Are single sex schools good or bad?

[Wills]

My gut instinct is bad but I'm not sure why I feel like this.

To give you the background. We've just moved counties and focused on finding dd1 an infant school. Having done that we are now having to look (almost immeidately) at Junior schools. Our house is basically placed between two that seem fairly similar on paper (need to visit of course) so I thought I'd have a quick look at the senior schools to see if there was an obvious better one. I was completely blown away by how good the senior schools are but.... most of them are single sex. There is only one good mixed school.

From articles I've read in the newspapers it appears that single sex schools can focus their teaching style appropriately and therefore get better results. BUT I want my kids to grow up realising that the opposite is merely the opposite sex and not something that should be put either on a pedestal or to be scared of. Are my fears stupid?

"what a single sex school won't do and can't do is give children the experience of learning and working and competing alongside the opposite sex. which imho is a big negative point".
I don't agree. My daughters have had no trouble at university in mixing with boys. They went to North London Collegiate and Haberdashers (I can say that as they've left now) and the former did things with Winchester and the latter has Habs boys next door so they're not exactly boy deprived and they have brothers and lots of out of school interests where they can meet boys, but the point is they weren't distracted in class and could grow up without those distraction. I don't find they're handicapped at all by having gone to single sex schools and one of their schools in the Telegraph this week had the best A level and GCSE results in the whole country so even just academically single sex schools seem to do best.

Xenia, I don't think these schools do better because they are single sex schools. It is more to do with the fact that most single sex schools are highly selective, either public schools or grammer schools, and have therefore great academic advantages over the majority of state co-ed schools.
Having said that I went to a Catholic girls school and enjoyed it. I don't think we wil be sending ds and dd to single sex schools though.

Yes, true and the boarding schools who have brought in girls have usually done so because their results weren't so good and they couldn't fill places whereas say Eton haven't had to do that. There isn't a single mixed selective private school right near the top of any national league tables except Westminster which I think has girls in the 6th form. Rugby possibly isn't doing too badly and it's mixed but they're the exceptions.

i went to a mixed junior school then on to a mixd senior school UNFORTUNATLY for me we had to move area and i went to a single sexd school - it wasn't catholic but i could probably count on my fingers the number of girls who left without a baby on the way. the way they managed to keep their standards up was by not entering certain pupils in exams. i wish i had been able to stay at the mixed school but i suppose i am less innocent in my aproach to life.

Haven't read the whole thread but I went to a single sex school and for years after found it very hard to relate to Men.

I would definitely choose a single-sex school for my daughters at secondary level if I have that choice and felt they would beneift from it. If I am concerned that they will one day have to compete in the workforce amongst men, then the best thing I can give them is confidence.

Once they're 18 and go to a mixed university or travel or start work, they'll have plenty of opportunities to be baffled about/learn about how some people of the opposite sex typically act but at least they will have had the space to develop their own interests and personality whilst being treated as a 'school pupil' rather than as a 'girl'.

Perhaps my view is naive but I really think that it does girls an injustice to say that the earlier they learn about how the 'real world' is the better off they will be. So, they should resign themselves to the notion of inequality at an early age so they don't get so upset or baffled about it later? Or what is it, exactly, that you are saying they learn about men whilst at school?

I think the best solution is probably to have schools that are mixed but lessons that are single-sex. I think it has been shown to be beneficial to both boys and girls to be segregated for English lessons.

I subscribe to the single-sex better for girls, mixed for boys theory, which scummy said was junk. I went to a girl's high school and loved it. Had a couple of years at mixed comps beforehand (due to moving house several times) and the boys were appalling. Not a distraction due to sexual attraction, but a distraction as in dominating the class and the teacher's time. Thinking farting was funny, all that stupid stuff. Admittedly, the comps were comps and the girl's school selective independent, but I do think it is better for girl's confidence and opportunities to study maths and sciences.

Single-sex schools for boys, though... my prejudice is that boys need the civilising influence of girls. Certainly the public school boys who came to events held at my schooI all struck me as fipping weird. So I want ds to go to a mixed school.

I went to a single sex all girls school It didnt do me any harm except that when me and my friends did come into contact with boys we were BOY CRAZY!!! I think it has had an impact on me though I am not very confident around men (who I dont know) I think mixed ed is definatly best!

I agree with Beatie. My 2 girls are now at university and went to single sex schools and they were brought up in an environment at school where no subject was "for boys", loads of girls did science and maths, school was a place of safety from unwanted sexual advances where it didn't matter that much how you looked in the sense that you weren't dressing up each day to catch the attention of a boy and many many girls went to Oxbridge. I just felt it was right for them. Some teenage girls are pushed too early into sexual maturity before they really want it and obviously you can't control what some girls choose to do in their evenings but if there aren't boys there during the day it takes the pressure off a bit.

I liked the comment below about self confidence. That's what North London Collegiate gave to one of mine and the other's school, Habs. confidence and I'm not sure had they say switched to Westminster (mixed) at 16 they'd have truly had that to the same extent.

I can also see it from the later stage too. They're both confident very sociable girls at obviously mixed universities, both had/have a stable relationship with a boyfriend and easily made friends with members of the opposite sex.

