To be angry so many girls schools are going Co-Ed?

[FaeryRing]

Yet again it’s been proven girls do better in single sex schools (I have a son as well as a daughter so please don’t think I’m ’hating on boys’).

https://amp.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/12/girls-do-better-in-exams-at-all-girls-schools-than-mixed-research-finds

In my hometown growing up there were 4 girls schools. 1 grammar, 1 private, and 2 regular secondaries, meaning pretty much all parents regardless of background had access to single sex education for their daughters if they wanted it.

2 have announced their plans to go Co-Ed, with 1 already having done so, leaving just 1 (the grammar, so working class girls will be inherently disadvantaged). This seems to be a pattern across the country.

AIBU to be angry this is happening? Can’t girls have anything to themselves?

I didn't go to an single sex female school, but really wish I had. I found the boys particularly loud and disruptive in class and a few were sex perverts at the ages between 11 -14 (raging hormones), constantly trying to touch up us girls, which i found extremely cringy. I don't think mixing with them helped my confidence whatsoever, sadly, I was shy enough without dealing with them, it took years after I started work to realise that not all men were like this, probably because they had outgrown their teenage creepy phase.

My school wasnt particularly good overall, but with boys taking up so much of the teachers' time needing constant reprimanding the amount of education I got was minimal, and as a result my end results were poor. I have heard that overall girls do better educationally in all girls environment, and that doesn's surprise me in the least given my experience.

I meant people used to argue that they didn't do so well in maths and science subjects because they were intimidated by boys.

What are you basing your assertion on?
One school or multiple studies?
Girls actually lot a lot more attention at my son's school, but that doesn't mean I think it's the case everywhere!
I'd suggest your rudeness is quite annoying but hey ho.

No, but I was part of a group of local campaigners who were associated with the school, and I was an alumna.

From my friends experience, it wasn’t that they missed being around boys but that there was a lot of bullying, bitchiness and cliquey-ness.

This could have happened in a mixed sex school too, but they believe it was due to it being all girls.

I would have hated going to an all girls primary school because most of my friends were boys.

But as we got older it was less ‘cool’ to hang around with someone of the opposite sex and so I’m not sure how I would have coped in a single sexed school and whether I would have enjoyed it more or not.

You don't get to police who takes part in a discussion.
You're also making far too many assumptions.

There are no schools without bullying, bitchiness and cliques.

I agree with a couple of other posters on here that went to an all girls school and have said it affected them. The level of nastiness from other girls was another level compared to my mixed primary. 20 years after I left the school still has the same problem.

From personal experience I always said my child would go to mixed which I have made sure they have.

One Essex Borough I work with is having a major problem in 3 schools that are mixed with girls and boys. The problem is the girls fighting. 1 of the schools in particular has a ‘lockdown’ at least once a week due to the fights getting out of hand. 2 teachers were assaulted by girls. Boys are not the problem and in fact they are getting annoyed with the girls and their behaviour.

What happens to boys when they turn 18, if they’re not the problem?

Given the stats I posted earlier?

• In the UK, 2 women a week are killed by men.

• Men make up 90% of the prison population.

Who knows how many women a week are raped by men.

Women on MN and all over the world, talking about how their husbands / boyfriends treat them badly.

All of these men were at school once.

Equally, the merits of STEM subjects over Arts and humanities subjects is perpetuating sexist ideas of subjects intrinsically holding more value if they are associated with men. I was pleased that my son didn’t opt for maths at A level and sciences as I think it’s a real shame for society that the Arts and humanities are being forgotten about. We need the Arts to develop skills in emotional expression, to be interpretive, passionate and collaborative- all skills that are starting to disappear with the STEM obsession. The developments in Mobile phone technology have been as a result of STEM enthusiasts and it’s hardly been an all round winner for society and many of these problems in schools are due to these ‘advances’.

@Goldenbear
The developments in Mobile phone technology have been as a result of STEM enthusiasts and it’s hardly been an all round winner for society and many of these problems in schools are due to these ‘advances’.

That’s a very good point.

You started a thread about girls’ schools becoming co-Ed. Numerous posters have merely offered an opinion as to why single sex schools are becoming less popular; the fact is that many people actively avoid single sex schools. In an ideal world, we would have a wide variety of school options for all children so they could pick which suited them. However, those schools need to be economically viable (state or private). If the demand for all girls schools is decreasing, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify keeping them open.

There have been some very aggressive and unpleasant posts suggesting that nearly all teenage boys pose a danger to girls and that they are all sexual predators who will assault girls. Some of us have pointed out that boys should not be portrayed in this light and the sweeping generalisations are, quite frankly, ludicrous.

I have children of both sexes. Whilst my children are at co-Ed schools, we did look at, and consider, single sex schools. I was genuinely neutral on single sex education. My experience of visiting an all girls school was quite a shock though; it really was like something out of the 1950s - “look at our amazing cookery suite, oh and by the way the physics lab is over there” (the science labs were pretty much the same as I’d had a co-Ed school 30 years previously). My daughter came out and says “there’s absolutely no way I’m going to a school which only has girls”. The point is that, increasingly, families are preferring co-Ed.

