Would a move back to single sex education help our girls?

[BalletBunting]

I've been meditating on this recently - particularly seeing reports of the shocking levels of sexual harassment girls experience at school, as well as seeing the levels of gender stereotyping both my DC (one of each) have experienced since they were born. It made me wonder whether a move back to more single sex schools (for secondary at least) could actually have a positive effect on children of both sexes (and girls in particular)

Less sexual harassment, less stereotyping and as I understand the research shows that children do better in single sex environments, where they don't feel they need to 'perform' for the opposite sex. It also means that difficulties of puberty including hormones, menstruation etc can be dealt with in what might feel like a more safe environment.
Thoughts?

I went to a single sex (girls') school and there are disadvantages for girls as well as advantages.

My experience was in the 1980s, so hopefully things have changed but our girls only school simply didn't offer subjects like woodwork and metalwork - no non academic traditional male subjects. Non academic subjects were very stereotypical indeed - home economics cookery and home economics textiles and the new shiny home economics childcare.

In lessons there was the advantage of not having boys impact classroom dynamics in puberty I assume. This may have benefited me - I went to a fully mixed primary and was loud and likely to raise my hand and have an opinion. Would that have disappeared at a mixed secondary? I have no way of knowing. What did remain the case was certain girls, me included, were quite loud and unintentionally dominating - other girls in the class were just as quiet and overlooked as at a mixed school.

Later only a tiny percentage of us took physics and we all took biology, about half of us took chemistry... Physics wasn't offered at A level because of insufficient interest...

I've taught at a mixed state school and in my subject girls dominated in top sets, but my academic arts subject is traditionally female dominated...

My personal disadvantage after leaving a single sex school was social - I grew up rurally with no brothers or boy cousins or local or family male friends - boys were an utter mystery to me. I was incredibly socially awkward for a while and then went a bit nuts, like the proverbial kid in a sweetshop... If my non school life had been less sheltered this would have been alleviated, but as it was I'm not sure a girl's school was best for my holistic education, though I was academically confident and got reasonable grades...

My teen DD is at a state mixed school and so far has both male and female friends (and brothers) but by fluke is in a female dominated class - obviously this is impossible to prearrange and pure luck, but a female friend class seems so far to offer the best of both worlds.

Gender stereotypes at school impact in girls schools too, but should obviously be stamped out in all institutional settings - unfortunately although things improved in the 1990s they are now going backwards in this area.

Some girls certainly do better in girls schools, I'm not sure it's a blanket solution, and certainly it depends very much on the school - just making it single sex certainly doesn't irradicate stereotypes.

I think what Pipandmum says about how disruptive boys can be in lessons is very pertinent.

While there may not necessarily be such a strong argument for totally sex segregated schools there may well be an argument for more sex segregated lessons within a mixed school.

PE lessons are currently sex segregated (for the most part). Perhaps this could be extended to a wider range of the curriculum?

What would things look like if all science classes were split into separate boys and girls classes for example?

I remember from when I was in secondary school (back in the late 1970s) that there were some lessons that were overwhelmingly split by sex - admittedly this was probably largely due to the gender expectations of the time - and there was real differences in the classroom experience in those subjects. All of that was in a normal mixed school.

Although, it must be said, that I defied the gender expectations of the time and went for the "boys" options.

I went to an ex- secondary modern and they were still very keen on providing practical lessons as well as academic lessons. I remember that one of our third year options (Year 9 in modern terminology) was a choice of typing or technical drawing.

Unsurprisingly, almost all the girls chose typing and all the boys chose technical drawing.

Just as an aside, can you even imagine a school offering "typing" or "technical drawing" as subjects in their own right in Year 9 nowadays?

Life is not single-sex

...and yet a lot us here on this forum spend quite a bit of time wanting to protect our single sex spaces; and think they are important and do matter.

I went to an all-girls' school, and think it led to giving less of a shit about male opinions. Male opinions didn't figure anywhere in my life - apart from when I hit late teens, obviously, and was keen on being as attractive as possible.

My experience was in the 1980s, so hopefully things have changed but our girls only school simply didn't offer subjects like woodwork and metalwork - no non academic traditional male subjects.

DD did electronic products and comp sci at gcse then double maths and physics A level plus comp sci to AS and an EPQ for which she built a robot - using the schools facilities to etch her circuit board etc. And helped run the robotics club for younger girls. Yes, things have changed!

Mind you, the boys school only got food tech facilities installed a few years ago.

Dd3 currently at a mixed state. Some fab boys there who she is friends with. But also lots if disruptive boys in lessons plus she feels the boys are favoured. They get to do football and rugby and girls do netball and cheerleading. Cant wait until shes at single sex and can do everything on offer.

