Girls schools - good for grades, terrible for mental health?

let your daughter choose ?

Going to a girls' school really does not mean you cannot get used to university or future learning in a mixed environment. My elder DD is in a very male dominated job and CPE is often male dominated too. I think the girls schools do promote that girls can do what they want to do.

Girls always find ways to mix with boys and enjoy their company - but when they are ready. You don't need to worry about girls learning with boys from the age of 18. They are not in a convent from the age of 11! There are very many opportunities to meet boys and I really don't think many girls are remotely interested in male teachers! Any more than boys are interested in women teachers (except Danny Baker of course!)

My daughter attends an all girl grammar and loves it. She's in year 9 now, I was concerned and during the open evening asked our guides if it was an issue and they were honest and said there sometimes was a little bitchiness but it was sorted out straight away. My daughters has had no issues neither have her friends.

Oh - and the results are much better! 77%A-C compared with 53%A-C...

The girls school near us is like this - DD is good friends with lots of the girls and in their 130 year intake 5 have been hospitalised with anorexia throughout their 7 years at school, and one hospitalised and taken out of school due to severe depression and anxiety. At DD's school there are more girls (about 150 girls) but none have faced these issues - though DD knows of one girl in the year below and one two years below suffering from anorexia, but they're both now back at school. I'm sure other factors must be involved but this anecdotal evidence definitely supports the above thesis!

Oh - it sounds like you were doing coursework as a student? I hope that's the case anyway.

I have done bits of work in the Indy girls' school and hated the bitching and flirting with the sole male teacher (poor chap was not remotely interested but these little slappers would not relent)

WTF?! You work with children and call them slappers? It's a very normal part of sexual development for teenage girls, even tweens, to develop crushes on adult male figures. I would hope that he would not be remotely interested in abusing his role, and also hope that he would understand the root cause. (I really hope you don't still work with kids...)

Cake my career choice is male dominated too and that is hard, completely agree.
But personally I think I might have found it harder to deal with if my all-girls' secondary school environment hadn't inadvertently demonstrated to me what unnecessary bullshit sexism is.

The school I went to didn't take us aside and discuss sexism and stuff- far from it. But there just was a good focus on you doing you, to the best that you can.

So you could wear custard stains on your jumper or joke about and look silly or get really into whatever subject you liked or whatever at school, without worrying what a teenage boy in the class thought about that. so I feel grateful for that, with hindsight. It wasn't part of my awareness at the time.

It also made me really appreciate a meritocracy, which obviously the real world doesn't always work around. So again that has helped me with dealing with sexism later at work I think.

But I haven't got anything else to compare it to so it's hard to say really.

For some it does give a better environment though

All future learning / professional development will be done in mixed environments so make it the norm throughout. They expressed a preference after the fact. Had they gone to co-ed secondary they might have had a fab experience, who knows?

Your DD found some primary age boys silly. DS had a male friend who left in yr8 due to bullying about his weight that came solely from a group of girls. You could say both could have been dealt with better by school (and possibly parents of those misbehaving).

For some it does give a better environment though. The boys/girls are not excluded from your life. Just for a few hours in a classroom. Both my DDs found some boys very juvenile and silly and were pleased to get rid of them. Not that they think that now they are adults but a classroom without them was good at 11. The children in single sex schools really do not have any seeds planted in them about society in general, (other than what they observe for themselves) they just have a preference for not learning with boys or indeed girls!

Our catchment school for DS is all boys. We chose co-ed. Why plant the seed in formative minds that excluding either sex makes for a better learning environment?

I I was a geek, interested in sci-fi, gaming, coding, graphic novels etc etc. Remember this was back in the 90s when all these interests were pretty niche anyway. I was labelled as being a freak, for having interests that didn't fit in with what the alpha girls deemed "normal". Added to that, I was overweight. I was "Fat Freak" shortened to F-squared for more years than I care to recall. I developed an eating disorder and also self-harmed mildly. The staff preferred the plaster-on-an-amputation approach and brushed everything under the carpet. "Nothing to see here, except our results!" hmm

This x100 sums up my personal preference for Co-ed. Appreciate that there are so many different factors but I absolutely agree with every sentence of this. I was actually totally fine in a girls school, there was major bitchiness in years 8-10 and i absolutely got the brunt of it at time, but I didn't have mental health issues or anything but I totally saw how wrong an all girls environment was for some of the other girls in my year and how it wouldn't work for my daughter for all those reasons you mention.

Cartoon - your point is exactly why I wish I had gone to a co-ed. Academically I did brilliantly at an extremely good all girls Indy and went on to a top Uni but it was poor preparation for life as I chose to work in a male dominated career and I found the environment difficult. If I could choose now for myself I would have gone to a co-ed and I would have been better prepared for a career in the real world outside of my girly bubble.

I don't think single sexual schools are bad for mental health.
Instagram, lack of exercise and parental neglect may affect mental health more.
If there is bullying then of course this is different but I don't think all girls schools are any worse for this.

Those 7 years were the only time in my life where the default human being was female, and that experience of being a person rather than a female person was really special.

This- really good point. ^^^^
This was my experience too. I think it was very formative looking back and has served me well to have confidence knowing what we/I could do, since the rest of life hasn't been like that.

I went to a girls school. It was remarkably un bitchy. My dd goes to a coed and it's much bitchier and seems to stem around boys. Thankfully dd does not get involved.

