19 February 2019

Star of the Sea College, Brighton, girls are defying the stereotype that scientists are usually men.

In fact, school principal, Mary O’Connor, said she was proud so many girls were choosing to study science at VCE and beyond.

Eighteen girls from the Brighton school received first-round offers to study science and engineering at university this year.

But more needed to be done to overcome inequality when it came to the types of science classes chosen, Ms O’Connor said.

Victorian Curriculum of Education statistics for 2018 show that while girls flocked to biology and psychology, they largely avoided physics, making up just 4.5 per cent of enrolments at both all girls and co-ed schools compared to 27 per cent of boys in Bayside.

Last year Star of the Sea took two field trips to NASA in the US.

11 February is the United Nations’ International Day of Women and Girls in Science www.womeninscienceday.org.

This article was originally published in the Bayside Leader on 19 February 2019.