How can I change my daughters mind? - I do nor want her to go to single sex school

[acca2017]

My daughter is 10 years old and we are planning to move her private secondary in year 7. She currently in state primary and doing really well. We visited schools near us this year to have an idea. We were always thinking a coed secondary for her but after visiting single sex schools (girls only) she would like to go there but that wasnt my plan. We visited St Dunstands, Colfes and Blackheath High School so far, unfortunately we couldn't attend Bromley High's open day. I only wanted to view the girls only schools in case if she can not have a offer from any coed schools we can have more options/chances. We didnt want to put all our eggs in to one egg but now my daughter says she really liked the girls only school environment etc... I am trying to change her mind since December last year but she is so straight forward. When we visited girls only school... a year 10 girl showed us around which was really kind, smart and intelligent. She talked a lot about girls only school advantages etc...- maybe thats the reason she would like to go there. I told her that I want her to be in one of coed schools and now she says she will do bad in the coed school exams so that she will need to go to girls only school. She is really bright, hard worker, smart child which is way above avarege. Me and her teachers belives that she will good in 11+ but now I am not sure how she will do in exams. I am not from UK so I do no have any experience in single sex school environment and none of my relatives attended so far, so, I am not sure what is the advantages and disadvantages. There are articles online which shows taht girls do better in all female environment but I think coed is really life, its sounds more normal to me. Am I wrong?

P.S: changed subject and copy and pasted here as nobody responded x

Nice misogyny there 🙄. What we like is the friendship pool is very deep. Dd2 had issues with bullying but there are so many other friendship options so she was able to walk away and find new (much nicer) friends as there are just so many other girls. Dd1 had a lovely easy going group from about year 8 and never had any issues with them.

The school has a bystander rule where if you witness bullying and don’t report it you get into trouble yourself. They are very proactive. Not saying it’s perfect (ridiculously strict on uniforms pushy academically and there are teen girls fall outs) but anecdotally not heard of any old school bullying like I witnessed in my comp.

Well said on all counts! I have taught in single sex and mixed schools and have boy/girl twins. We decided on a mixed school as we wanted them to be together and they were in the junior department of the same school already.
i can only speak for what we found but there was no pressure on the girls to take a back seat academically and in fact DD, who gained the top exam results in the year, said any negative remarks came from girls, not boys.
It also saddens me that my lovely DS be lumped in with ‘all boys’ when he would step in to support anyone he felt was having a hard time, as would many of his friends.

I did very well in a single sex school. Just make sure she mixes with boys in some other way.

What we like is the friendship pool is very deep

Yes this appealed to me too. My DDs primary school is very boy heavy. 9 girls and 21 boys. It's been a really negative experience to be honest. That's one of the reasons I was so keen for her to go to a girls school for secondary. So she will have more friendship options

Why would she need to mix with boys?

My nearly 14 year old dd2 is doing a fair amount of mixing with boys from the local boys school off her own bat !

acca2017: "Sorry another question for all of you… what is the advantages of selective/nonselective or academic/nonacademic. Do you think we need to consider these while we decide on school? Academic schools are top of the list in legue but is this because they picked all the academic kids or their teaching is better then nonselective or nonacademic school?"

It is certainly an important thing to consider! However, as this is already a long (and very interesting) thread, I think it might be better for you to start a new thread for this separate question, otherwise some people may only read your original question and not the whole thread, so it will become a jumble of different answers.

Our local girls independent school is struggling for numbers and has got smaller and smaller in recent years. Marketing now in overdrive. Supposedly selective but can't afford to be too picky any more. Conversely, the co-ed independents are thriving and there are plenty of self-assured and confident girls being turned out by them. Also plenty of decent young men who have grown up alongside girls and don't see them as anything other than equal. How it should be and surely what we all want.

If they are segregated through school and awful things like porn and the fakeness of social media are the main experience of the opposite sex for some boys and girls, then surely it makes it harder for them to build normal relationships? Historic problems with schools don't necessarily mean they are still like that, and co-ed schools are not all hot beds of sexual harassment. My DS15 and his friends received lots of attention and messaging from a group of girls when they were 13 and not yet interested, girls are not necessarily all sweet and innocent! To be fair to them, the boys were careful not to hurt their feelings but the girls were quite persistent and I kept an eye on things. These particular girls go to a girls school.

