Co-ed or all boys

[JustgetmethroughOctober]

Hi,

if I get through October with all this school choice stuff it will be a minor miracle!

Have narrowed down from 6 possible schools to 3.

I need to decide between:
partally selective co-ed faith school
partially selective boys faith school
local co-ed comp.

Local comp is improving but is furthest away. I wouldn't have a problem if he ended up there as it is definitley improving after a rocky few years but I'd like a bit more distance time-wise between the rocky few years ideally so will be putting it as third choice.

Can't decide between the co-ed faith and the boys faith schools for first and second choice - have equal chance of getting into either. Had a good feel for both schools when viewing. The all boys is a little better on paper but not signifcantly. I just can't get my head around all boys as I went to a mixed school and it just seems odd!

Is it? What are the good and bad bits?

I much prefer co-ed. We looked round lots of co-ed and all girls schools. Chose our favourite co-ed, and our favourite all girls, and let DD choose. She chose all girls, which I absolutely wouldn't have done, but we went with her choice and, with the benefit of hindsight (DD just started sixth form), she was 100% correct in her decision.

So, I would go with what your son wants. Would it be possible for him to do taster days at the schools, so that he gets a feel for them?

He likes both. I wish one was miles better than the other!

Thanks all.

In my view it depends on the dc gender. Boys respond better in co ed situations where I believe girls tend to work harder in same sex environments

My ds went to an all boys school. Not specifically because it was single sex, but, over the 7 years he was there, the 'vibe' or atmosphere around the school was fantastic. The staff who taught there all seemed to really "get" boys - I suppose they'd made an active decision to apply to work at an all boys school. The pastoral side was excellent.
I can only tell of my experience - I don't know how much of this was down to it being a boys school, and how much was down to it being that particular school, but I'd certainly recommend it for my ds, and have recommended it many times over the years.

I certainly wouldn't be put off by the fact there aren't girls there.

My two DSs went to a co-ed faith school, and I couldn't have been happier. Both DH and I went to single sex schools, and neither of us wanted that for our sons. The younger is now in Y13, and they have both always had a really lovely mixed group of friends. I wish I'd have had that when I was their age. I think mixed is definitely better for them socially. And academically, they really have to work hard to compete with the high performing girls!

Single sex worked well for both genders for us.
Specifically for boys there was no "but that's girly" type thinking. you could sing treble without much older girls being better than you , or play the flute as well as captaining the rugby team until you damaged yourself!
There was a science bias coming from the parents but that was the wish for your son to be a doctor or dentist tbh.

For me, single sex education is the way forward. My DD went to an all-girls grammar school and my DS went to an all-boys boarding school. My own personal experience was a complete disaster - having achieved greatly from an all-boys school to a co-ed school doing Form VI. From my experience, early teenage boys are too self conscious when thrown in together with girls. They (most) dare not speak out or do anything that may turn out ‘silly’ for fear of being ridiculed - not in front of all the girls please. As a defence mechanism, they retreat to the back and try to remain invisible or at least act as if they are fully on board while in fact they are not. Their education soon suffers.

Others may argue when they go to university it would be co-ed anyway. Yes, but by then they would have become young adults and are more mature and all teenage foolishness and anxieties would have been consigned to history. On the contrary, they would be more respectful towards the opposite sex seeing that they will have to work together from now onwards.

I would send your DS to the all-boys faith school.