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 ?

That's not what Paris lycée teachers think! Nothing at all to do with lower aspirations, because the same girls that find S intolerable want to go to prépa and to Grandes Ecoles (which require sciences to a very high level and are the ultimate in prestigious aspirations) - they do, however, look for routes that avoid spending 16-18 with immature S profiles.

because all the immature science types
??? I can only assume that there is some strange difference in France that leads to what seems to me a bizarrely innacurate stereotyping.

Tak - do you find that the girls who persue science/maths tend to be on the whole good at it whereas while there may be more boys, they will be a mix of good and somewhat mediocre?

Here is an interesting article:

American research in Science journal

It doesn't show all the research it draws on but I've seen similar in the UK in the last couple of years, people who are looking at this issue seem to be concluding that the differences you see in girls' performance in single sex schools is because of selection into the schools, not due to the schools themselves. But the girls' schools associations have a huge vested interest in promoting the single-sex schools as beneficial.

I like this bit:
"Most proponents of single-sex schooling readily admit that it is not suitable for all, but they nonetheless believe it should be a choice for a minority of girls (and boys). What ?type? of girl is that? There are vague suggestions: girls with low self-confidence who won?t compete with boys; girls with strong libidos who are distracted by boys; girls with low body satisfaction who are embarrassed to be near boys; girls who strongly dislike boys. But none of these beliefs is backed by research, and in fact, still other research tells us that the girls who are successful in single-sex settings are the same ones who would be successful in coeducational classrooms."

I asked "what about the boyz" upthread. To return to that a mo, if we want to see more girls schools then we'll need more boys schools.

What happens to boys who are educated in single sex schools? I'm not interetsed in their academic outcomes for now but in the kind of men they become. Are they the kind of boys/men you want your daughters to have to mix with?

I know I'm stereoptyping here but the whole debate 9and the concept of single sex education) seems based on stereotypes to me.

If you want clever men of a certain class/accent then you tend to find those in single sex academic boys' schools and those are probably the suitable men for equivalent girls so it all works pretty well in the UK.

Fennel - I would agree that the girls in single sex schools are the same girls who would be successful in mixed school. As I've said elsewhere, the fundamental problem with establishing the benefits or otherwise of single sex education for girls lies in the fact that single sex schools are overwhelmingly private or selective schools. I haven't been able to find out how many single sex comprehensive schools there are in the UK, but as far as I can see there are only around 400 single sex state schools including grammars.

Its also fair to say firstly, that the benefits or otherwise in terms of educational achievement are contested. As far as I can see, some studies conclude that girls with lower levels of educational attainment benefit most from single sex education, other studies conclude that there is no 'value added' effect and the differences are linked to differences in the population of girls attending single sex schools.

Secondly, IMO the benefits of single sex education for girls are not really about numbers of GCSEs or A levels gained, or even what subjects those results are in (though of course it is important). They are more about carving out a place for women where they are primary in importance. As such it isn't surprising that they get a lot of knee-jerk antagonism.

I suppose its a bit like Mumsnet - would we all come on here and speak with the same freedom if MN were equally populated by men and women? I know that there are men on here (and of course it isn't obvious who is male and who is female), but essentially it is a women's space. And couldn't the same objections be made - what sort of women need to come to a board like this for support; are we all women with low self confidence, poor body image, or strong libidos (or indeed maybe all three)?

Or, just perhaps, are we women who can perfectly well function in mixed sex groupings in the 'real world' but who like from time to time to operate in a society where we are not the second sex?

If you want clever men of a certain class/accent ...

well I guess I did as that's what I've got - DHs view seems to be that a boys' school can be a pretty uncivilized place.

Whereas AFAIK one of the core values of most girls' schools is explicitly to develop confident young women with a strong sense of their abilities and equal value in society, I'm not sure that this would be parallelled in a boys' school. What typically would be their ethos?

Its an interesting question, and outside of the very academic grammars & indys, I'm not sure there's a good answer.

My old school had an equivalent boys' school just across the road. To answer JenaiMarr, the boys who went to it always seemed very ordinary, for want of a better description. They didn't appear to view us girls as an alien species, certainly, nor to be any better or worse than the usual run of teenage boys (rather spotty on the average, but I suspect that they mostly grew out of it).

However, the boys school was perennially undersubscribed and eventually closed not so many years after I left. The LA also wanted to close the girls school but it survived by becoming one of the first 'opted out' schools back in the early 90s.

I guess that no-one had much of an interest in an academically mediocre boys comp, whereas there was a definite constituency who wanted the girls school to survive. The funny thing is that I think that constituency was a mix of those who wanted single sex education for their daughters for feminist reasons, and those who didn't want their daughters to be taught with boys for religious / cultural reasons.