Concerned UK "Co-Ed" Independent Schools are Sexist

[squiffymum]

Dear Mumsnet

Apologies for the somewhat inflammatory subject line...

We're currently applying for independent co-ed schools and I've just discovered that pretty much all of them have a 60/40 boy to girl ratio, rather than being truly co-ed (50/50).

Frankly, I'm deeply upset and pretty disgusted by this. It's 2022, not 1822. When I try and unpick the reasons for this ratio... it's sexism, plain and simple. And we're sending a signal to school-age students that this is acceptable and normal? I asked one of the schools for the rationale: it was "so that the boys aren't dominated". As parents of a daughter, are we truly expected to stump up independent fees (for the same fees as the boys) for her to be "dominated"?

Also, it also presumably means it's harder for girls to get into these schools than boys. How is this even legal - surely it's discriminatory?

Is anyone else upset by this, or am I all alone in my outrage? ;-)

(Background is - we're moving out of London and wish to send our daughter (ten) and later our son (still only seven) to an independent school - ideally, the same one. They're currently in the public/state system, however we feel they'll benefit from smaller class sizes. We are looking across a wide area of the South West, from Portsmouth to Bath - even up to Cheltenham. I can't believe we are willing to pay good money but there are no options that aren't single sex or effectively single sex ("co-ed" schools with 60/40 boy/girl ratios are boys schools that accept girls to my mind). Per the above - it's 2022!)

I know you're moving out of London, but if you stayed in London - Highgate as far as I'm aware takes 50/50 boys and girls every intake.

My point being that no school can guarantee 50:50 continuously.

An independent school can - admissions are done with a 50:50 split. If a boy leaves you call the boys on the the waiting list for an assessment; likewise if it is a girl.
A good/excellent independent school will be oversubscribed and could easily fill vacancies in this way.

A local independent manages to do this despite having a highly regarded girls and boys single sex independents nearby. Recently there were 30+ assessed for a year 5 chance vacancy for a boys place, so no girls were called for assessment, maintaining the exact split.

@squiffymum i have a non sporty DD at KES, do message me if you want.

my feeling has never been that the school is sexist, and it’s very accepting of all variants of pupil. Does have a bias to science over arts though…. But that might suit you!

You can do it that way.

But it could be equally unfair; why should a talented boy or girl on the waiting list be overlooked because the vacant space ‘has’ to be filled by any given gender?

I don’t think something magical happens with a 50:50 split. I don’t think educational nirvana is achieved. And I don’t see anything wrong with a co-ed having different weightings per year.

There is also, and this will likely annoy people,
something distinctly non-independent about that approach. Independent schools, if nothing else,
focus on the idea of the individual; be they boy or girl. I would be uncomfortable with the idea of a school turning an applicant down to fulfil an arbitrary idea of balance.

I went to a Co-Ed 60/40 would've been great.

Was 3:1 boys to girls in every class in my year.

My DD will be going to a girls school.

Not really, independent schools set different arbitrary criteria for intake, for example taking a June born child over a January born one even if the latter is brighter- this allows an even spread across the year group rather than having a majority winter born year group, which would be significant at primary age, in particular.
Balance of the sexes is important for friendship, to have even opportunity in sport amongst other things. The odd one extra won’t make a difference but it becomes difficult to control if you open every place to both sexes.
Those applying know fully well that there is half the number of places available to them.

Tbh no school really has an entry assessment based on the individual- it’s catchment area or ability in core subjects, perhaps sport, music or drama but none of them are holistic. It’s only really after admission they can start to focus on the individual.

Yes it does. I know Highgate very well. But yes, we're moving away unfortunately.

OP here. Regarding "For example, and not wishing to be glib, I imagine you have no particular interest in seeing 50% of bricklayers as women. Or, in contrast, 50% of nurses as men." I absolutely do have an interest in this. I don't understand why one wouldn't?
"And genuine equality in education will see boys and girls gently veer towards certain subjects and activities." (By which I assume you mean they would gently veer towards "boy subjects" and "girl subjects"?) This isn't borne out by research, which indicates choices of activity by gender are cultural (imposed) rather than innate. Namely they are shaped by the environment (including the schools) that children are raised in and exposed to from birth. (See www.lettoysbetoys.org.uk/ which was originally started on Mumsnet.)

