What our parents say about Fintona

Small class sizes, a single sex education based on Christian values and friendly staff are what we like the most about Fintona. Our daughter comes home happy.

Why Choose a Girls Only School?

Our Principal's perspective

Prior to coming to Fintona, I spent many years teaching in boys' schools and then became the Vice Principal of a large co-educational school, so I was curious to test my theories of which was better, single sex or co-education, in the real world, rather than just read yet another study or more research. My experience over six years at that school confirmed all the theories about the merits of separating girls and boys, particularly in senior school.

An all girls' school is better able to cater for the different ways in which girls learn and to develop classroom practices that enhance their learning. Here are some of the reasons why I believe girls benefit from a single sex education:

• Teachers can match their teaching to the way girls develop and tailor courses, activities and materials to suit.
• Girls thrive and excel in collaborative teams.
• Girls tend to be less competitive but more demanding of themselves; they are more co-operative and prefer to discuss and tease out ideas. They prefer to work in groups and gain strength from each other, rather than seeing fellow students as a threat to their place in the learning hierarchy.
• Girls' only schools have fewer opportunities for stereotyping of subjects and careers, so girls can feel confident that there are no impediments to their choices, whether they are in sport, academia or co-curricular areas and this extends to their choices of career paths.
• All the leadership roles are filled by girls in a girls' school and girls are also more likely to evolve a model of team work and co-operation more closely allied to modern views about leadership. All activities are open to them: they can participate, influence and lead. A high percentage of women who have become leaders in their field were educated at girls' schools.

Is it any wonder in such classrooms that girls' academic abilities are honed and result in girls in an all girls' environment achieving significantly stronger academic results than any other group in Australia?

Proponents of co-education tend to argue that it is a superior pathway on the basis that the ‘real' world is co-educational. However, students of all ages in today's world mix socially on many occasions and have many opportunities to develop communication together. Their time at school needs to be focused on acquiring broader skills to take into the future, including a first class academic education, a sense of themselves, social skills and a raft of others. I can see no evidence that students in a single sex school are disadvantaged when they leave school and have no idea how to function in the ‘real' world with a mixture of genders. Dysfunctionality is often the result of poor upbringing, a lack of social skills or calamitous events, not the result of not spending time with the opposite sex at school. Both my children in their later primary years attended single sex, independent schools and both have successful academic, social and working lives, apart from the many hundreds of students I have taught and met once they have left school who seem similarly well adjusted.

Miss Cunningham had a vision for a girls' school and whilst she may have taught and led in an earlier era, she was well ahead of her time in her understanding of education and of young women. Subsequent principals have carried on that fine tradition and I feel very privileged to be able to speak with great personal conviction that we have evolved and maintained an outstanding girls' school for the very best of reasons and for the very best outcomes. Fintona has a long, proud history of teaching young women at the highest level and remains firmly committed to that ethos, not just in the present but well into the future.

Mrs Suzy Chandler
Principal