Sorry another question for all of you… what is the advantages of selective/nonselective or academic/nonacademic. Do you think we need to consider these while we decide on school? Academic schools are top of the list in legue but is this because they picked all the academic kids or their teaching is better then nonselective or nonacademic school?

We picked selective schools that were actually not top rank academic. The really academic ones put a huge amount of pressure on pupils to maintain their top academic credentials. Some don't cope with the pressure very well and it can manifest in things like anorexia. Teenage life is not all about exams and a balance is important.

Selective, (and I'm probably going to be roasted for this) because as we were paying an awful lot of money for this, we didn't want the class held back.

DD's school was excellent. Top quality teaching and a real mission to do their best for the girls. Time tabling for GCSE didn't allow DD to do Latin along with the 10 other subjects she was taking and rather than say sorry, no can do, they made arrangements for her to have lessons after school. You really are not going to get that level of support in a state school.

As usual MN land is a parallel universe. FWIW a huge majority of the country, us plebs, don't have any state single sex schools. From reading this you would think that we are condemning our daughters to 5 years of abuse, sexual harassment, underachievement and misery.

Anyone sending their daughter to the local co-ed "bog-standard" comp (as we do) should be aware that their girls can be happy, confident and achieve their potential academically, despite the doom-mongers on here.

Of course there are some boys who are misogynists just as there are some men who are, but boys and girls need to learn how to behave in each other's company with respect and understanding, and why shouldn't this begin at school. I am not excusing the shocking stories of abuse and inappropriate behaviour that have come out of schools, but this is mirroring society at large, which is co-ed. Surely the way to tackle the issues around toxic masculinity is through education.

There also always seems to be such a push for girls to take STEM subjects on MN. Of course there should be parity and girls in my DDs co-ed school achieve just as well as boys in Maths and Sciences. It also has to be said that some girls are not interested in STEM and other subjects are available. This has nothing to do with the attitudes of boys but more to do with their individual preferences. My eldest DD took PE GCSE and some of the attitudes of the boys during discussions were as expected. However, the teacher and the girls were able to challenge these and we had some lively discussions at home about how they would have reached their viewpoints. To me co-ed has given my daughters experience of certain attitudes that they will unfortunately encounter in real life. It doesn't mean that I am happy that they have had to experience them, but it does mean that we have had a chance to talk about the challenges of being a female in the 21st century.

Girls do better at single sex schools

From an investigation into sexual assault in schools:

*The girls who responded to our questionnaire indicated that, in order of prevalence, the following types of harmful sexual behaviours happened ‘a lot’ or ‘sometimes’ between people their age:

Non-contact forms, but face-to-face:
sexist name-calling (92%)
rumours about their sexual activity (81%)
unwanted or inappropriate comments of a sexual nature (80%)

Non-contact forms, online or on social media:
being sent pictures or videos they did not want to see (88%)
being put under pressure to provide sexual images of themselves (80%)
having pictures or videos that they sent being shared more widely without their knowledge or consent (73%)
being photographed or videoed without their knowledge or consent (59%)
having pictures or videos of themselves that they did not know about being circulated (51%)

Contact forms:
sexual assault of any kind (79%)
feeling pressured to do sexual things that they did not want to (68%)
unwanted touching (64%)

These findings are strongly supported by existing research into harmful sexual behaviour between peers*

All the women I know in real life who are super confident went to girls' schools. I wanted my dd to go to a girls' school but she was having none of it. I'd go for the girls' school if she's up for it. All the research suggests that girls thrive in single sex ed.

It's very hard to separate out different factors. You say the super confident girls you know went to SS schools - but SS schools are also overwhelmingly more likely to be grammar or independent - so how do you separate out how much of that confidence is due to SS and how much is down to the school and cohort type? The girls at my kids' co-ed independent are also often super confident.

