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?

Yes, bloss when my ex husband's prep school went mixed it got pretty hard to persuade 12 year old boys to sing treble in the choir, do so much drama etc etc. The girls caked in makeup in secondary schools when boys come to the school etc is true too. If you look at the 18 year old girls emerging from one of my daughter's single sex schools, (she's now left) which is North London Collegiate - they are confident and perfectly able to deal with boys. I can't see any evidence they're suffered at all.

haven't had a chance to read the whole thread, so I appologise if this has already been posted

In this week's Times Educational Suppliment a reaserch project was quoted that said that the results of children educated in sinle sex schools was not significanly better or worse than those educated in mixed schools.

However Children were significantly more likley to choose 'non obvious' subjects, ie not dictacted by their gender, if they went to single sex schools. Girls, for example where significany more likely to do the sciences if they went to a girls school