My DDs went to single sex schools and the most sought after Grammars around me are single sex. The single sex secondary moderns merged years ago so they are all now co Ed. Many former boys schools such as Stowe now have girls all the way through. They are, apparently, a force for good and work ethic. In effect they are a good influence on the boys and boost results so they are useful. That wasn’t what I had in mind for DDs.

Girls really will find boys if they want them. I found my DDs were not playing much with boys from about age 5, but instead observed the boys running around, play fighting but liked their jokes. Little boys seem to be full of jokes. By y5, they didn’t care for any of them and found some utterly annoying. By 14 they were friends with brothers of school friends and met boys socially. They didn’t need boys on a daily basis.

Both, now in their 20s, relate well to men, work with them and value them. They make their own choices about who they associate with outside work and I don’t see any differences between them and girls who went to co Ed schools. Some girls won’t thrive in a specific environment so choosing the best school for DD is key. Mine, however, were pleased to drop boys for a few years and give the boys time to mature and then choose which ones they spent time with.

Personally I would say no - it may lead to "Buddha syndrome" (I just invented that maybe) where girls are sheltered and not able to compete on a level footing with boys

I'd say the opposite.

But then we all are talking from our own personal experiences; which are very varied and often very much dependent on temperament and personality.

I think learning to interact sensibly with the opposite sex is important

Yes, but that can be done outside of school - which is primarily where we go to be educated in subject areas and skills. Gendered expectations still apply in the mixed school environment, and often to the girls' disadvantage; and the girls and boys tend naturally to cluster together, anyway.

I speak as an ex secondary teacher, myself.

"Life is not single-sex. You spend a large part of your childhood/teenage years socialising within a school that does not represent the society you are theoretically preparing to enter"

I went to single sex school and totally agree with this.

My DD is dyslexic. She spent most of primary in the bottom set with the "naughty boys". She was convinced she was bad at maths.

1 year in an all-girls secondary and it's a different story. She no longer feels she's bad at maths, and got moved up a set after only 1 term. The girls at her school are so confident but also really friendly. It's given her a huge boost.

She does plenty of outside school activities, most of which are mixed, so I don't think she will get to 18 unable to speak to boys.

I did do a "computer studies" as it was then called GCSE - taught by a woman teacher, and we learnt to code... But I was part of the first year group who took GCSEs not O levels, and as such in our backwater I think caught the end of the time period in which computing was still seen as a girls' subject! We did typing too, separately, on manual typewriters with a secretarial skills teacher... certainly no technical drawing though a friend who left to go to a boys school with girls in the 6th form did technical drawing A level there...

Glad things have changed. If girls schools offer exactly the same subjects my main qualm remains the social skills for girls like me who basically never had any male peers - only males I knew to speak to between the age of 11 and 16 were adults - probably fairly unusual set of circumstances though I expect. Made boys and men a bit of a mythical, unknown, fascinating but scary forbidden fruit mystery for a while, and then a major hobby for a few years... which isn't ideal!

A couple of posts have reminded me that one of the studies of single sex schools showed that while they were beneficial for academic attainment of all girls, the benefit was particularly marked for the less academic girls.

I went to two girls' secondary schools: one a rather posh (but selective, and academically strong to this day) boarding school in England, and the other a public school in my home country, a school that was extremely selective and also very diverse, ie pupils of all races. The two leading schools in my country were single sex, one for boys and one for girls. Both had a very high standard, as high or higher than in the UK. Both were later made co-educational and still are today.

I loved being at an all-girls school. I have always been a quiet, introverted person and I hate making my voice heard, always have. I would have been trampled under in a mixed sex school.

Both of my girls' schools had a strong STEM approach but really, STEM is not the be all and end all. Children who are more artistic, more "dreamy", as I was, need strong encouragement , and I'm pretty sure I'd have been completely tongue-tied and lacking in confidence had I had to cope with boys, a shadow of myself.

To me, it's a matter of providing a structure in which a more sensitive mind can grow, just as we might put a fence around a young tree; it helps that tree grow strong, which is what happened to me. As an adult I became fully able to cope with men and have had a very rich professional life.

Both my children went to mixed schools. My daughter didn't want to go to my old UK school, which would have been my first choice. She joined my son at his school. I am totally in favour of girls' schools as an option.

Perhaps we'd all be better off if Eton was forced to be mixed sex.

My worry about single sex education is you set up something of an unnatural system where boys and girls don't mix. And entrenched sexism can almost reinforce itself merely in different ways.

