All girls sixth form, your thoughts please

[dingit]

Dd has a conditional offer for selective academy, all girls. It specialises in engineering and languages. She wants to do engineering.
She has had problems all year with queen bee/ bitch, who today has been strutting round saying an all girls sixth form is really bad, and no one should go there.
What can I say to dd to make her feel positive about it. I went to an all girls school, and it didn't bother me ( met boys in park at lunchtime)
Naturally she is listening to her peers and getting a bit upset.

in a mixed school she would not be encouraged to sign up for engineering - it is a fantastic opportunity!

Academically it seems a good idea as she won't be the only or one if a few doing what are still thought of as "male" subjects like Maths and physics

However unless you are sure that socially she will not be excluded from boys I would think twice. I went to an all girls school through to 18 and turned up at Uni amongst an alien life form ie males! But if she is coming from a mixed school this may not be a problem.

There will be queen bees in all schools- coed and single sex. Evolution innit

I loved being in an all girls sixth form. It felt fairly peaceful. I should say that I was all girls all the way through school, but in the sixth form I appreciated it as there were no distracting boys! Also I have a brother so there were boys around at home all the time anyway.

Thanks. She is in a mixed school now, and also has a brother. She realises there will always be a queen bee!

Sounds like Queen Bee is a bit jealous.

All the research says that girls who want to do science and engineering do much, much better in an all girls environment.
They then go on to do better in STEM subjects at uni because they are confident in their abilities.

Almost certainly Spring, but I'm not sure why she's doing it, as she also would have got an offer had she applied.

Lonecat, that's just the sort of thing I want to quote to her, thanks.

Tell her that different schools suit different people. She's not one of a herd, she's capable of making her own choices. She doesn't need to depend on 'queen bees' for external validation, does she?

My DD is at a girls' GS and has never seriously considered going anywhere else for sixth form. (Though if she was near your DD's 6th form she might, as hers has just dropped the systems&control she wanted to do so she'd be )

My DD's assessment of the 'popular group' - of which Queen Bees are generally the leader - is that they're the ones who are most into worrying about what boys think of them, what they look like, all that sort of crap, and underneath really not so self-assured as the rather more maverick types.

If it helps I am reading this with slightly green eyes, it would be perfect for my dd in a few years but there is nothing like that around here as far as I know.

Why is the other girl doing this? Trying to bolster her own ego, or protesting too much because she isn't totally sure she's made the best choice herself.
Or maybe she's just not a very nice person.

Queen Bee has illustrated one very good reason to go. i.e. her not being there.

Errol, she's nasty. We had huge problems at the start of the year, where dd was refusing to go to school, and threatening suicide
I wouldn't want her to choose her school solely for that reason, but it is an advantage.

Another an all girls school that specialises in engineering which is what your DD is interested in is more likely to have other girls like her. I say that as someone who made no really close friends till I went to uni and meet people like me interested in the same narrow STEM subject I was interested in.

blog.gdst.net/post/114745629985/girls-and-technology-the-time-is-now

This might help. Articles like this frequently appear on the website "A Mighty Girl" too.