A Melbourne private school has attributed a sharp improvement in its VCE results partly to teaching boys and girls separately before gradually bringing them together, with Tintern Grammar recording its strongest median study scores in 2024 and 2025.
The Ringwood East school was named the eastern Melbourne winner of The Age’s 2026 Schools that Excel award, which recognises sustained improvement in Victorian Certificate of Education performance over a decade.
Tintern Grammar’s parallel learning model places pupils in single-sex classes from Prep to Year 9, while allowing them to mix at lunchtime and through activities including music, drama, sport and work on the school’s farm. The school describes the approach as a combination of single-gender and co-educational learning. ([tintern.vic.edu.au](https://www.tintern.vic.edu.au/life-at-tintern/middle-school/?utm_source=openai))
Principal Brad Fry, who joined the school in 2015, said the arrangement helped students develop confidence and positive learning habits before entering fully co-educational classes in the senior years.
“I think the model we have is one of the key things that gets them ready for VCE,” Mr Fry said. “We can instil a lot of really positive attitudes and dispositions by virtue of the fact that they’ve been parallel.”
Tintern Grammar’s VCE results improve
The school’s median study score rose from 32 in 2016 to 33 in 2023, before reaching 34 in both 2024 and 2025. The proportion of students recording study scores of at least 40 also increased from 11.1 per cent in 2016 to 18.6 per cent in 2025.
In 2025, 11 students achieved scores of 40 or more in Mathematical Methods, while 10 did so in General Mathematics, seven in Physical Education and four in Business Management. One student recorded a perfect 50 in English.
The figures cover only students who agreed to have their results published, meaning the school’s overall totals may be higher.
Tintern’s 2024 results included a median ATAR of 87, with 66 per cent of students achieving an ATAR above 80, according to the school’s announcement for that graduating cohort. ([tintern.vic.edu.au](https://www.tintern.vic.edu.au/congratulations-to-the-class-of-2024/?utm_source=openai))
Mr Fry, a former science and mathematics teacher, said he believed boys and girls often responded differently to classroom settings, although he acknowledged the model was intended to support both groups rather than keep them apart permanently.
“In a general sense, young men don’t do things like sit still as well as girls do,” he said. “They like to learn by doing things.”
Year 12 student Olivia Cardamone joined Tintern in Year 9 after attending an all-girls school. She said the gradual transition gave her time to settle in before encountering mixed classes.
“It was an easy move because we already knew each other from being around the school,” the 17-year-old said. She added that discussions in subjects such as English benefited from the inclusion of both female and male perspectives.
School captain Sebastian Humphrys said the system had helped him build leadership skills and confidence before the move into co-educational classes. Vice-captain Isabella Di Felice said pupils now mixed comfortably and formed friendship groups that included boys and girls.
The school has also credited its careers programme, which provides students with workplace experience and encourages them to choose subjects they genuinely care about rather than focusing only on courses likely to maximise their ATAR.
Mr Fry said academic results were not the sole measure of the school’s success, and that staff rarely discussed rankings outside the period when results were released.
“You don’t run onto the football field thinking about what the score will be at the end,” he said. “If you do that, you’re not concentrating on the things that create the score.”
