girl's schools

[lorcana]

What do you think of single sex schooling for girls ? Can these schools be bastions of excellence and powerful female only spaces ? Or not ?

some of my friends went to an all girls school, and had horrid experiences bitchiness/ eating disorders etc.
and also they had no idea how to act around boys.. the words boy crazy came to mind on more than one occasion..

Interestingly, there aren't any private boys schools in our town (although there is a girls school, and four co-ed private schools - not that we're in a position to go private). I did however consider a boys state secondary for ds, thinking they might have a better handle on the specific needs of boys.

In the event, it seemed too stereotypically boyish (in that it is very geared towards competitive sport, and you could smell the urinals from the corridor) and tbh I'm not sure that boys do have specific needs that can't be met in a co-ed environment. Fortunately boys don't seem to be have been demonised at his primary (or at least ds hasn't).

I don't have any daughters; perhaps I'd feel differently if I did. But I do think that if I had to choose between my child gaining 12 GCSEs at a single sex school, and 10 at a co-ed, then all else being equal I'd rather the latter. It just seems strange to segregate the sexes. I don't mix exclusively (or even predominantly) with women now, and didn't when I was a teenager.

ps wrt competitive sport, I don't have a problem with it at all, it's just not ds's thing (unless you're talking about motorsports, which aren't generally offered at schools!).

Sorry, slooooowwwww posting on my part!

If someone wants to do 12+ GCSEs then that's super, but they're extras. 8 (and I'm rather plucking that figure from the air, but it seems a reasonable one to me: maybe three sciences, Maths, English Lit and Lang, an MFL and a humanity) should be enough. I appreciate though that "enough" isn't always the right thing.

Although thinking on a bit, maybe 10 would be a better figure

Last time I read any studies, girls often do better in an all girls school but boys tend to do better coed - which is a bit hard to arrange!

Although I'm very happy so far with DDs school, there is one private girls school in our area we wouldn't have touched with a bargepole - decent results but we'd heard (from impeccable sources) that there was a bad bullying problem. DH was also put off by having worked with women who'd been there.

It may be that a good girls' school can be the best choice for some girls, but a bad one will be worse than mixed?

girls often do better in an all girls school but boys tend to do better coed I've heard that several times, too.

But assuming it's true, why?

Girls and boys aren't that different. I suppose girls tend to hit puberty earlier than boys; does that have something to do with it? Maybe their brains get addled by adolescence earlier than boys so they go through the angsty stuff at just the wrong time. In a girls school therefore it's easier to pitch lessons in the most appropriate way (in a similar way to it being easier I imagine to lesson plan if all your pupils have passed an entrance exam).

Actually scrap that, I think I'm talking bollocks. Whilst some 10yos go through puberty, there are 15yos yet to experience that joy; surely there are more differences between individuals within each sex than there are between the sexes.

It is the same here wrt private - 2 co-ed and 1 all girls. I think girls are sometimes seen as a civislising influence by parents of boys who are paying, whilst boys might be seen as a distracting influence by the parents of girls!

"But assuming it's true, why?
Girls and boys aren't that different."

We know that - but lots of people on MN and elsewhere wouldn't agree - all those people who happily post about their 'typical boys' who climb trees and are bad at writing, sitting still etc and 'typical girls' who are good at concentrating and working quietly, just for example

That's the real advantage of a girls' school IME - at its best it can give you space to explore who you really are, with all the baggage of the patriarchy and what 'proper girls' are like held a little at arms length.

My perception of DDs school is that they behave like typical girls in lessons from the concentration aspect but that they don't need to conform to any stereotypes re subject preferences or style.

Me and my sister went to an all girls school.

However when my sister hit the sixth form the school went co-ed with a local mixed school. She soon noticed that the girls from the all girls school acted and regarded themselves as equals to the boys. However the girls who had been at the mixed school all defferred to the boys and let them 'run the show'.

Both me and my sister are now in very male dominated professions which I'm sure has some bearing on the fact we went to single sex schools. It certainly didn't come from our mother who was a SAHM and is very 'traditional' (unless it was a reaction to that).

Even now she would expect my DP to ring for a trades person if something went wrong in the house because she believes that is what men deal with. She is even more horrified (as to be fair is my DP) at my refusal to call any trades person before I've tried to fix the problem myself. So far I've saved ££££s fixing the washing machine and dishwasher etc rather than getting someone out to fix them.

I'm in the middle of choosing post primary school for dd1. Her first choice is co-ed. I think the big benefit of all girls academically is in science and maths and these aren't her interests anyway. I do think it a shame when girls at all girls school don't have any friendships with boys. I have always got on well with boys at school and men at work and I remember at uni how girls who had been educated in all girls schools were less comfortable around men. It is complicated but in all I think I prefer co-ed

I worked for years in an all girls school and the benefits were as everyone has already mentioned - the girls were far more encouraged in maths and science and as a result did better. They also didn't have to "dumb down" for the boys around them. Luckily there was a boys school nearby which they were linked to, shared discos, events etc, which meant they did have a chance to learn how to "be" around boys.

