To think mixed sex schools a PITA for we poor undeserving Mums?

[valhala]

The thread on the 11+ and selective education has made my mind turn to the subject of mixed sex schools.

My own was a single sex school and although there was the inevitable cattiness that often goes with large groups of teenaged girls and a certain amount of competition about clothes, shoes and the like, despite a very strict and fiercly enforced uniform policy, I can't help feeling that we studied harder and benefitted from not having the distraction of boys.

My own DDs go to a mixed sex school. Here too they wear traditional uniform although the rules are overlooked depending on which teacher passes by the girls with the extra short skirts or spidery mascara. I confess that this drives me nuts and I'm a harridan, coming down on DDs like a ton of bricks when they try to sneak out of the door with anything other than the "natural looking" make-up allowed by the school, despite their protests that everyone else wears it.

It seems to me that the need to impress the boys, the constant talk of who fancies who and who has been dumped by whom, or who is fit is far more prevelent in the conversations which my DDs and their female peers have than about their homework or lessons. Call me an old fogey but it wasn't like that in my day!

I know that they need to have fun as well as learn but I am convinced that they would learn more without the distraction of the boys. I guess I had the best of both worlds as from the Lower 6th we took some consortium lessons with boys from the local lads' grammar and two mixed comprehensives. My only defence is to say that by this time we'd got 5 years of uncomplicated study under our (navy blue, regulation) belts!

Am I right? Are mixed schools a PITA, did you go to a single sex school and feel that your own DC in a mixed sex environment are not learning as much as they could because of their determination to play up to the opposite sex?

Or am I just an old so and so who needs to get with the times?!

I would choose single sex for dd and mixed for ds.

I went to single sex girls' school and think that is the way to go academically. Boys are louder and get more attention from the teacher. I think that can stifle the shyer girls.

I want the teachers to tell the girls specifically that they can do anything and not subconsciously limit their horizons with gender stereotypes.

That was what my all girls' school was good at. Bringing out the potential of all the girls, whether it be in arts, science, being witty, kind, clever, funny.

Dd has a brother who looks like he will have lots of friends (only 3 years old), so she won't find them totally alien.

I went to an all girls school, and I dont think it was a good preparation for normal life. dd1 is at a mixed school, and has already far more experience at handling boys than I ever got!
Its true that I did physics, maths and chemistry without having shove my way in, but my girls also take it for granted that they could do these subjects. So I think it comes from the family.

I went to both and much preferred the mixed. It was the all girls school that was sex mad and quite bitchy.

I think there is no right or wrong way and very much depends on the child.

DS1 went to a birthday party yesterday where there were no girls as the little boy who's birthday it was didn't like girls and is very much a boy's boy - into Ben10, Powerrangers and all that stuff

My DS1 on the other hand is very much a girl's boy - has loads of friends who are girls, likes art, singing, more theatrical stuff so I don't think an all boys school would be very nice for him.

Tryharder - tend to agree. All boys schools have also got an unreal atmosphere in my experience. Mixed for boys is definitely better. Looking back I would have far prefered a mixed school rather than an all boys boarding school.

We send DS1 and DS2 go to a school that is 95% girls and we always have done BUT they are very keen rugby players and definitley like boy stuff.

I don't like the idea of seperating the sexes.

I refused to go to an all girls school (at 11).

I had quite a few friends who did and were obsessed with boys, adn had very low standards.

Plus I just think it's weird

Never any problem with girls taking science at A level at my school - the classes were 50/50 split and several of my female friends went on to become engineers (though at university they were often the only female on the course or one of 2-3 others compared with 50+ boys).

I don't know, I went to a mixed, and actually pretty rough, comprehensive where all that "going with" stuff was huge, who was whose boyfriend etc., girls got pregnant, blah. I was very academic and you might have thought I'd thrive in a girls' school but actually I wouldn't have changed it. I got on with boys, I had male friends as well as fancying boys, and in fact it was boys who protected me from the worst of the catty/bitchy bullying by girls.

I do remember being obsessed with boys I had a crush on / being absolutely beside myself for weeks if I'd actually snogged one - if you saw my diary from when I was 15 you'd probably think I was total airhead. In fact I was also busy getting almost straight As, it's just that that wasn't what you talked about with your mates!

I went to botha a single sex school and a mixed sex school and didnt notice any difference really!

I went to both co-ed and ss, and think there are a lot of assumptions being made about both in this thread.

I don't believe it's a given that girls at a ss school will be boy mad or that girls at a co-ed school will not be cliquey or bitchy.

Boys weren't an exotic species simply because we didn't sit alongside them in the classroom. We did lots of extra-curricular stuff in a mixed group, caught buses to and from school together and hung out in mixed groups outside of school hours. Most of us had male friends and, come to that, brothers.

SS or co-ed is not necessarily the defining characteristic of a school. Two schools can have nothing in common outside of the sex of their student body - they can have completely different atmospheres, attitudes and outcomes despite both having and all-girl (or all-boy) student body. To assume otherwise just buys into easy stereotypes.

I went to a mixed-sex secondary as a boy in the '80s but I still left there feeling that girls were a mysterious alien species...

One thing I did notice in many of the classes there were that the top sets for maths, english and many of the other subjects were dominated by girls. It was the norm to find most of the girls sat at the front of the class and paying attention while the boys (and I include myself in this) were sat at the back arsing around.

It seems likely that both DS and DD will be going to a single-sex schools as the nearest mixed-sex one fills up too fast. I'm in two minds whether that will be a good thing or not; academically I think it will, but socially I'm not so sure. Hopefully their close relationship will help.