What do you all think about single sex education?

[IsItStupid]

I was thinking about future schools for DC, and I started thinking about single sex education. My apologies if there are lots of threads about this, I didn't find many in a quick search.

I am conflicted, because I whole-heartededly disapprove of single sex workplaces etc and I think that your sex shouldn't really impact your education. I want an equal society and I guess that I think single sex is perhaps against that?

On the other hand, I was educated in a single sex environment between the ages of five and eighteen and I loved it. I think it played a real role in my confidence and my choice to study three sciences in sixth form. I know that each science had forty girls enrolled (there were about sixty in my year group) and mathematics was higher still, about fifty girls. Only four or five girls didn't do any form of science or maths.

I went to a school that was very much a "blue-stockings" school and there was a message of "women can do anything" but it was somewhat hidden in the background- I don't think many of us truly realised the need for such a message until we finished school. It just never occurred to many of us that other people didn't think that women were equally capable.

I suppose I'm trying to figure out how I feel about single sex education by comparing how I think it's ultimately inimical to how I think the future should look against the fact I had such a positive experience that made me into the feminist I am today!

What do you all think?

Also, if this thread has been done to death, I apologise! Please point me in the direction of good previous threads about this topic.

My daughter went to an all-girls state school, and did okay. It had a wide cross-section of girls in it's in-take, from all sorts of backgrounds. There were the usual problems you find in any school, but she managed okay in her GCSe's.

Then she went to a mixed sixth-form college. She decided the university was her next goal, and realised that some actual graft would be involved. She was taking science subjects, and really got stuck in. She has worked hard, and is off to uni in September. But that came from her, and her realisation that there is no substitute for hard work.

The teen years are complicated for kids growing up, but there are distractions in any environment. You can try to second-guess what might be the best option, but in the end it comes down to the kid and how they cope with the pressures that our society puts on them. I am glad that we sent her to a single-sex school, but I can't say how much effect it had, because she really flourished once she got to a mixed college.

Yes I agree 1scoop that her views may change.

I just found it interesting that at this young age she came out with this apropos of nothing.

When I asked her why she said (in 7yo words) that she found the boys disruptive.

When I asked her why she said (in 7yo words) that she found the boys disruptive.

my son goes to cubs, he wants to leave as they waste half the evening waiting for the boys to behave, i have a friend who is a cub leader and she said this sounds normal.

So can my son go to an all girls school :)

Indeed that's very true....

It will very much depend on how she gets on and grows within the setting.

My DD has schooled from y7-11 at all all girls school.

It has been fabulous. It has given her a daily safe space in which to spend her most difficult years. It has been a thoroughly easy and enjoyable transition form girl to woman.

She's now leaving for co-ed sixth form.

Why do people think that girls should go to mixed schools so they can learn how to socialise with boys? What are they going to learn exactly?

• to "dumb down" so boys don't think you're too clever?
• to roll your skirts up so you're one of popular girls?
• to imbibe messages from your teachers that boys are good at science and girls are good at talking?
• that being studious and female won't get you as much attention as being noisy and male.

It's a crying shame though that the many boys who are in the middle for academic achievement as well as being well behaved do not get the attention they deserve nor do they have the option of going to a girls' school.

I wonder what the reasons are for pupils at single sex boys' schools not doing as well as mixed schools. Does anyone know?

Interesting thread - dd will be starting at a single sex grammar in September, so watching with interest.

I have also heard that mixed = better for boys but single sex = better for girls.

messy re single sex boys I don't know. I think the idea is that girls are a "civilising" influence

Mind you there are loads of "top" boys schools, so it's not that straightforward! Do the boys at premier boys schools do even better when they let some girls in? I have no idea of the answer BTW.

& this is all very stereotypical isn't it, really children are children and have a range of different needs but in a sexist society different behaviours are encouraged / expected / overlooked and this seems to be detrimental to girls.

Cocktail

Yes this is what I am led to believe.

The school dd will be attending ....although phasing in boys for early years and primary and again for 6th form has no plans to do so for the years inbetween....for this very reason.

"It's a crying shame though that the many boys who are in the middle for academic achievement as well as being well behaved do not get the attention they deserve nor do they have the option of going to a girls' school."

If that follows though then wouldn't they be advantaged at the girls school to the detriment of the girls IYSWIM.

If all this is due to unconscious bias then that won't stop just because the boys are not rowdy ones IYSWIM.

whirl my DS attends a single sex top public school that has a co-ed sixth form.

The way things work from 13-16 is a world away from my DD's all girls school .

I am in NZ so not sure if the results are the same in the UK but here research points to boys achieving significantly higher in a single sex schools, especially in subjects like English.

I suspect there is some correlation rather than causation in the figures (as is the case with girl's results in single sex schools) but not enough to account or the significant discrepancy.

undermythumb your comment intrigued me, I found a very interesting University of Otago study that said boys at single sex schools have academic advantages that last up until at least the age of 25. And a dominion post article that said an analysis of end of year exams (NCEA?) shows that boys have better pass rates when educated in single sex secondary schools.

Very interesting, as I had been led to believe that single sex was (academically) better for girls and worse for boys.

