For those who did, do you think going to an all girls school was a good thing for you...?

[BraveMerida]

...or did it scar you for life ? Why?!

And would/did/do you send your dd to one?

just interested.

That was in a nut shell a summary of my experience of the mixed grammar I attended 30 years ago too mrsmuffin. At about 12years of age, I remember vividly some of the boys cornering some of the girls in the corridors between lessons and practising their flirting techniques with them and groping them.

Really interesting (and sad, at times) to read everyone's experience of both sorts of school.

I guess it comes down to what I say on most 'which is best' threads on Education - it totally depends on the individual school, as well as sometimes on the individual child.

I have seen co-ed schools where there is genuine respect and cooperation between the genders. My niece went to one of them (state school in Herts). I have also seen well balanced all girls' schools, where the school makes efforts to have links with boys' schools and the girls don't seem any more bitchy or clique-y than in co-ed schools. I've also heard of (but thankfully not seen) the opposite in both.

I went to a mixed primary school which I thrived at.

I attended a mixed secondary school where I was bullied by boys and girls. There was a lot of competition, trying to impress the opposite sex whatever it took.

I was called the most awful names due to being different I.e. not confident with boys, not conventionally pretty, unfashionable.

Boys can be just as horrible as girls. I experienced this first hand. It hurt all the more because as a teenage girl a part of you wants to be accepted/liked/desired by boys. I never was and felt adequate. To this day I have no male friends.

Mrsmuffin I had a similar experience. I was regularly called frigid in front of my friends.

Boys can be just as horrible as girls abso-fucking-lutely.

One of the 'king lads' at my school used to sit opposite me in English (my best subject, one I'd won prizes in) and mouth 'fuck off cunt' at me. Another one pushed my friend so hard into a wall she bruised her cheekbone because she was 'fat and taking up too much space in the corridor'.

There were plenty of decent guys there too. It's not boys or girls - it's people. Some people are horrible. But I do think taking the sexual element out of it until everyone's hormones have settled down a bit helps girls.

And my experience of the mixed grammar was from 30 years ago, with all the pornography that are about now and how that is corrupting young minds, it frankly scares me to think how toxic a mixed secondary environment can be these days.

I went to both, though secondary was all-girl boarding school. I think the individual schools on offer and how the school deals with sexual stereotyping and sexism is way more important than the sexes of the kids.

My all-girl school was hot on the messages that you could excel and needed to earn a living, and excellent in science - but maths teaching was poor, computers and technology a huge afterthought, and it was never suggested you might want to earn enough to support a family - it was all 'do what interests you'.

I went to a 95% male environment in my gap year with no trouble at all. I figure boys aren't really worth talking to until about 17, so really don't think I missed out on contact with 13-15yo lads!

Snap bumblequeen. I wasn't too unlucky. The worst I ever had was boys shoving snow down my top when I was about 15. And at the time I didn't even see it as a sexual assault, which it was, and in broad daylight on the hockey pitch, what upset me was that there was gravel in the snow and they scratched me and it was just horribly humiliating. One of them said "well we can't do this to ((*&^^%$" (the name of a really popular girl who was sort of revered, I can't explain i better than that). But they felt free to grab another passing girl and I think there were about six of them.

Also, another time, a boy whose locker was beside mine gave me a dead leg. I was limping.

When I started my second mixed school one boy spread it round that he knew me from our home town and that he'd shagged me on the beach (wtf?) but that was taken to be true. I was 16. I only found out that the whole year knew very little about me besides that after I left.

To be honest, the girls were never as vile to me as the boys were. I am not hideous, I am now sporty and normal looking, I have 'scrubbed up' as the decades rolled by, but in school I was very ordinary I think and if there's nothing that boys will mock more than a girl that is sexually unappealing. It's like you have NO right to exist almost.

Couple that with being in a predominantly boys school where the teachers still hark back to the good old days of all boys, and fuck me, but it's a jungle for girls! I was like catniss trying to survive my school days!

~Actually, the girls were either really nice, or just we ignored each other.

