We're Solving the Wrong Problem with Opportunity Class Quotas

We're Solving the Wrong Problem with Opportunity Class Quotas

I was one of a handful of women in my computer science degree at an ivy league university. Throughout my career in world-class companies, I've been the only woman in the room more times than I can count. I also can’t count how many times someone has assumed I didn't earn my place, i.e. I was a "diversity hire," or that standards were lowered so that I could get in. Spoiler: they weren’t.

When the NSW Government announced that Opportunity Classes will move to 50/50 gender quotas from 2027, my first thought was “Oh @#$!!@, now we're about to do this to 10-year-old girls?”

The gender balance problem is real. OC is currently 60% boys and 40% girls. The gap is widening—girls made up 45% of Year 7 selective places in 2019, but only 41% in 2025. The 2018 review found girls face hurdles at every stage: fewer apply, fewer get offers, fewer accept.

But quotas are the wrong solution.

The Stigma Starts Early

Here's what quotas will do: every girl who gets into OC from 2027 onwards will face the question of whether she really earned it. Would she have gotten in without the quota? Was a more capable boy turned away to make room for her?

I've lived with that question my entire career and the doubt is always there, hovering in the background.

Now we're going to impose that on 10-year-olds. Children who already face the challenge of being outnumbered will also carry the burden of wondering and having others wonder if they really belong there.

Treating Symptoms, Not Causes

The data tells us girls are opting out at every stage. Fewer are applying and more are declining offers. Anecdotally, parents are saying in Facebook groups on surveys that this is a big factor in their decision making.

The quota forces 50/50 balance. But it doesn't address why girls are opting out. If anything, it makes the real problem harder to see. The numbers will look balanced, but the underlying issue remains unsolved.

What We Should Be Doing Instead

The solution isn't to force balance. It's to make OC environments so genuinely good that gender imbalance doesn't factor into decision-making.

Make the classes excellent. Make the culture inclusive. Support students so well that current students become ambassadors. When Year 3 girls see Year 5 girls thriving in OC, even if there are more boys, that changes the calculation.

This is harder than implementing quotas. It requires actually fixing the environment rather than just fixing the numbers. It means confronting what makes these spaces feel unwelcoming and addressing it directly.

I've been outnumbered my entire career. And you know what? When the environment is good – when you're respected, challenged, supported – being outnumbered matters less. But when you suspect people think you only got there because of your gender, being outnumbered matters a lot more.

Quotas guarantee the second scenario. Meanwhile, they do nothing to improve the actual experience of being in OC classes.

The Easy Way Out

Quotas are the easy policy solution. They're simple to implement and produce nice-looking numbers. In 2027, the government can point to 50/50 balance and declare victory.

But I think they're taking the easy way out. They're imposing stigma on 10-year-old girls rather than fixing the environments those children learn in. I made it through those filters and I proved the doubters wrong. But in 2025, I shouldn't have to tell my daughter that if she gets into OC, some people will assume she didn't earn it.

We can do better. Fix the environment, not the numbers.