But it doesn’t change the violence that girls experience being in the vicinity of this disruptive, challenging behaviour from girls. What do you say to your DD like mine who has spoken of these very intimidating are very upsetting girl disruption, “oh that may be the case darling but you have to remember the stats don’t back up what you are saying, what about when boys become 18 is what you need to worry about”

I don't have a horse in this race, but I do find it interesting that on a forum frequented mostly by women (and which has a dedicated Feminism board!), there are so many people who believe teen girls are worse than boys, cattier, bitchier, worse bullies etc., someone even said they'd rather have a 14 yr boy over a same age girl any day.

I noticed this is a really widespread stereotype in society, teen girls are routinely stigmatised as awful, bitchy, overly dramatic, their feelings are minimised, their interests are mocked more than boys' interests etc. It was the same when I was younger in a different country, all teen girls were apparently monsters and having a daughter was an actual curse (according to every single adult), while boys are just being boys, bad apples are rare etc.

I think we should interrogate these stereotypes when they appear. Are they based in any reality, or could they be garden variety misogyny?

I couldn’t agree more. I don’t understand the obsession with people viewing STEM subjects as “better”, and that arts subjects are not something which girls should aspire to. We should treat all subjects equally, for both boys and girls. There’s nothing wrong if a girl (or boy) wants to pursue arts subjects, and yet they are increasingly being made to feel like they are doing the female population a disservice if they choose that route. Equality should be about encouraging all children to pursue their interests, not about pushing them into other areas just to make some kind of feminist point.

@ICantThinkofAnythingClever bashing either sex simply for being that sex isn't acceptable.
Many also seem very happy to bash ALL boys and paint their girls as angels.

I agree. I have taught in single sex schools (private and state) and Co ed

I have been a teen girl, and they are far, far worse than boys at that age. I have never had a bad comment from a boy about my appearance, for example: whereas girls were awful. I did have issues with older men as a teen, they can be total perves which is disgusting, but boys my own age were far nicer than girls and I'm not about to say otherwise in order to not be 'misogynist'.

No of course it doesn’t. I’m not saying girls can’t be disruptive at all. I know they can. In my experience boys are worse. My daughters prefer a single sex school (they had mixed up til age 11).

And so sadly our daughters will have to worry about boys and men after age 18 (as all women do). Whoever they worry about before.

Agreed.
Boys and girls should be encouraged to pursue what they enjoy and are motivated towards.

I have a boy and a girl so definitely don’t think this about girls. There is no point in denying that problematic girls don’t exist or aren’t bullies though. Maybe it is my DC’s school that is unusual but I do think it is more down to parents’ values than in a majority of cases. I live in an area that has quite a few outspoken parents and are fairly political even so this is generally reflected in the pupil population e.g the boys at DS’s school started to crowd around girls that were getting picked on to have their skirts measured as they thought it was sexist. The school now allows laddered tights as the parents objected to the traditional principles that didn’t allow girls agency over their own body.

Tbf I wouldn’t be able to tell you whether my DD would prefer a girls school as she hasn’t been to one. i think there is some truth in boys dominating in certain subjects like P.e. DD hates the mixed football and rugby for example as some of the boys are ‘annoying’, she told me about this boy who is amazing at football and kept shouting at her to get in a position for a goal and the P.E teacher didn’t say anything to him. She’s actually an incredibly good runner but hates P.e and these mixed games where boys in the past have tended to dominate. She doesn’t like to get kicked either (who does) so she stand on the sidelines. She does enjoy cricket though and rounders, in fact she is joining the all girls team after school but within school time it is always mixed.

Not sure how old you are or when you were at school but the issue nowadays for me is that boys are often exposed to very extreme pornography which affects their brain and distorts their view of women and girls.

The bullying and bitchiness was worse at the mixed school I went to compared with the girls school. My DD has said the same thing. The girls school was much more accepting of people who weren't heterosexual too.

We have the opposite situation in this area. All the boys schools are going co-ed (save for one grammar, one comprehensive and one independent school), and the girl's schools are staying single-sex (both State and Private).

One of my children's prep school merged with another (and has gone co-ed). All the prep schools are now co-ed save for one girls school. When the schools merged the boy's parents were far more in favour then the girl's. They are doing a phased merger (so Reception co-ed) all other classes taught single sex, in part because they were worried they would lose so many girls if they just went fully co-ed straight away. A lot of the "Alpha" male boy parents are now unhappy; the school is much stricter on behaviour now (and these boys are falling foul of this) and there is far less of a culture of "boys will be boys", - which is a definite positive.

I think a lot is less to do with ideology and more practicalities. If you have a family with girls and boys, and working parents, you don't want multiple drop offs/plays etc/holidays.

I'm a big fan of single sex education (particularly for girls). I went to GDST school (was GDPST in those days) and it was great. An environment where we told we could achieve anything we wanted. My contemporaries are doctors, lawyers and professors. I would want the same for my daughter.