Can someone point to the high profile campaigns to get more girls into the trades? And more lads into care work or office admin. I admit I haven't seen those.

@lljkk Girlguiding’s Girls’ Attitudes Survey 201527 shows that gendered career stereotypes are already embedded in girls aged 7 to 10 years old.

www.youngwomenstrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Making-apprenticeships-work-for-young-women.pdf. Worth reading.

It's not just that it is not easy for girls to go into traditional male roles but also that the traditional female roles are underpaid and undervalued.

Here's one underway in New Zealand at the moment:
tradecareers.co/
Many women work in the trades there. It's good money and flexible hours.

I doubt that many schools want a 60:40 split for the sake of it. It's likely to be more to do with the balance of applications. Even where the ratio of boarding house places is 6:4, that may well be because that is, historically, the sort of proportion that has been needed - and maybe they would expand the girls' houses if it changes.
Have you ascertained that boys and girls are scored separately for admissions?

DD's class at primary was two-thirds boys for most of KS2 - just luck of who had left and who had joined - and I don't think it affected her opportunities at all.

@lanthanum .. an oversubscribed school that selects it's intake can choose exactly what ratio it admits.. every year.

It is possible that the admit, sex blind, based on results only and that the highest performing girls are at the girls only school down the road.. .. but I would like to hear the schools answer that question because more than once the answer is.. 'we tried it once and it didn't work' or '40% gives the impression of being coed without having to have too many girls'.

on the 2019 ISI report Emanuel school was showing 474 boys to 450 girls so 51.3% to 48.7%

www.emanuel.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Emanuel-School-RCI-Report-v5-2019-03-06-DP.pdf

My kids are at a private co-ed in Surrey, slightly more boys than girls, never even crossed my mind to think of it as sexist🤣. There are so many kids there you would never notice.

As you're a kiwi, a private co-ed that springs to mind is St Kents in Auckland. This is their current stats

"The 2019 Education Review Office (ERO) report states that the school had 2,092 students (28 of which are international). The gender composition was 58% male and 42% female"

Perhaps it's just a global thing🤷

I don't know Auckland well, or the school you mention. However I imagine private schools across New Zealand would show similar stats, as most boys schools only started admitting girls quite recently. I wouldn't send my daughter to any of the former boys single-sex schools I know in NZ that have started admitting girls, as they all still retain much of their original culture and therefore feel like boys schools that admit girls (as other posts say - usually with a focus on the benefit to the boys), rather than co-ed. Yes, would agree it's likely to be a global thing in the private sector.

In relation to NZ when we were living there we found the gender stereotypes were much more firmly embedded than the UK. It’s one of the reasons we moved back to UK as we didn’t want our ds growing up in that “macho” culture.

This is very interesting. I left NZ about three days after I left university (i.e. as fast as I could) so I don't have the context of working or raising a family there. However, I did work in Australia (and I'm back there now temporarily) and I also feel more comfortable in the UK than here, I think for a similar reason. Everyone thinks we're nuts to head back to the UK from OZ (Brexit, crap weather, etc.) but I'm a staunchly loyal UK immigrant! I do sense NZ/OZ are quite polarizing - they also produce some pretty feisty feminists (Germaine Greer, Clementine Ford, pretty much any woman I know in NZ!).

It used to be said that girls get the best results by being at a all girls' school, and boys get the best results by going to a co-ed school. I don't know if that's still the case.

Anyway, girls' schools on average have the worst uniforms.

I went to a school that had been all boys and was gradually moving over. Our year was quite good girl wise-it was just less than 2:1 boys:girls.
I don't think it was sexist generally.
There were some teachers who tended to ask the boys if they wanted something heavy shifted-but they also tended to be the teachers left over from when it was all boys and were a bit nervous of the girls, so it meant the girls could get away with a lot more! I remember our form objecting once and the teacher being genuinely surprised that we were happy to move chairs-but after that he asked everyone.
There were 2 boys' changing rooms to one girls', we did metalwork and woodwork rather than home ec, but I don't think it was particularly a sexist place.

I know the school said that the offers were done blindly, so they had no idea how many boy/girls they offered to initially, but although they typically offered slightly more to the boys, on average the boys tended to be more likely to take up the offer so by the time they got the entrants it was more heavily biased.

Another local school that did say that they offered strictly 50/50 still had a boy bias. There were 2 all girl schools to one all boy, and the others were co-ed.