BraveMerida, yes, it's terrifying now. The social media, and the pressure that could be on girls 24/7 almost. And like it or not, boys do sort of dictate the norm. If the boys dictate that this is ok and you're a prude to listen to your parents' warnings then the girls will feel that rebellion is to ignore their mums and join in with the sexting.
my friend found her 13 year old dd's phone and read the texts, and she said her daughter's texts were all innocent, trying to chat, trying to talk to him like a friend, and every single one of his were sexual in content. he was also 13.

I was both sexually unappealing and clever. You can imagine how popular this made me in the sixth form. Nothing like a girl who's doing better than you...or so I found in 1970s Norwich, anyway.

A poster upthread said "at least I know my daughter is safe at school", mrsMuffin I think,and I am feeling more and more like I agree with this. I know they have their phones, but they're not allowed to have them on in class. So at least while they are in the classroom they're not being shouted down, compared to rhianna or miley, or being sexted, groped by their lockers, feeling pressured to reapply concealer every time they go to the loo

I did, and I loved it. It was quite small, very supportive and probably quite old fashioned (English style but overseas). The great things:

• quite a quasi-feminist, girls-can-do-anything attitude which my friends at co-ed schools didn't have at all
• lack of self-consciousness about how we dressed and behaved within the school walls (we could all be quite silly sometimes, which was lovely)
• very supportive teachers (most of whom were female too), it was like a little enclave from the outside world - I loved that but I get that not everyone would!

One down-side would be that I didn't really have any male friends. But I had school mates who did- I was very shy. We could definitely be silly around boys, but to be honest I think all teenage girls can (and vice-versa of course!) regardless of whether you're at school with them all day or not. It did take me a few months when I started university to realise that you could be friends with a boy!

DP went to an all-boys comprehensive and feels very positive about single-sex schooling too, he says him and his classmates could just 'get on with being them' instead of worrying about what their classmates of the opposite sex were thinking of them. We've got two very good single-sex comprehensives in our town which we will definitely consider for DD and DS when they're at that stage.

MI

I don't understand this concept of "just getting on with being them" at single-sex schools. All I hear is "we lived in a state of arrested emotional development". Why is that a good thing?

So what type of personality suits a girls school?

Bonsoir I'm doing the opposite of what my parents did. I had to trek out to a mixed private school miles away. So I'm thinking nearby girls school....

a state of arrested emotional development

That doesn't reflect my experience or what I've been reading here. It's also rather insulting. Teenage girls don't rely on teenage boys for their emotional development.

mymaneiswinkly, I agree, I didn't understand that part either.

I think it would actually remove an impediment to emotional development myself, but I guess this thread is interesting because of the totally different experiences.

I went to an all girls Grammar and have/had a healthy attitude to boys but then I had two brothers and I don't know if that makes a difference or not.

Like others I loved my school and I enjoyed flirting with the boys from the boys school on the bus on the way home .

No. Lasted one term and changed. Think that was particular to that school though. Will decide with DD later.

I went to a single sex school and loved it
plenty of boyfriends out of school and absolutely no problems with mixing with boys at uni or, well, ever really
my dds are also at an all girls school with no issues.

A state of arrested emotional development? Like some say bullying is character building?

A timely article....
www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10494898/Boys-and-girls-cant-be-friends-without-sexual-innuendo-study-finds.html

Hmm I went to an all girls' secondary school and for me there were pros and cons.

Pros:

• not distracted by boys in class (in the sense of trying to impress them or flirt etc)
• subjects weren't seen as "boys" or "girls" subjects - lots of us did science and maths as well as English/humanities/languages - it was very much whatever you wanted to do was cool

Cons:

• I only ever met boys when we were out and trying to cop off with them! I'm not sure this is entirely helpful.
• it could be a bit intense and bitchy at times

I'd prefer mixed sex schools for my dcs. School for me is also about preparing them for the real world and half the people in the real world will be of the opposite sex to them!

I think teenagers do need other teenagers of the opposite sex for their emotional development.

Would better exam results not outweigh that unmet need?
I was at a mixed sxhool and had no male friends anyway