If I had a DD I'd definitely send her to an all girls school.

Dexter - yes, I think that is a really important point, about the girls seeing themselves as equals rather than deferring to boys or letting them run the show. That was definitely my experience and I could see it in effect at university too.

"I do think it a shame when girls at all girls school don't have any friendships with boys."
Unless its a boarding school (and even then there are holidays, but I don't have any personal experience) girls at single sex schools have plenty of time out of school to be friends with boys. I had friends who were boys through music & sport, from 14 onwards lots of my friends were Venture Scouts etc etc.

(Actually, as I was at secondary school in the 80s with all the strikes we had to be off school grounds every break and lunch time, so we hung out in the park with all the other school kids, girls & boys, but I imagine that isn't the norm now )

Thinking about it, while I spent a lot of lesson time in male-dominated*
classes, my friends within school were all girls. My male friends were all via out of school activities.

*male-dominated only in terms of numbers

I think girls' schools do better for girls than co-eds quite simply because it's usually the only place (apart from Brownies etc.) where the space is all female and isn't organised for the greater convenience of males. Everywhere else in the world practically, is organised with men in mind. Girls' schools are organised with girls in mind. So barring the odd bad experience which there will always be with any school, in general, girls' schools churn out girls who assume that they have the right to be in the world and aren't there only if boys are prepared to tolerate them.

That's the real value of them IMO. The different psychological perspective they give girls which co-ed schools, despite all their equality policies, can't give.

takver at a recent event at DD's school, the HT mentioned the P word and I almost swooned.

Her view is that an all girl environment is freeing.

The P word?

Oh - patriarchy.

Soz.

[dim]

Oh god and sorry for saying soz as well. Dreadful habit I have picked up from my co-ed DS

Maybe I was the sort of nerdy girl Bonsoir was trying to avoid but I found being in boy-dominated classes (mixed sex school, I was the only girl in physics and further maths A levels with lots of spotty boys) quite freeing. I do worry about the idea that girls are gentle little flowers who get squashed by those rowdy boys. As feminists (on this board anyway) shouldn't we be teaching our girls to be a bit more outspoken and challenging so they don't need special sheltered environments?

My dds seem to appreciate having boys around in school, they certainly aren't cowed into silence or girlish giggles around them, not so far anyway.

Yeay for "nerdy girls" who dare to be themselves!

I think for some girls it can be fine, Fennel, but not for all. Otherwise - unless we accept some fundamental difference between the sexes - it is hard to explain why only 25% of A level physics students are girls. Of course single sex schools wouldn't change that overnight, but I think in many cases they provide an easier climate for girls to choose science.

I also think that gender stereotyping tends to work more strongly at lower academic levels. It is reasonably 'acceptable' for a girl to study A level maths or physics (so long as she doesn't mind being considered nerdy/geeky). Its much less acceptable for a girl to choose mechanics over hairdressing at college, or 'Resistant Materials' GCSE over 'Fashion Design' when they take their options.

(Can you tell I've been quizzing the staff on M/F student ratios at 2ndary school open days - I get a sadistic pleasure in watching the woodworking teachers squirm gently though as a good member of the sisterhood I'm nicer to the sewing teachers )

More seriously, the longer term income effects of option choices are pretty obvious; all those Resistant Materials students are likely to go off to small engineering workshops, be fixing tractors or the like. And the fashion design students . . . I'm not so sure what the options for those are round here, but I'm betting they're not that well paid. (Of course one in a thousand may go off to London & make a good wage in fashion, but realistically it isn't going to be many of them.)

"I do worry about the idea that girls are gentle little flowers who get squashed by those rowdy boys."

I don't worry about that issue at all because I don't think it exists. The point is that a lot of girls in the 16-18 age range find science types (boys and girls) of the same age group very immature and intolerable company for hours at a time, days on end. Certainly, here in France where the Bac S (science-concentration bac) is the most prestigious, it is still an issue for girls to follow it not because they are not up to the science, but because all the immature science types are concentrated in those classes.

Hmm, huge exhibition (one of those educational exhibitions they take all the 2ndry school pupils to see) a couple of years ago in my home town in Normandy about that very topic Bonsoir. The conclusion of all the number-crunching the exhibition was based on was that it was pretty much entirely due social conditioning and lower aspirations on the girls' part.

Blimey was different at my old school. More girls in advanced maths and physics. Mostly mature girls, head girls, prefects etc.

Concentration of boyish boys in bottom sets instead.