This school’s black and red blazers are more than a uniform. They’re a passport to a prestigious network

W alking into Xavier College – with its Great Hall, its 250-space underground temperature-controlled car park, 600-strong rotating art collection, lush sporting ovals and view of the city skyline – feels less like entering a school and more like gaining access to Melbourne’s upper echelons.And that’s just for a visitor. For the boys who enter the Kew college’s gates, the black and red blazer is a passport that will gain them entry to an exclusive network that can open doors throughout their lives – in business, politics and sport.Xavier is exclusive and prestigious, with annual fees above $44,000 for every secondary year level.For that fee, families gain access to not only great facilities and teaching, but to one of the largest alumni communities in Australia, according to Xavier.Xavier College rector Father Chris Middleton with students in front of the school’s chapel. Simon SchluterBut enrolments at the Catholic boys’ school have been declining for more than a decade. The decline has occurred alongside the cost-of-living crisis and changing demographics, and as most boys’ schools battle the general perception that single-sex schools can breed hypermasculine culture.Increasingly, single-sex schools have gone co-educational in response, but every staff member and old collegian The Age spoke to said the Kew school would stay true to its tradition and remain all-boys.The Xaverians and staff shared the view of advocates for boys’ schools who argue boys thrive in a learning environment tailored to their gender.But despite the best intentions, teenage boys are far from perfect, and Xavier has not avoided its share of scandals.In the early 2000s, muck-up day marred the college’s reputation when a group of year 12 students were suspended for drinking and public urination. The Age reported that those students were “terrorising the school’s Kew neighbours”, and a student was taken to hospital.The school also dealt with concerns about a culture of bullying when a decade ago a Xavier College student claimed he had received a threatening letter containing a bullet in the mail.In 2007, a mobile phone video emerged of a 15-year-old boy standing in a wheelie bin while other students kicked and pushed him. Five students were reportedly suspended.And at the end of last year, former Xavier student Tom Silvagni, the son of AFL legend Stephen Silvagni, was convicted of two counts of rape.Interim principal Lee MacMaster, who is about to retire after 46 years as an educator, said the news of Silvagni’s conviction sent reverberations through the whole school.“Things like this should never happen,” he said.MacMaster said the school had strong relationships with girls’ schools, there were female staff in senior roles, and a no-tolerance approach was taken to misogyny.“What we’re trying to educate our boys is there’s something much bigger than yourself,” he said.In its 148 years, Xavier has produced a Queensland premier, a lord mayor of Melbourne, and 18 federal and state members of parliament – including former leader of the federal opposition Bill Shorten and federal member for Wannon Dan Tehan.Tehan, who graduated in 1985, said Xavier taught him not to take things at face value but to prosecute, interrogate and always seek the truth.Tehan said he also gained a group of lifelong friends.“That is to me what a great education should be about,” he said.Celebrity chef Adam D’Sylva and his son Javier at Xavier College.Luis Enrique AscuiXavier alumni include 16 graduates who have been knighted, two Rhodes Scholars and a High Court judge. There have also been 62 OAM recipients and a United Nations special rapporteur.Celebrity chef Adam D’Sylva, who has appeared on MasterChef and Snack Masters and is the owner of newly hatted restaurant Decca, is among the famous alumni.“Once you go to Xavier, you are a Xaverian for life,” said D’Sylva. “What Xavier gave me, aside from the academic side, it gave me the feeling that you can be invincible, you can do anything and be anything you want in life.”He said his teenage daughter jokingly calls his network of Xavier friends a cult.“But it’s a really good cult,” he said.Academically, Xavier achieved a median VCE study score of 33 in 2025, above the state average of 30, yet it wasn’t among the state’s top-performing schools last year.But as a founding member of the Associated Public Schools of Victoria (APS Sport), Xavier’s sporting teams are among the state’s most competitive.While Xavier doesn’t offer standalone sports scholarships, the school has produced more than 149 AFL players, 17 Olympians and a Paralympian.Head of sports Michael Wilson said sporting scouts often visit games, and AFL teams use the school’s football oval. He said the school had replicated a professional sporting environment on campus where they could.