Picking the so-called "right" school can weigh heavily on the minds of parents.

And when it comes to deciding between single-sex and co-education, it's a debate that invokes deeply held beliefs about which type is "better".

The overwhelming majority of schools and enrolments across Australia are in co-educational facilities, but there is still demand for both government and non-government single-sex schools.

After having taught in both single-sex and co-educational settings, the principal of Brisbane's Villanova College Paul Begg says both types offer "great education".

"But there are certain students and certain families where a single-sex education is going to serve that boy or that girl better, and a certain environment where co-educational will serve that child better," he says.

Shift towards co-ed schools driven by parent demand and enrolments

There are about seven public single-sex schools in Victoria and one in South Australia, while all government schools in Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory are co-educational.

It's a different story in New South Wales, where 45 out of 405 secondary schools are single-sex and 360 are co-ed.

The state government has committed to increasing access to public co-ed schools, meaning four single-sex state schools will make the transition from next year.

They include Georges River College Penshurst Girls, Georges River College Hurstville Boys, Randwick Boys and Randwick Girls High School.

Barker College on Sydney's north shore became fully co-educational two years ago, in a move the school's headmaster Phillip Heath says was driven by parent demand.

Mr Heath says he believes co-education enriches the classroom and "prepares you for what they'll experience at university and in the workplace".

"I love seeing, frankly, the girls and the boys competing a bit for the top places in the classroom," he quips.

The University of Melbourne's Associate Professor Daniela Acquaro says the broader move towards co-ed schools could also be driven by financial reasons around sustaining and increasing enrolments.

"What we're sort of seeing is a steady decline in the number of single-sex schools across Canada, the UK, the United States and in Australia," she says.

"All of the principals that I've spoken to about this have said that generally, it's really trying to consider what is beneficial for the school long-term in terms of enrolments."

Single-sex schools working to buck gender stereotypes

There's still demand for single-sex schools, however, with some recent examples including two new boys' schools – Hartford College in Sydney and Lysterfield Lake College in Melbourne.

Overall, enrolments in the independent school sector grew over the five years to 2023, with an almost 6 per cent increase in girls' schooling, and an almost 3 per cent increase for boys.

Meanwhile, enrolments in co-ed schools have grown by almost 16 per cent.

In the Catholic sector, co-ed enrolments have grown by almost 4 per cent. In single-sex facilities, female enrolments have grown by 3 per cent, while male enrolments have dropped by 0.2 per cent.

Melbourne Girls' College is a government all-girls school in the city's suburb of Richmond, established in 1994. With no plans for the school to become co-educational, principal Tamy Stubley says girls' schools are generally led by women.

Enrolments in the school tend to be driven by parents seeking out an education that also has the capacity to build self-confidence, she adds.

She says the school has strong rates of participation in subjects traditionally associated with males, such as the sciences and maths.

"They are not gender-stereotyped in any way, shape or form," she says.

"In the end, it's about building an opportunity for our students so that when their time is up here, when they're ready to move on, that they've got so many different pathways and doors to open that enable them to be successful."

Mr Begg says contemporary boys' education is working to counter stereotypes, including "actively talking with boys to make sure that they're having a broader consideration about the world that they live in" and about "being a part of it themselves".

"We talk about this notion of a restless search for truth, that we should be challenging and questioning things and critically analysing things," he says.

"And that's all elements of what we are, what we do as society, including gender and gender roles."

So, what's the verdict?

When it comes to the link between academic outcomes and single-sex or co-ed schools, the research is contradictory, Dr Acquaro says.

She says some of the literature has led to a prevailing view by parents, teachers and school leaders that girls benefit from single-sex settings, while boys are generally advantaged in co-education.

But the University of Sydney's Dr Kellie Burns say there is no "conclusive evidence" that any type of schooling leads to better academic outcomes, or that single-sex schools could "disadvantage young people in terms of their capacity to navigate gendered relationships".

She says socio-economic status plays a more significant role when it comes to academic achievement.

"There's widely circulated ideas that co-education better prepares young people for the co-educational world that they'll be going into," she says.

"But this assumes, of course, that all co-educational schools are creating the same learning and social environments, and this is simply not the case."

At the end of the day, it all comes down to personal choice, Mr Begg says.