As a child I attended what was essentially a boys’ primary school. It was then known as Stella Maris (Balzan), and though it wasn’t yet official, the school was essentially St. Aloysius College’s primary school because almost all of the boys who attended Stella Maris made it to St. Aloysius for their secondary years.

During my childhood Stella Maris used to accept a handful of girls and for some reason I was one of them. I was one of only four or five girls in the whole school, and yet I don’t recall one single day, not even a moment for that matter, during which I felt like an outcast or even slightly different.

Although we girls had to wear a skirt and sometimes a hat, thus making us stick out like sore thumbs, we were part and parcel of the system, integrated in all activities, and so the rest just took our presence as a matter of fact.

This was nothing like my experience at the all girls’ school to which I was moved at age nine. I won’t go into psychological bullying that went on there because the teachers’ ignorance was more to blame than anything else, but I’m still pretty miffed for not having been ‘allowed’ to go on to St. Aloysius for my secondary school years.

It’s not because of the bullying that I had to endure, nor because of the trauma of changing friends, I’m peeved because I wasn’t given the opportunity to attend what was possibly the best school on the island simply because I happened to be a girl.

Although I eventually moved on to attend one of the best girl schools - a school I loved till this very day, academically it was still nowhere close to St. Aloysius, so essentially I was deprived from a better education simply because I didn’t have an appendage hanging between my legs.

Whenever I say that girls and boys should be given exactly the same opportunities, most agree and nod their heads, but when I mention St. Aloysius as an example and pinpoint the injustice of one of the best schools on the island automatically excluding girls based on their gender, most think that I’m taking the argument too far.

So whilst they agree in principle, when pushed to challenge the long-standing status quo, most don’t question any further and essentially don’t stand the test of being dipped in hot water.

Based on my personal experience and my steadfast belief that girls and boys, women and men, should be given exactly the same opportunities in life, I can’t be happier about the recent move to make all State schools co-ed. Maybe one day, hopefully in my lifetime, we’ll really have a little something called equality for all.