I went to a mixed school in both primary and secondary. I do think that girls especially can get a bit pre-occupied with the whole boyfriend thing too early which interrupts their learning wave lengths.

I have a classic example of a fantastic neice gorgeous in everyway got all level 5s in her sats from primary but into her second year of secondary and getting distracted by the boys.

I just wonder if the boys werent so available iykwim they wouldnt concentrate on them as much. No immediate distractions.

I went to a mixed primary and all-girls secondary. For the record, I am NOT a nympho, not am I scared of boys

I do have an older brother - and dated several of his friends, plus I went to a mixed youth club when I was 15.

I went to a mixed school and have ahem had quite a few encounters of the sub-duvet kind

I worry about socialising with and meeting boys, I have to say, for my daughters (who may well go to a single sex secondary school). If I hadn't gone to a mixed school I'd have met virtually no boys at all.

Thing is you will almost certainly be competing with Men in the workplace and understanding Men and not thinking the are from Mars may help.

Also the distraction with Boys will 'kick in' in University and perhaps at a greater intensity.

But by 18 or 19 you have the maturity to cope with that distraction and are more career focussed. I don't think you just postpone a sex phase with a single sex school. You remove it forever in some ways. I don't think my girls have ever had problem talking to boys. They were at day schools so lots of boys around out of school. This house isn't like a convent - they have brothers' friends, boys when they do their hobbies so going to university suddenly didn't mean contact with boys for first time, no idea how to relate etc. It worked out fine for us.

IME if a girl the type to get distracted in lessons, she'll get distracted whether there are boys around or not - if there aren't any, she'll just get distracted by chat & gossip with the other girls

"Thing is you will almost certainly be competing with Men in the workplace and understanding Men and not thinking the are from Mars may help"

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Why do women have to enter the workplace forearmed with an inner knowledge of a man's mind. Isn't being intelligent and skilled in her job role more important?

I have a feeling that if research showed boys achieved more in an all male school environment, no-one would be worrying how they will manage to compete with women in the world of work

Beatie if intellegence was all that was needed then we would all be CEOs. I work for a large Civil Service Dept and all the top jobs are taken by Men and the women I know who get promoted to the highest ranks are probably the best at networking. This is a skill that Men do very well and women don't often realise the value of.

Do you know that these women who have been promoted went to a mixed school?

If a mixed-school experience was all that was needed then a large majority of us would be CEOs

No idea. I will conduct a mini research project. Interesting idea. What I do know is a lot of the women I am thinking about socialised a lot with Men usually in a pub situation. If like me after leaving a single sex school I was uncomfortable with Men I would never have felt comfortable doing this.

Bear in mind that this is the Public Sector. I understand from friends that the Pub culture is even more important in the Private Sector in some professions.

I think single sex girls schools provide the kind of netowkring for life contacts if it's one of the top of league tables girls' schools that help them though get there. I can already see my daughters using networking skills, contacts of friends from school etc - girls mafia type stuff which presumably men have always used. Perhaps we should be talking about which schools are best for life and work contacts and job prospects rather than just the male/female issue though.

I suspect very few schools concentrate on the skills needed in the work place. How to crack the Glass Ceiling should be a compulsory subject for all groups under represented in the corridors of power.

Interesting thread! I don't really see a link between co-ed schooling and Glass Ceiling Breaking tactics. Nearly all my friends at all-girls school had boyfriends by age 18. I didn't because I was a nerd . I'd never blame my school for that! What I did notice though was that a few bright girls didn't go to good (or any) unis because the boyfriend's "needs". But that's just society for you - in fact I'd say the parents were behind those pressures, surely.

This is interesting on this topic. I wonder if my daughter would have been as likely to have done physics and chemistry in the sixth form at a boys school.
"The Times September 22, 2006

Single-sex school girls choose jobs they enjoy and earn more
By Alexandra Frean
GIRLS who attend single-sex schools go on to earn more in the world of work than those in mixed education, although they do no better in exams, a new study has suggested.

Researchers who studied 13,000 people born in 1958 throughout their lives found that by the age of 16 girls educated in single-sex schools were more likely to study subjects that they enjoyed and were good at, rather than allowing gender stereotypes to influence their choice of subject.

This meant that more were studying maths and science than in co-educational schools.

This pattern carried through to university and into the world of work, enabling the young women from girls? schools to enter areas of employment typically dominated by men and in which salaries tended to be higher.

Alice Sullivan, a researcher at the Institute of Education?s Centre for Longitudinal Studies and co-author of the study, said the findings suggested that co-educational schools needed to examine the ways in which they may, unwittingly, be holding back boys and girls by imposing powerful gender stereotypes on them.

?Single-sex schools seemed more likely to encourage students to pursue academic paths according to their talents rather than their gender, whereas more gender-stereotyped choices were made in co-educational schools,? Dr Sullivan said.

Diana Leonard, co-author of the research, said that although the correlation between attending a girls? school and ending up in a traditionally male area of work was only a weak one, the link between higher-than- average earnings was much stronger.

However, the Economic and Social Research Council-funded research also found that single-sex education brought almost no advantage in terms of exam results.

Pupils from girls? schools did only slightly better in exams than their co-educational peers, while boys did no better at all."

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