It doesn't address the issue that girls are socialised from infancy to behave and bad behaviour from boys is tolerated more and normalised - which is the problem many posters have referred to on this thread.

DS is 4 and still at nursery. We noticed this idea of boys being bosterious and being put outside to play whilst the girls were more encouraged to stay inside, not run around and do colouring very early on.

I don't know I guess see single sex schooling as a way to avoid tackling the problems we should be in a way. This view that its better for girls to go to a single sex school rather than tackling harassment and stereotypes from early years just seems so wrong headed. It misses the point for me.

Personally, I don't think it's really good enough to interact with the opposite sex in purely social situations outside of school.

I want my daughter to know that her opinions are as important as a man's in an academic, and therefore professional, context and have the confidence to voice them.

I'm not sure how you learn those skills only seeing men at after school activities. Schools that mix with boy's schools in 6th form or for certain activities seem implicitly to recognise this.

I remember for instance when I was around 13, we had to produce a magazine (this as at my posh UK school) , and to my astonishment I was elected editor. I remember pouring my heart and soul into it, getting the girls to make their contributions. I'm pretty sure that if boys had been on my editing team I'd have clammed up and not said a word and let them take the lead. As I later became a writer, this seems quite a prophetic decision on the part of my English teachers!

It doesn't address the issue that girls are socialised from infancy to behave and bad behaviour from boys is tolerated more and normalised - which is the problem many posters have referred to on this thread

Surely in a boys school though theres no choice but to deal with the behaviour.

There are no girls for the boy girl seating plans and the unpaid tas /crowd control that girls are often used for.

No. I actually feel it’s counter productive and just concretes the idea in kids minds that they need to be separated in order to learn.

Far better to enforce girls and boys are equal from nursery with no sport or subject kept back from any child.

When my dd got top marks in physics in a mixed sex class I was so proud of her and I made sure she knew it too. I dont think I’d have had that level of pride in a single sex school class. Girls should know they can do as well and or better than boys and how can they in a single sex environment.

Boys should be free to enjoy the traditionally girlie subjects too along side girls.

I dont think I’d have had that level of pride in a single sex school class.

What a weird thing to say. Not that it’s your pride that’s important, but to not be proud unless they compete against boys is utterly strange.

Most primary schools are coed. Certainly it would be a good idea if sexism and stereotypes were robustly tackled there. Once that's done, hopefully the reasons for single sex secondaries would evaporate.

I dont think I’d have had that level of pride in a single sex school class. Girls should know they can do as well and or better than boys and how can they in a single sex environment.

They compare the gcse and a level results versus their local boys school.

There are no girls for the boy girl seating plans and the unpaid tas /crowd control that girls are often used for.

Why are these practices tolerated. We have guidelines for so many things. Easy to make some for this.

It's just a lack of willingness to tackle these issues and to tackle the teachers using poor practice.

Most of the boys independent schools I have read about seem to have done so to benefit the boys - they perform better when girls are included. Now it may be that the stuff I read was aimed at current parents, and they were trying to persuade parents it was a good idea, but I must say I would be amazed if any parent of girls could read that and think the girls were not being expected to socialise the boys and model the work ethic they wanted for the boys. Once the boys schools start being co ed it then becomes very hard for the girls school not to admit boys to keep numbers up.

I went to a big girls comprehensive, although we shared playing fields with the adjacent boys school. You could socialise at lunch break if you wished (each school kept single sex areas and then there was a mixed area for those that wanted). That worked well I think. There didn’t seem to be the level of harassment that seems to go on now (but maybe that’s a function of the rise of easy porn access).

I see some independent schools (and maybe some state) now offer a diamond model - totally mixed until age 11, then segregation for lessons until post GCSE but together in the same forms, then co Ed for sixth form. Be interesting to see how this pans out in the future.

...and yet a lot us here on this forum spend quite a bit of time wanting to protect our single sex spaces; and think they are important and do matter.

Of course they are important. But that comes down to the purpose of those spaces to give a break from the world rather than be our world.

I think an alternative solution might be to have MUCH smaller class sizes throughout school. Girls can't be taught to interact better with boys in an environment where the teachers can barely exercise sufficient crowd control. I know it would be expensive but I see it as important enough.
I worked as an SNA at an infant school, and sometimes took out a group of say a dozen kids for an alternative activity - and on an odd occasion got left with the whole class. The difference ins phenomenal. With a dozen, the kids, boys included, are easy to engage with, to get them to listen and contribute. With 30+ it was exhausting and it was apparent that boys were egging each other on to be a royal pain in the... And as a bystander within a class I could see that even with the experienced teacher in charge there were a good few kids not taking a blind bit of notice of the teacher.