I also have a DD at an all girls school ...but it is an Independent and I think the girls are somewhat more considerate to each other (which may also be the case with grammar schools). There are friendship changes - some of which really surprise me in year 10/11 when the girls have been friends for many many years.

My only comment is that there seems to be more issues with sexuality - allot of the girls proclaim they are gay/bi have crushes on teachers - it may be so ...but I think because they are mainly in an all girls environment they have no experience of boys ...some cant handle dealing with such feelings and therefore it leads to mental health issues- I know one of my daughter's friends is in counselling but I also know of other girls in counselling at Co Ed schools ...

My DD goes to a selective girls-only state school. It was the right choice for her, she's very academic and has thrived in this environment - she compares her experience with her primary school girl friends who went to nearby state mixed comps and she thinks she has made the right choice.

Whether an all girls environment induces "bitchiness" is a non-question. "Bitchiness" amongst girls (if it occurs) will occur whether there are boys around or not. Friendship issues will occur regardless of the single/mixed sex issue.

It depends so much on the person and their friendship group. My DD's school environment allows all the girls to be fearless and uninhibited when it comes to academics - there's no false suggestion that girls can't be good or enjoy STEM subjects.

There's a big variety of "types" of girls at school (sporty, geeks, populars etc.) but they all seem to rub along together in my DD's experience.

My daughter has just started at an all girls school in Yr 7 and was at a mixed primary. So far she is loving it. Girls will still be unkind to one another in a mixed school, and in my opinion boys are often at the heart of any drama (certainly most of the fall outs and drama that happened in primary yr 6, boys were involved or even the cause).
One thing I noticed at an evening event at her new school was that the girls are much less self aware and less concerned about looking silly, they threw themselves into what was potentially an embarrassing show for parents with no hesitation, I think once boys are in the mix girls are more hesitant, at least that has been my experience.

I went to an all girls' school and did self-harm, but that was due to severe PMS and I was much worse at university.

My school wasn't bitchy at all - the girls were generally friendly and supportive, and seemed a lot more confident in themselves than my friends from mixed schools. Little things made a difference - the sound engineers and stage hands in school plays were all girls; we were expected to lift heavy furniture and get things from high cupboards and hold doors open, and be competent.

Those 7 years were the only time in my life where the default human being was female, and that experience of being a person rather than a female person was really special.

Although it may appear that girls schools obtain higher results, the question for me is whether this is just because they take only girls or are other factors at play here e.g. girls schools more likely to be selective ( a lot of girls schools in some areas are grammar schools), how much of this is due to the intake and how much is down to the teaching rather than the pupils.
There is a former girls school in our neighbouring town which was all girls a few years ago and was top of the league tables. It is now co-ed and still top of the league tables so that suggests this was down to being a very good school rather than the fact that it was all girls.
Some of the things mentioned to do with girls being obsessed with looks etc may be more down to the ethos of the school rather than whether it was single sex or not. Certainly it wasn't like that for dd at her co-ed school.
Any anecdotes of no girls studying Physics (at A level?) are likely to be outdated too. Most schools are very equal opps conscious now and would encourage girls to take subjects such as Physics if they had the ability to do so.

I agree that mental health issues are usually rooted in issues outside of school.
There may well be a disproportionate number of those with mental health issues in single sex or possibly high flying schools because the families who choose such schools may create pressure on the kids....the school is not the cause of the pressure and mental health problems.
And I agree that unhappy children with me to health issues would probably be unhappy children with mental health issues in any school. Some schools might be better at recognising and providing help for e these things than others, but I don't think they are usually the root cause of the problems.
Pressure is a complex thing. Kids who get into the top single sex selective schools have to go through quite a lot of pressure to get in, in the first place in many cases. Some have had years of tutoring and their parents are terrified about 'failure' and having to go to a different type of school. It is almost impossible to keep that pressure and burden from the child. They are already under immense pressure to succeed before they arrive at the secondary school. And then they have to keep up, if parents are only satisfied with them being in the top few, which is difficult when everyone is clever.
I think parental attitudes towards schooling and education make a huge difference. It is possible to value education and to instill a desire to do well in kids, without it becoming overwhelming and a huge burden. I'm sure lots of us need to work on that.

No bitchiness at my all girls school in the 1970s nor in DD's now.

Both my DC go to single sex schools as did I. DH went co-ed and commented on zero girls doing physics at his school. So he was very pro DD going all girls.

Plus both of my DC only had friends of the same sex from Junior school. Single sex school gave them 30 potential friends in their class rather then 15!

I don't know why parents worry so much about this either. Also, why do parents automatically assume their DDs head will be turned by other pupils in a way they dislike? What is wrong with being confident in your own parenting and not worrying about other children? Why would your child grow up too fast? What is wrong with children who do? Are they demons for being a bit more advanced in some ways? What does it matter if they are still doing well at school? It is so judgemental to dislike other children so much that you cannot bear your DD to be with them! Just choose the school that she likes and where she feels comfortable. Put your prejudices to one side and look at the education on offer not at what may never happen!

I work in a split site girls' school. I'd send a daughter to the school in a heartbeat. I think girls are much more supportive of each other in a single sex environment and the girls I work with don't have to deal with the sexual harassment and misogyny that I did at my mixed comp. Having the younger years separated from the older ones puts less pressure on the younger ones to grow up too quickly too. The most popular subject at A Level is maths whereas in the local mixed schools the A Level maths classes are very much dominated by boys.