Private School Girl

My good and bad experiences attending an all-girls religious school

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

From the ages of 12 to 17, during the 1980s and 90s, I attended a small Christian girls school in Melbourne, Australia. My parents paid money for me to attend that school. In return, the school gave me a pretty good education and lifelong friendships. I was also indoctrinated into Christianity and over-sheltered. This meant that I entered my adult years naïve and timid. My school taught me that girls could do anything, but not how. I had no idea how to approach the struggles that girls and women face, or even that they faced struggles.

What’s the point of writing about my privileged education?

I’m not writing this article to criticize the school I went to. It was very good, and it suited me. I can thank it for some of the successes I’ve had in life. I just want to share my experience.

Maybe you’re deciding where to send your daughter to school, if you’re in the privileged position of being able to choose. Maybe you want to read about an educational experience similar to yours or learn about a different one.

I hope I can provide some advice on where to send your kid to school. But I also want to emphasize that my perspective is one individual’s opinion about one school in a certain country during a certain era. I don’t have children of my own. This is just my own experience.

What is a private school?

According to Dictionary.com, a private school is established and run by a private group rather than the government. The people running the school usually charge a tuition fee and follow a particular philosophy, standpoint or religion. In the UK, private schools are often known as public schools. The posher schools in Australia are also referred to as public schools. They can be referred to as independent or religious schools too. In this article, I’ll use the terminology “private” and “government” schools to talk about independent and state-operated schools.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 34.4 percent of Australian students attended a fee-paying independent or Catholic school in 2020. In the US, it was 10.1 percent. So maybe my…