-sex schooling at Fernvale and Lorem has nuanced similarities and differences. For many of the young people in our study, mainstream coeducational schools had not served them well socially or academically. This had particularly been the case for the girls at Fernvale who had often been treated poorly by mainstream schools because of their pregnancy or motherhood. Many of the young women too had experienced domestic violence and had not had positive experiences with men. The rationale for creating a safe space for these young women is easily justifiable and resonates with a feminist politics that has advocated for, for example, women’s shelters, women’s only spaces on campus and women’s only gyms. Within the environment of Fernvale EC there was an attempt to ensure that the institutional obstacles that were preventing young women from participating in social life on a par with others were removed. There were attempts made to reconnect Indigenous girls to their culture and the impact of this was beneficial to all the young women through enrichment of school activities. Having recognised the benefits to the girls, we are also cognisant of the need to acknowledge that there are many ‘masculinities’ (Martino et al., 2016) and the presence of young fathers (for example) may have helped the girls’ disrupt perceptions of male power and oppression.

The boys at Lorem, in the main, came from marginalised backgrounds, and faced a variety of institutional obstacles preventing them from acquiring the benefits of schooling. These included socioeconomic background and a model of masculinity that drew upon traditional constructions of ‘being a man’, including violence. One 10-year-old, for example, admitted to stabbing his social worker. Dominant constructions of masculinity had clearly shaped many of these boys’ responses to mainstream schooling (as with other aspects of their life). Such constructions and their ability to live up to or resist its manifestations, according to workers in the school, had an impact on their sense of self. However, rather than substantially challenging the essentialist constructions of masculinity (and femininity) the school actively reinforced them through their attempts to engage the boys in learning, through their exhortations about how to treat women and their views on role models. The focus on meditation and care added a parallel approach that sought to encourage the boys to be more reflective and to draw out gentler behaviours. However, these attempts did not seek to undermine hegemonic forms of masculinity or to problematise fundamental social inequalities at the heart of their marginalisation.

The two schools here are firmly located within the flexible learning space. In consideration of what has caused these young people to disengage from schooling, or as we have noted elsewhere been disenfranchised by schooling, (Mills & McGregor, 2016), there is often a focus on justice matters related to socioeconomic status and race. However, what the two schools here demonstrate is that gender too is a factor that intersects with these injustices to marginalise young people in particular ways, and while we are critical of the approach taken at Lorem, less so at Fernvale, we would suggest that gender, and its dominant constructions, requires problematising within such schools.

While it was not raised as an issue at either Fernvale or Lorem, we think it is important to note that increasingly, young people who identify as LGBT[Q]I[A+] and especially transgender are experiencing mainstream schooling as an oppressive site (Martino et al., 2022). Hence, many in Australia are turning to alternatives such as those in the flexi system. Schools like Fernvale and Lorem as single-sex schools are unlikely to provide them with support. In our view, and while we are very supportive of the work being done by Fernvale in particular, the current anti-trans discourses that are becoming pervasive in Australia (as elsewhere) require single-sex schools to consider how they will ensure that they do not play a role in exacerbating the marginalisation and oppression of trans youth.