St Paul for Girls vs Westminster

[Tom0111]

Hello,
Our daughter received offers from both St Paul for Girls and Westminster (which will become co-ed from Sep 2026). Obviously, they are both very good schools and we are studying the profiles of both; but I’d love to hear any opinion (particularly from those with first hand experience) on whether one could be preferred to the other.
Thank you very much in advance.
Regards,
Tom

It's long been proven that girls schools are better for girls and mixed schools are better for boys. So on that basis, SPGS every time.

Thanks very much for the quick reply(!). I’ve been looking for evidence on that, but couldn’t find any reliable (peer-reviewed) one…

Congratulations!

I have the exact same dilemma. I, too, know what the previous poster mentions is well known (based on the annual results, no scientific studies, really) which is why we considered SPGS. But I also know girls can be quite mean to each other in most girls schools - which to me is a major downside. All girls environments can be toxic at times.

There's another thread here that might be of interest!

www.mumsnet.com/talk/private-school/5490777-godolphin-and-latymer-or-westminster

Thanks very much, @PuppyHappy - and congratulations as well(!).

A well known meta-analysis (a bit old) seems to contradict the common view on the benefits of SS schools. Here is the abstract, in case it’s of interest:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=single+sex+schools+benefit+girls&oq=single+sex+schools+benefit+girl#d=gs_qabs&t=1771195461914&u=%23p%3DMzIZOgZ1EzMJ

I’ll try to gather more info on Westminster’s results broken down by gender.

The other thread is very interesting - many thanks 🙏🏻

Also relevant:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03054980120067393

Our prep cohort has a good number of girls with the same offer-pair; those I’ve spoken to have chosen SPGS.

That said, their daughters, like our DD, have been in single sex education since reception — and love it. If your DD has been habituated to being educated alongside boys, her take may well be different.

Will say that our initial interest in Westminster was strong — and that, despite lived experience of the pros of single sex education, we were absolutely willing to consider the upsides to coeducation at Westminster (particularly given how eloquently Westminster put forward its case). That, sadly, entirely broke down with exposure to the practical side of the theoretical. And: definitively so.

From conversations we’ve had with other families, the experience has been similar — the conclusions drawn: equally so.

Bit oblique as a set of statements — and deliberately so. Will elaborate offline if it’s of real interest.

I’m struggling a bit to unpack whatever you are trying to say here. Your claims are dramatically inflated and based on pure speculation.

What could a “good number” mean in real life beats me. Considering that Westminster would have made around 20 offers for this September entry and statistically it is very unlikely that all these would have overlapped with SPGS and linked to your prep - are you talking about two or three families?

We know a large cohort of girls from SPGS and GL applying to Westminster and KC for sixth form. The saying of girls better in single sex and boys in coed is not from data peer review recently in 5 years, read in an earlier MN thread.

I think you need to check GCSEs subjects, curriculum etc. The fit for DC in Open day and the school environment.

Also, head of Westminster was Head Master of Alleyn's School, coed day school. Therefore have experience in coed education.

Great choices to have!

I went to a private school in Scotland that had fairly recently started taking girls followed by SPGS for 6th form. A long time ago but I have two thoughts.

1. I hated being at a school that still felt like it was set up for boys. Hopefully Westminster will do a much better job but there will presumably still be far more boys there, and setting up things like sports fixtures etc for girls will be in their first year.
2. The atmosphere at SPGS was so refreshing after 4 years at my boy heavy Scottish school. They really did make us believe we could do anything

Boys are usually a distraction for girls. In primary, I see its more of the boys disrupting the class (my experience growing up and my experience now when I go/went into my kids classes). And then later on I see some girls getting distracted by boys for other reasons (boyfriends, crushes etc). Obviously, it is not all girls.

Thanks very much, @IsThisRealLife, for sharing your insights. I’d be very interested in knowing more about the reasons which led the families you mentioned to prefer SPGS over WS.

Thanks very much @HawaiiWake - I’d really love to hear from any family/student who experienced the move from SPGS to WS for sixth form(!).

This.

Plus I would be wary of a school that had only recently gone co-ed to understand the different needs of girls in education over boys’ needs. Listening to the head of Highgate’s talk (an ex Eton master) where it was clear he hadn’t thought it through absolutely stopped us from accepting their offer. At one point he also made all toilets mixed sex and the girls had to protest: And they are not even that recently co-ed!

While it is true that the data on girls doing better in single sex education is pretty old, one thing that is correct is that girls in single sex schools are more likely to choose STEM subjects than in mixed sex schools. It suggests unconscious bias in teaching and/or some sort of peer pressure to avoid more traditionally “male”
subjects.

Also, sexual assault in schools remains an issue. I just want there to be one bloody place my DD can go without having to worry about it and just focus on learning.

In truth they are both very good schools, and you may not encounter these issues. And I know not everyone cares as much about single sec education as I do. But the two schools are very different in atmosphere so I would attend the offer holder days and see how you and your DD feel. Different schools suit different people.

My elder DD made this move and I shared some comments on this thread.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/private-school/5490777-godolphin-and-latymer-or-westminster?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

I think uptake probably reflects where families are coming from. If you’re already at a girls’ prep, you’ve usually chosen single-sex quite deliberately and been immersed in the girls-only narrative for years, so SPGS naturally feels aligned with your existing values. If you’re at a co-ed prep or through-school, Westminster tends to appeal for much the same reason.

