Ivanhoe Grammar want to promote gender balance and provide a true coeducational experience for all students. The decision will allow Ivanhoe Grammar to target female students in its advertising and to offer sweeteners to attract girls, including "scholarship and bursary assistance". Principal Gerard Foley said the move would help the school provide a "true coeducational experience for all students" and promote gender balance in the community. He said the school had increased capacity to cater for coeducation, and the decision to introduce girls had not excluded any prospective male students. "As a school, we are committed to providing the best coeducational experience for our students and we believe that the human rights exemption will assist us in achieving this aim," Mr Foley said.

Exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act will allow Ivanhoe Grammar to target female students in its advertising. He said the reaction from the school and community had been positive. The fee structure for girls will remain the same as for male students, Mr Foley said. VCAT stated in its decision that there was "significant disparity" between the numbers of boys and girls enrolled. The statement said that while the numbers of boys consistently reached capacity, available places for girls consistently fell short by up to 30 per cent.

Mr Foley said the school had taken "significant" steps to ensure girls felt included in the school. "Being an all boys' school for almost 85 years, the strong brand of Ivanhoe Grammar School has been synonymous with single sex education," he said. "Significant changes in curriculum, co-curricular and leadership offerings, along with substantial modification to our facilities, have assisted us in attracting female students. "The exemption allows us to home in on some of these offerings that we provide as a coeducational community." At the VCAT hearing on July 13, Mr Foley said the school offered gender-specific classes for core subjects, created a "gender-neutral curriculum" offering food technology, drama, multimedia and fashion and encouraged girls to hold leadership positions.

The exemption will be used to encourage girls to see the school as an alternative to other private schools in the area. It was, Mr Foley said, "necessary to overcome the historical and seemingly entrenched view that the applicant school is for boys only". The school had been granted exemptions to the act, giving preference of enrolment to girls and offering financial assistance to girls in 1999 and 2002, but no further exemptions were sought after they expired in 2005. VCAT member Anna Dea found a five-year exemption would "allow sufficient time" for the school to increase female enrolments. "The basis for seeking balance is because a skewed number of male or female students will mean that the relevant school cannot offer a true coeducational environment and so meet the expectations of its students and their parents," she said, in the VCAT statement.

"That might impact on the educational and social development of the students. "I have noted the efforts the applicant has made over the last 10 years to build its female cohort. "I am satisfied that, where those efforts have not achieved the preferred 45 per cent to 55 per cent balance of female-to-male students and that such a balance is not likely to be reached for a further 12 or 13 years on current growth rates, the grant of an exemption is appropriate." The exemptions will expire on August 17, 2021, and they do not apply to the grammar school's Mernda campus.