Girls in the independent sector

[Litchick]

My understanding is that girls currently perform better than boys at GCSE and A level. Is that right or an urban myth?

If it is right, then I wondered if this trend was also reflected in the private sector.

Thanks to anyone who might know/have a view as to why this would be.

It seems to be where I live. Both the Private all girl schools seem to do better in general than the mixed private school. They are all selective intake.

The reason is that girls are better than boys ner ner ne ner ner

lol @ mintycane!!!!!

Went through this when trying to chose schools for DD (a while ago now as she's almost 18) - I remembered reading this in the Guardian earlier this year, so I googled it for you.

Girls are, of course, better than boys though

Yes, true. Usually true that the girls' school outperforms the boys' equivalent where there is one, private or not private. Girls apparently do better in subjects historically perceived as unfeminine in girls schools and more likely to take them too than they would in mixed i.e. science and maths.

Message withdrawn

Thanks, that's interesting

I would rather my daughter grew up relaxed in the company of both boys and girls and take a measured risk with the odd exam point, though.

Arguably girls are more likely to be relaxed in with boys if they don't have to spend too much time with them as spotty teenagers. There's huge amounts of research about the ways that boys take up a disproportionate amount of teachers' time in the classroom and girls' learning is disrupted in all sorts of ways. The school my dds go to has a diamond strucutre with co-ed kindergarten and 6th form and prep and high schools that are separate but adjacent. They grow up having contact with each other and togetehr for extra-curricular stuff, school plays etc so don't see each other as alien but are taught separately.

I was positively thrilled with all those spotty boys when I was sent to a co-ed school just before my thirteenth birthday .

It's very rare indeed to get a single-sex school in France these days - you'd have to positively overdose on the Catholic thing to get an all girls school. There is an academically very rigorous all girls school just up the road that DD's second cousins attend. I somehow doubt she'll end up there, though.

My DS and Dd did 2 years at a highly academic, competitive entry Co Ed, and then went to single sex independent in year 9. They both say single sex was far better.

That's right. My boy and girl are at independent single sex schools in the same town. They have similar demographics but the girls' school always does better.

My daughter, a bit of a tomboy who has always enjoyed being with boys, has flourished in an all-girls environment. She loves it.

My children are lucky because they are at schools which work closely together. So things like drama are often done in mixed sex groups. And more esoteric subjects, like Russian, taught jointly. They travel on the same coaches to school as well.

dh & I both did the single sex schooling thing & we both prefer the idea (& reality) of co-ed for our children. Interestingly in ds's year the boys noticeably outperform the girls, but the reverse is true in dd's year at the same school.

I'm pleased to hear these postive stories.
DCs are goone co-ed until now when I think I may separate them at scondary.

Sorry if I am repeating what it says in that Guardian article but I cannot read it as it does not want to download for some reason (prob due to too many adverts)

I think that there are two aspects to this
a) learning: as others have said, girls get their fair share of attention when there are no boys to dominate the classroom so they learn more. Also, they also are not doctrinated into the concept that some subjects are 'not for girls' e.g. maths or sciences.
b) exam results: in my day, O Levels etc were exam-only which suits boys' temperament (disclaimer: I know that this is a sweeping generalisation) so they did better. Nowadays GCSEs have a large element of continuous-assessment which suits girls' temperament (equal & opposite disclaimer) so now they do better. However, just to muddy the analysis, in the independent sector they often do IGCSE (non-coursework) instead of GCSE.

There is also another aspect. You haven't defined your word 'better' but girls and boys have different achievement profiles.
If you look at exam results etc, the general population follows a standard distribution i.e. most people are average , with a smaller number slightly above/below that, with an even smaller number even more above/below, etc, etc which gives you the classic bell-shaped-curve.
For girls, more are average and less are at either one extreme or the other.
For boys, there are not so many average and their extremes tend to be more extreme.

Thus girls appear to do well because they tend to be more average, conformist, what-the-examiner-is-looking-for types.
Most boys can also achieve the expected but there is this larger percentage of 'belows' who will skew the figures.

This year when they cut down on the amount of course work in gcse maths boys gained more passes than girls. When I did olevels in the 80's boys almost always outperformed girls as course work was non existent and your grade depended entirely on final year exams. My point is the current exam system where course work makes up a large percentage of the final mark favours girls but boys are better at sudden death exams. So it might not just be that its because its an all girls school that girls do better than boys a lot of it is due to the current exam system.

I vaguely remember from A'Level Sociology that some (probably out of date) studies show that boys do better in a co-ed environment and girls do better in a single sex one. DS1 is in a mixed school, and DS2 will go to the same, but DD is sufficently younger that I think I'll consider sending her to the local girl's school (the boys would be so far ahead that there would be any additional benefit from attending the same school)

wouldn't be, that should say

Senua - thank you for that.
How interesting this all this.
Also, how interesting that as soon as GCSEs were changed to allow girls to show their true potential, we are hit with calls of dumbing down.

How about another one?
The people who do best at GCSE tend to be the ones who put in the work i.e. have the more mature attitude to education. Sweeping generalisation time again, but it does tend to be the girls.

I think there is some truth in this dumbing down claim. My daughter goes to an academic girls school where GCSE English essays are sent back to the girls until they hit the grade considered acceptable by the school. If you took English lit. O level you didn't have this option of polishing up work until you knew it made the grade.

Well me and DW have been carrying out a real time experiment with our DSs education which may cast light on this issue.

We deliberately sent our two boys to girls schools all their school lives (age 9 and 7) except for one year of their education 2 years ago were they were both put in a slightly boy heavy school. The experience of the boy heavy school was not at all good. Poor concentration, more angst in the playground, more general unhappiness and poorer learning experience. We took them out and sent them back to a girls school.

Now our boys are back in a 90:10 ratio girl:boy school and they are far happier and DS2 is noticeably coming on with his reading. DS1 who has always been very poor a dealing with social sitiations is much more focussed and relaxed. The boy heavy school they went to seemed like chaos whenever we walked in but the girls school they are at is calm and focussed with a lovely atmosphere.

Its an interestng control experiment. Put a boy in a girls school and see how he does.

Much better in our experience.

I don't think there's any suggestion that single-sex education is better at that age, though, ABD. It's later on that there's a suggestion that it may be (and generally is, in academic terms).

I think one advantage of having children of both sexes is knowing that they'll get plenty of exposure to the opposite sex at home whether or not they do at school, so there's less hanging on a single-sex/co-ed decision.

Went round the local girls school a couple of week's back and the head basically said single sex was better for girls as in mixed the girls tend to work away quietly while the boys muck about, consequently the girls are overlooked as the boys are more boisterous and as such the girls are less supported, get less attention and slowly get the message that's boy's needs are more important than theirs and that their achievements are less worthy and they are criticised for not getting on with it, while a boy would not be criticised for poor attention.

My other vibe was that in a mixed school girls sport got lip service, in a girls school sport was heavily encouraged and the girl's school science teacher was excellent and loved her subject so much that a girl would just do science without feeling she was "weird" whereas, in the mixed school I noticed the science clubs were exclusively male...

The local girls school partners with the local boys school and share after school clubs...apparently there used to be an exclusion zone! But they reviewed this and found it was emotionally unhealthy.

Miggsie, while there may be some truth in the heads words, she would say that wouldn't she?

I think co-ed independants that have been co-ed for a very long time tend to be more geared up towards girls sport & girls in general than the more newly co-ed ones in the main.