Within the girls-only bubble, it can be surprisingly hard to imagine that many families actively prefer co-ed for their DDs — particularly international families, for whom single-sex schooling can feel quite strange. I was certainly one of them, and I say this as someone whose DD1 went from Bute to SPGS. The messaging in girls’ schools can be fairly strong — girls are better off without boys, single-sex is best — but, honestly, what else would they say?

The same applies the other way round, of course. Parents in co-ed schools will often say they’d never choose single-sex for their child.

Girls’ schools champion girls-only, boys’ schools champion boys-only, and co-ed schools champion learning together. Heads are usually very convincing about whichever model they happen to be running at the time changing their beliefs every time they move schools. In the end, though, it’s far less about ideology and much more about whether the school genuinely suits your child.

I know two girls at St Pauls, it has excellent facilities with huge grounds whereas because Westminster is in the city it is much smaller.

Doesn't Westminster also have Saturday morning lessons? This put me off when we were looking for DS.

Which one are you closer to?

Are you sure they have huge grounds? It looked quite cramped on the Open Day with little outside space although so much better than CLSG!

I have heard amazing things about their sports facilities however we were not shown - I believe those are a short walk away?

Westminster has a brand new building which they are opening this September to the Under school.
Space in itself is not a criteria for us, it is what they do with it.
My daughter is not sporty at all, it’s just not her thing and that makes it easier - one less thing to worry about.

Sport for girls is absolutely crucial. It need not be competitive or team sports, but it does need to be taken seriously. Few things better for building confidence and robust mental health.

Same boat here. A good problem to have! We’re most likely going to accept Westminster for Year 7. We like mixed schools and our daughter loved it at W. She thought the teachers there were fascinating, and the kids were super chatty, relaxed, and full of interesting opinions — she felt like she could talk to anyone there for hours. For us, being part of the first cohort is a little nerve-wracking, but also honestly pretty exciting.

Went through peer reviewed papers, too. And, like you, didn’t find much that was compelling (from a pure SS vs coed framing).

I wonder whether research questions related to the institutional ethos, history and culture of an onboarding school on its traditional cohort — and what those foundations might mean for opposite-sex integration — might yield more interesting insights.

To wit: would Westminster accepting girls and SPGS accepting boys have the same impact on the girls in those mixed cohorts? My intuition is: no.

Ultimately, perhaps the most salient issue is not single-sex vs coeducational education, but between the experience of girls in academic cultures in which female intellectual ambition, leadership and strength have been the dominant historic norm versus those in which they have not.

I’m saying that families in my orbit with SPGS and Westminster offers are — or appear to be — leaning SPGS.

To your other points:

1 : Meaningful SPGS/Westminster offer overlap within the selective girls’ prep cohort is unsurprising; and

2 : Given a Westminster intake of ~ twenty, multiple families in that cohort declining Westminster in favour of SPGS is a relevant data point — no inflation necessary.

Westminster is a great school. And yes: many families who choose girls-only secondaries (like SPGS) at the 11+ will support their DDs spending sixth form there.

I see no contradiction in that.

Ultimately: where one might prefer one’s DD to spend six years of her adolescence has little bearing on where one might want her to be at seventeen.

💯

"multiple families in that cohort declining Westminster in favour of SPGS".

You (alone) have been spreading this rumour on a few threads for the past days.

With respect, I cannot believe this. Otherwise I do not not understand why are you so ardent and repeatedly mention everyone favours SPGS.

There are many other people that have mentioned they prefer Westminster over SPGS. So what you are claiming does not hold much water, in my view!

Just following up my earlier rather dashed off comment. I should have started by saying well done to your DD. Either will be wonderful! She has done well and is so lucky to have the choice. I didn't really mean single sec is better for girls in terms of results (have no idea on this) but in terms of personal experience, breadth, opportunity and range of challenges accesible, acceptable and available. I went to a girls' school and so did my daughter so I am obviously biased - but I know far more girls did maths and sciences at those schools than at mixed schools. Equally, at my sons' school, more boys did English, drama and art than at mixed schools.

My DD loved every day at SPGS and has a very strong friend group still from there. They are based all over the world but travel to meet up regularly. But more importantly, she did so much and felt so free to explore things without any male gaze on her. She was shocked (as was I) when she encountered dreadful sexism at uni (she was doing science) and so many of the male students treated her as lesser because she was a girl. One famously said to her "you can't be doing Physiscs, you're wearing hoop earrings". She was, and she did fabulously, but grappled with dismissive male students and supervisors throughout. Shocking!

You could argue it would be better that she was exposed to that beforehand, but actually for me I was happy she had had all those years free from it. And she has brothers so I knew she wasn't growing up without any experience of the wider world. She had and has good friendships with lads from SPS but I think is very glad she was at SPGS. She did music, sport, drama, dance - some well, some poorly but all with great joy - as well as her academics. It was a very rich time.

She did explore the idea of Westminster for sixth form but decided her teachers for her subjects were better so didn't pursue it in the end.

Good luck with the choice xx

I’ve been through this multiple times and am now nearly on the other side of the process. Forum threads can get very heated every offer season, and you often see extremely polarised views.

It’s worth being cautious about the motivations of anonymous posters at this stage — not saying anyone on this thread is. For example, it’s a fairly well-known pattern that some waitlist place-holders post persistently negative or undermining commentary in the hope of deterring offer-holders and freeing up places.

Sharing a genuine point of view is one thing, but repeatedly posting disparaging comments, engaging in semi gaslighting, or pushing misleading narratives is quite an invested act. You see this every single year around this time around.