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?

There's a surprise.
Special treatment, at the tax payers expense.

Plenty of grammar schools are...
But OK, I'm not a fan of those either as they ruin 11yo dreams and cause huge social divisions these days which was not what they were intended for.

Happy to pay for my DC to go to single sex and benefit.

I wrote a dissertation on this, the main takeaways were:

• Both boys and girls perform better in single sex schools
• Boys need girls in school to regulate their behaviour
• Boys from single sex schools are more likely to divorce in future and have issues with relationships, self esteem and mental health problems
• Girls thrive in the absence of boys emotionally and socially. There is less pressure to adhere to beauty standards, eating disorders are less prevalent and girls have higher self esteem
• Girls from single sex schools are more likely to pursue powerful jobs and roles in STEM

Essentially, boys need girls but boys' presence in school is detrimental to girls.

I'd always recommend anyone with a daughter to send them to a single-sex school and anyone with a son to send them to a co-ed school

Why is this at tax payers expense?
Unless the poster went to one of the single sex grammars, she would have been privately educated.

There are more boys grammars than girls btw.

I think if you look at the local papers the peadophiles, rapists and sex offenders still seem to be largely British, where I live.

But you were talking about femicide. And you can also be British but with a non-British cultural heritage.

I'd imagine the perpetrators of most murders are ultimately still white British due to the overall makeup of our society, but it doesn't take much to bump up the figure of ~100 per year, so I predict that as we see immigration from patriarchal cultures rise we'll also see a rise in things like honour killings as we currently are with FGM.

And as a disclaimer (before somebody accuses me of being a xenophobe) I have no issues with other cultures and work for an Indian-run business as mentioned upthread, as well as working with a fair few Muslims both African and Pakistani. Most are just normal people but I also recognise that male violence is nuanced and different demographics are more represented in different crimes.

"A recent GSA report examining academic achievement in girls' schools found that girls in single-sex schools are 2.6 times more likely to take further maths, and more than twice as likely to take physics and computer science at A-level, compared to girls at co-educational schools.24 Jan 2024"

took me 2 seconds on google. are you sure you have a science background?

If it's a SS state school it's luxury definitely at the tax payers expense.
If it's a SS private school then it's clearly not financially viable to keep excluding boys, otherwise they'd be remaining SS.
Either way OP needs to find a private SS school or accept that it's just not feasible to have segregated education.
(I think both private and state SS schools have been discussed)

I'm honoured you're stalking me.
The limitations of such studies of selective girls schools have already been discussed.
Next.

Why would you suggest boys go to co-ed schools if both sexes perform better in single sex schools as stated in your first bullet point?

🙄
Boys need girls to regulate their behaviour yet they apparently do better in SS schools?

I wondered that too.

If you don't think it makes a difference to outcome, why is it a luxury?

It's a luxury expecting a school to exclude males to benefit females.
Education is for all.

haha stalking you?! you said in your response to me: "I went to a CoEd school and have a science background"! i agree that there are limitations but you asked me for evidence of exactly that and thats what i gave you. i would still choose to send my daughter(s) there in the hopes that it would encourage her to consider the widest range of options.

So when it is an all boys school it is fine, because it doesn't benefit females.
Far more of single sex boys schools and co-eds than just girls.
Clearly feels threatening for you to have something benefiting females though!

Totally off topic but the repeated use of the word 'regulate' has caused the Warren G song to pop into my head. 🤣

That's a lot of single sex schools in one town. Doesn't leave a lot of choice for people who don't want single sex. I would have hated a single sex school and opted to go to a mixed school. Girls and women behave pretty appalling in my experience when in a single sex group together. A lot of bitchiness and cliqueyness, even as adults. Not sure why, seems completely unnecessary (and pretty childish as adults) to me and I want no part of it. I have periodically become involved in single sex groups and it always turns out the same. I find that both boys and girls tend to behave better when n a mixed group rather than single sex. I think single sex groups generally bring out the worst in both sexes.

Please tell me where I said any SS school is fine? I haven't ever said that because it's not an opinion I hold.

Fair enough.
I still find the concept of SS schools outdated - all schools should offer good opportunities to both sexes.

I think the problem is that parents are keener on SS schooling for girls than for boys. At the macro level, this risks a situation where state schools (and co-ed private schools) tend to become boy-heavy, making life harder for the girls there.

There is a whiff of “I want single-sex for my daughter, but boys need to be socialized by boys. I want other people’s daughters to do that work” about some of this stuff.

"In my experience of being at a high achieving girls school, this is correct - devoid of boys, it was just the norm for girls to achieve and to be top of the class, in all subjects. We didn’t think twice about whether girls should be good at science/maths/technology because it was only girls studying it there, if that makes sense. There was no sex split or gender stereotypes to gradually bend to, because it was simply all girls"

As you didn't go to a mixed school you have no frame of reference. I did, and no-one thought twice about girls being good at maths or science either. In fact my A level Maths class was mainly girls and I was one of the best in my class at maths to GCSE level. There was also none of this "taking over" by boys in certain classes that people talk about. Just didn't happen.

And this is exactly the sort of issue I’m talking about.

At the mass level, what kind of outcome is that going to lead to, if enough parents do this?

I went to a mixed primary school, and even at the age of 10/11 the children were obsessed about having boyfriends/girlfriends, fighting about it, bullying when someone didn't have one, competing, trying to look "fanciable" etc. Then I went to an all-girls grammar and there was none of that. Anyone who did have a boyfriend wasn't affected by them during the day. That all happened after school or at the weekends. School was genuinely more about school, sports, and friendship groups (or cliques, depending on personalities). It really is the better option for some children.

This post surprised me - because in my area (I grew up here, and am now back in the same area, where my children are growing up) there are not any single sex state schools and certainly haven't been for decades! What shocked me was I had no idea such a thing existed - so it's never occurred to me to think about it as an option for my children.

Decades ago, there was a private all girls school and private all boys school - and in 1985 the boys school changed to co-ed. It's about 50/50 these days. The girls school is still all girls now, but smaller. The co-ed one is having to expand as more and more girls are choosing it. It's a school which also has boarders (day or full) and they have all the classes co-ed (bar PE) BUT they have a house system where they are separate. For practical boarding reasons really. So there are boys houses and girls houses - and that's where the kids go at breaks, lunch breaks, after school (if boarders - most aren't). So outside of classes they're either in the dining hall (or extracurricular), or in their houses which are separate sexes. I wonder where that falls within this!

All the state secondary schools are mixed. My DD is about to start at one of them - it genuinely never occurred to me to look at the single sex school... But then maybe because we are spoiled and the state school is one of the top in the country so it gets better results than either of the private ones. Blows my mind that there are any state single sex schools - but then we don't have grammar schools locally either. I guess I've led a sheltered life - or should that be unsheltered...? 😄

Here in Australia, it seems the opposite. A lot of boys schools are turning co-educational, but there is not the same pattern with the girls schools. Having worked at universities here (lecturing and course convening), I certainly notice a difference between girls who go to a single sex school vs co-ed. In general, the girls who went to co-ed schools are already well trained to defer to the boys, stay quieter in tutorials, and rarely speak up. The girls coming from single sex schools seem more mystified and irritated by being spoken over and treated poorly. They generally didn’t tolerate it as well. I’m sure there were girls who went boy crazy. There are potentially positives and negatives to all options. It’s also hard to compare any one person’s experience at school. Regardless of the actual school, there are significant differences among year cohorts that have a huge impact. I started my career in schools and even in primary school, there were huge variations in year groups and dynamics, which would impact on the schooling experience.