^ This! And I don't have a son to defend

Of course there are some boys who are misogynists just as there are some men who are, but boys and girls need to learn how to behave in each other's company with respect and understanding, and why shouldn't this begin at school. I am not excusing the shocking stories of abuse and inappropriate behaviour that have come out of schools, but this is mirroring society at large, which is co-ed. Surely the way to tackle the issues around toxic masculinity is through education.

Yes but the time it will take to educate boys and men of the issues around toxic masculinity and misogyny, and for enough of them to change their behaviour accordingly, will be lengthy.

And in the meantime girls are lambs to the slaughter in many (not all) schools due to the large numbers of sexual harassment towards them by many (not all) boys.

They shouldn't have to put up with it while the root cause is tackled, if they wish to be educated in single sex schools.

Neither should people be shamed or it be insinuated they are painting all boys as predators for considering this a huge issue and being concerned for their daughters safety while that root cause is tackled.

Most men aren't predators but we have single sex spaces because some are, we can't tell which ones, and many girls and women feel more comfortable, safe and that their dignity and privacy isn't being infringed on in single sex spaces where it would be in unisex ones.

It's a valid consideration for girls and their parents to consider similar things when debating sending them to a single sex or co-ed school.

Not thinking co-ed is best for your daughter as an individual doesn't mean all boys are 'bad' and it certainly doesn't mean all girls are 'good'. It simply means that the issues associated with some boys' behaviour is a concern and creates risks girls / their parents don't want to take if they don't have to.

I think that people who think otherwise are going down the NAMALT route. Which is not constructive and minimised valid concerns from women and girls, who don't think all boys and men are 'like that'. But enough are that it makes many (not all) girls and women's lives harder due to the issues caused by the ones who are 'like that.'

I went to single sex and believe that people somehow have idolised all girls when I wouldnt now chose it for my kids
I didnt experience this utopia of feminism

For me it didnt teach me how to manage boys, it made them into an illusive species which we didnt know how to co exist.
There was a slight fever pitch around any passing boy. I genuinely believe that it made girls accept any old boy because he was the only one they knew, and some awful behaviour that went with it was tolerated. It put so much power in the boys hands and encouraged me to do anything for male attention. Rates of underage sexual activity were super high

I wish male presence had been normalised, wed been supported in building working relationships etc

My same sex school definitely had things like bra pinging, awfulnes around periods, regular rates of bullying, disparaging of people felt to be nerdy. But also things like pornography and nudes being shared

Im genuinely suprised by what people think girls schools are like

Let her go to the single sex school. She’s keen on it and it will be so much better for her. Good for girls’ confidence too as they’re not shouted down and dominated by boys all the time. My dd went to a girls school (I did too) and I can assure you she and her friends are far from being shy and hesitant!

Whats the evidence this happens less in same sex schools? girls were definitely doing lots of that in my school, especially name calling, rumours but also spreading nudes and sending illicit stuff to kids that were considered nerdy

The boys we met outside of school were also full of the above danger, only there was no one to go to about it because it was outside school, with usually older boys that we were all pretending to our parents that we never met

@Mudblast

Do you really think the below experiences are as prevalent between pupils within a single sex school setting than they are in a co-ed one?

being put under pressure to provide sexual images of themselves (80%)
having pictures or videos that they sent being shared more widely without their knowledge or consent (73%)
being photographed or videoed without their knowledge or consent (59%)
sexual assault of any kind (79%)
feeling pressured to do sexual things that they did not want to (68%)
unwanted touching (64%)

I went to a girls' school and it was definitely a better environment for me than co-ed. Sometimes i think we need to trust our children's views - make sure she is clear with you about why she wants to choose single sex. If she's as bright as you say, she probably understands the benefits. Also trust that she knows her own mind, even though she's only 10. As long as the schools tick all the boxes you want, aside from being co-ed, then I would go with it.

I went to a co--ed sixth form, so that might be an option down the line.

I’m sure your daughter will thrive in a single sex school and she’ll be grateful I’m the future that you listened to her and took her opinion into account. I honestly wish I’d had the opportunity to go to a single sex school - there are so many benefits as have been outlined in this thread. Good luck!