“We put GPS units on our footballs so we can track the distances they run, ice baths after class, world-class gym with gym instructors; it’s a unique opportunity for our boys to taste-test what they are going into,” Wilson said.Xavier’s sporting stars extend to pro basketball and American football, with Old Xaverian Deng Adel playing for the NBA, the Canadian Basketball League and now the Brisbane Bullets, and former AFL star Billy Gowers playing American football for the Indiana Hoosiers.Head of music James de Rozario said there was a place for everyone at the school.“If you are an AFL football player, if you want to sing, make art, want to be in drama, a scientist, there is a place here for you,” he said.Rozario said there was a preconception about what a single-sex boys’ education was going to be like.“When you see a big school high on the hill with a big domed chapel, you can come up with those assumptions automatically,” he said. “It’s not a typical gung-ho hypermasculine school.”The school ethos is guided by its roots in the male Jesuit order founded by St Ignatius of Loyola.Xavier’s Jesuit ethos places importance on being a “man with and for others”, which means students are charitable; act with dignity and respect; recognise injustice; and have the courage to stand up for others.Students are encouraged to tutor people from non-English-speaking migrant and refugee backgrounds at Friday Night School, they pack safe-birthing kits for women in other countries, and they make care packs for homeless people.School rector Father Chris Middleton said it focused on “cura personalis”, or care for the whole person. He said that wellbeing was a significant focus but with social media and mental health issues among young men, it was also “the most challenging space”.Middleton said a voluntary Mass, in which a student delivers a sermon in the chapel about something they’ve overcome, was so packed that students sat on the floor to attend.It helped other students feel they could openly talk about issues they encountered, he said.Over recent decades, elite boys’ schools in Victoria have increasingly made the decision to open their gates to girls.Xavier College is one of just four all-boys Catholic schools in Victoria, alongside 19 all-boys independent schools and the government select-entry Melbourne High School.Some elite boys’ schools like St Kevin’s College and Scotch College have seen enrolment increases, yet changing societal expectations and growing competition for enrolments have made going co-ed a necessary transition for other high-fee single-sex schools.Over the past decade, Xavier enrolments have declined 26.9 per cent, from 1982 in 2016 to 1449 in 2026.Advocates of all-boys education, including the International Boys’ Schools Coalition, a network of 260 boys’ schools worldwide, believe boys and girls develop differently and that boys’ schools create a learning environment based on boys’ needs, including movement, space and rest.MacMaster said he would never suggest a boys’ school was automatically better than a co-ed school, but that a good boys’ school could create an environment attuned to the developmental needs of boys and could design learning, relationships and experiences around that.“When a boys’ school understands boys and believes in them, and deliberately creates an environment where the boys can flourish. I think that’s when you see magic happen,” he said.However, Professor Lise Eliot from the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago said there was no neurological basis to the notion that boys and girls learn differently.She said the main difference was that generally girls go through puberty earlier than boys, and mature psychologically earlier than boys.“To me, there is no benefit and only harm of segregating children by gender,” Elliot said.Xavier accepts girls into its early learning centre, and until 2021, it also enrolled girls from prep until grade 4.Dwindling enrolments at the junior school campus in Brighton and a plan to fund an $81 million infrastructure project at its main campus in Kew led to the sale of the Brighton campus that year.The sale meant a further drop in enrolments, which Xavier says was expected and planned for.Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher, who co-founded The Demographics Group, said Xavier’s location could also be contributing to the enrolment decline.The school is one of 18 private schools in the Boroondara council area, which has the highest concentration in the state, and is dominated by Baby Boomers.“The kids of the Baby Boomers are now having kids that should be of Xavier age, but they can’t live anywhere near this area,” Kuestenmacher said.According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the area recorded a drop of 3220 people (7.5 per cent) aged 19 and younger between 2015 and 2024.But Kuestenmacher argued that turning Xavier co-ed “would seem almost scandalous” to many old boys.Celebrity chef D’Sylva agreed.“For Xavier to be a co-ed school, I’d veto against it,” he said.Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.