Are most single sex schools not also academically selective in the UK?

sorry to side track but i was looking for girls schools near us and I thought QE is our nearest (it is co-ed), i have never seen such an edited thread before
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/education/a1982279-Queen-Ethelburgas-Harrogate-anyone

Our local secondary schools are single sex. The boys has gone (highly) selective but the girls still operates with a distance intake. I don't know how unusual that is.

My secondary school was selective and single sex but was private. My primary school was mixed to age 8 and then the boys had to leave. I used to wonder what was going to happen when the boys turned 9! But now think maybe prep schools have different intake ages and the expectation was they would be leaving then anyway. I could be wrong on that I know nothing of prep schools but thought I heard somewhere they start at 8.

Oh I mean the two nearest there are lots of mixed ones as well.

I went to an all girls school and don't recognise what people are saying about them here. It was still a place where the cools girls rolled their skirts up and they only offered dual sciences gcse and hardly anyone did further maths at a level - unlike the partnered boys school. Yet it was still seen as a top school.

I wouldn't send my kids single sex. But if you do I'd check carefully and not make too many assumptions about such things based on the fact that it's single sex.

Interesting point. Mine was just a bog standard comp (was ex grammar though).

Panda yes we rolled our skirts up too!

Did do lots of science though.

My friends sister went to a local girls school - this was some decades ago - and they only had a secretarial course for them, no a-levels available! But still, she's not that old, she'd be about 45 now it sounds like something victorian!

Yes, we rolled skirts up, obsessed over boys (so much more desirable when not actually present), piled on make up. We had disruptive girls, bullies and cliques too - certainly it wasn't a haven of female solidarity (homophobic bullying was a particularly negative feature). But you were never pushed to the back of the lab and sidelined because you were a girl. And although I probably would have stopped answering in class if assertive boys had been present, they weren't, so I didn't. And the idea that something wasn't for you because of your gender simply wasn't there - quite the opposite in fact. I had a physics teacher whose aim in life was to get girls to do A level physics and maths (I was a sad disappointment to her but at least that was due to lack of ability).

I went to an RC all-girls secondary school in Dublin, and I would never, ever send any daughter of mine to a single-sex school. It was blatantly obvious the whole way through that girls who were from wealthier families and interested in art, music and languages were favoured, and sciences and higher maths were barely pushed at all. Career guidance was poor too - some girls were not told that they needed a Leaving Cert science subject for nursing, and girls who were good at maths and physical sciences rarely if ever had the word "engineering" mentioned to them and were more likely to have accountancy or becoming a maths teacher suggested. The only sports offered were hockey, badminton and camogie and if you weren't interested in them the school could be actively obstructive in terms of time off. I went to the European kenpo karate championships when I was 15 and got a bollocking off the nun who was head of year for taking two days off school for it. One of the happiest days of my life was the day I walked out of that school after taking my last Leaving Cert paper a couple of days before my 18th birthday.

I would much prefer a mixed, non or multi-denominational, academically rigorous school for any child of mine. I was always much more comfortable in the male-dominated environment of a university CS department than I was in a convent school. Life is not single-sex, so why educate that way?

I think there is a lot of idealism and rose tinted spectacles on this thread.I was educated in a single sex environment and it was fine but very insular and somewhat bitchy , eating disorders were rife . Single sex was pretty much the norm then though and it's not now .

There are no single sex boys options near us and only one girls , the head is very pro girls schools and some of the rhetoric on their website saddens
me as the mother of boys .

There are just as many girls as boys doing maths and sciences at my ds' school , and my elder son did arts A levels again roughly half and half . the orchestra and choir are also fully mixed and singing is cool for boys , incidentally the star trombonist in the swing band is a girl and a boy is the lead violin in the orchestra.There are two gay couples in the sixth form one of either sec and no one bats an eyelid.Its just life .

My boys do not see girls as "girls" they see them as people , yet again we went to an event at the weekend where the two girls from single sex schools were done up to the nines with plunging necklines and spent the afternoon simpering into their phones and giggling . The co ed girls were in shorts and t shirts , very little make up and playing cards and garden games .

I don't doubt that there are some fabulous girls schools with great science teachers etc and obviously mumsnet daughters would not behave this way but just because it's single sex does not necessarily mean better.

Clearly single sex doesn't necessarily mean better but the evidence indicates that girls are more likely to achieve good grades, more likely to take 'male' subjects and less likely to be pushed into feminised roles in an all-girl environment. But obviously this is across the population and doesn't apply to everyone and every school.

It seems clear to me why single sex is good for girls and not for boys. There is now a large body of research about teachers in mixed environments - how they spend much more time (I think 70% of their time?) focussing on the boys, and particularly in STEM subjects interact with them very differently. So clearly this disadvantage girls, who benefit from a level playing-field of all girls, and advantages boys, who would only get a fair amount of attention in an all-boys environment (barring a miriad other factors going on ...)

My nephew goes to a single sex boys school. I dont know if its because its an independent where they value 'tradition' but I dislike some of the messages he gets there. Eg No home economics class or textiles whilst the equivalent girls school does do those subjects. I'm not sure how helpful it to society for boys to be educated separately though I can understand why an individual parent might want their daughter in a single sex environment.