single sex schools

[MarieDeGournay]

Girls do better in exams at all-girls schools than mixed, research finds | Schools | The Guardian
I remember research showing that was true some time ago, then it was debunked, now it's back again
As a product of all-girl schools, I've always believed it was very beneficial. Given that I was gender-non-conforming to the point of dysphoria, that might sound strange, and I did feel a huge disconnect with my classmates; but if I'd been in a mixed school I'd have been drawn towards the boy-side, whereas in an all-girls' school, I just had to work out a way to be a different kind of girl.
And I had the female teachers - even the science teachers - as role models. I wouldn't have worked things out as well in a mixed school, I think.

That's not even mentioning the shocking rate of sexual harassment of girls in mixed schools.

Here in Ireland, single-sex schools are disappearing in a blaze of 'aren't we wonderfully progressive?' but I think it may be one more thing we wish we'd held on to. Any thoughts?

New schools are unlikely to be single sex because schools are rarely built in pairs. One school is built and it will have to be co Ed for obvious reasons. The school is needed for the whole school population. Not half of it.

Where I live, we have 13 grammars. 8 are single sex (4-4 split) and 5 are co Ed. So not everyone gets the chance of single sex, but quite a few people do and they remain very popular. They are all great schools. All the other schools are co Ed but they have changed over time. Some were built as single sex but low rolls enforced amalgamation, Private secondaries range from co Ed Stowe to single sex Pipers Corner and Wycombe Abbey for girls. Boys single sex is in short supply!

My DDs were single sex and boys were available. They found each other. Never heard about any DD with an eating disorder where my DDs went. However neither school was high pressure. The schools allowed the girls to develop as they wished and no pressure from boys in school was a bonus or teachers favouring boys. Overall the pros outweigh the cons and they are fully functioning women now.

I went to an all girls school from the ages of 7-15. It was fantastic, it was such a supportive environment, we were encouraged to excellent at studies and sport. No one cared about fashion or looks.
The last 2 years it went to mixed sex. It was horrible, the girls suddenly became coy and worried about boys, their clothes, gods it was so cliche while I now had to deal with sexist assumptions, remarks and anger as I was smarter.
I was naive though when I went to uni, I was totally unprepared for the sexism and sexual harassment.

My DDs cared loads about fashion. The school had a fashion designer in residence. Takes all sorts.

I went to a single sex school. The experience was mainly positive, though when I got to university I had no idea how to deal with boys! I think single sex schools are better for girls, especially now that sexual assaults and harassment are so high, not to mention the vexed unisex loos!

@Grammarnut

Were there no brothers of friends? No boys where you lived? School is never 100% of life. My DDs met plenty of boys and they boarded!

Both my brothers were much younger than me. My only male cousin lived on the south coast and I lived in London. So, no, there were no other boys. I did meet young men at church, for example, but I had no idea how to deal with them. This was not uncommon for girls in the 60s who went to a girls' school.

@Grammarnut

It would be uncommon now I can assure you. I think your parents gave you a sheltered life - church is the key word here. Others were having more fun. Boys were included in that. My boarding DDs had lots of male friends! Even DSs of neighbours. Did your parents have no friends with boys?

I'm not convinced girls' schools have fewer girls wanting to be boys. Not being around boys creates an environment where girls can come up with unrealistic fantasies of what boys are like and identify themselves with those fantasies. Girls in mixed schools have to face the reality of how horrible actual boys often are.

Boys from single sex schools are more likely to divorce in future and have issues with relationships, self esteem and mental health problems.

Of course these things aren't great for women either. If everyone went to single sex schools, perhaps relationships and marriages in adult life would be worse for both sexes. Possibly single sex schools merely delay the problems that arise when males and females interact, rather than eliminating them.

I think there are far too many huge generalisations being made about single sex schools - as everyone's experience is unique to them. I really appreciated going to a single sex secondary, as did my daughter, and now we're thinking of her daughter/my granddaughter going to a single sex school too. We've both got experience of teaching - and in my view/experience there is no great advantage to mixed sex schooling for girls.

When it comes to marriage......most people used to go to single sex schools and the divorce rate was much lower than it is now when many people do not. That is maybe suggestive of people being more realistic and less idealistic about marriage in the past? If mixed schools better prepared you for marriage or made you more in touch with reality -why so many divorces?

I rather think it's just shaken off the shackles of one misogynistic belief system and fallen straight into the clutches of another.

A key issue I perceive is that single sex primary and secondary education shifts the problem of male misogyny to a later stage, and possibly they end up with it more deeply ingrained than otherwise.

I feel a visceral frustration with the idea that girls should be needed to "civilise" boys, but getting them to realise that we are their equals as early as possible may be better than leaving it until later.

As an example of an OECD country with one of the highest rates of segregated education in the world, take a look at Australia. Sexism and misogyny are off the scale here - among schoolboys. Among adult men. Among politicians. Male politicians barked at a female politician in parliament. They made DOG NOISES at her. And they faced no penalty.

I don't know if higher rates of co-education would mitigate the problem, but my sense is that it would.

We also need better parenting of boys. Schools can't do it all.

Because 'trans' is a cultural phenomena it is the environment girls are growing up in, and because it is largely an on-line phenomena and girls are more prone to social media usage - they are going to be no less affected than if they had gone to a mixed sex school.

In the past the quirky, independent minded, loners or creatives may have become goths or emo out of school; others may have succumbed to self harming fads or to eating disorders ( and some still do), and nascent lesbians would have simply been dealing with the same issues around same sex attraction as they always have. Now some of them are declaring trans identities.

Mixed sex education does not mitigate any of that poor boy behaviour. The idea that familiarity lessens it is simply not the case.

That's what is implied by " throwing the baby out"......Knee jerk revolution or over-throw simply lands you back in the same set of patterns and behaviours - because rather than reflect and process; sift and sort the wheat from the chaff - you just re-create another similar scenario - and you have to re-build the things you've lost, or carelessly thrown out in the heat of the moment.

I went to mixed sex comprehensive schools. My parents could have afforded to send either me or my brother to private school, but not both of us, so they decided it was fairer to send neither of us.

When I was in year 6 my teacher tried to encourage my parents to enter me for scholarships to nearby private schools. They decided not to.

One of the reasons they decided not to was because I did much better at school than my brother, and so they were worried that if I got a scholarship to private school but then two years later he didn't, we would have been treated unequally.

The other reason was that all the private schools nearby were single sex, and my dad in particular thought that I would become a better rounded person if I went to a mixed sex school.

At my first secondary school I was horribly bullied. Mainly by girls, it has to be said, but the boys were not particularly nice to me either. And my learning was affected, not just by the bullying but by extremely disruptive and badly behaved boys.

At my next secondary school, I was much happier, but there were still quite a lot of disruptive boys. This was a particular problem in science, because the school did not have many decent science teachers and none of them could cope with bottom sets, so we were taught in completely mixed ability groups right through to GCSE. In year 10 my one experience of dissection was brought to an abrupt halt by the boys deciding to throw pigs' kidneys around the classroom until the teacher ran away in tears.

I still got very good GCSEs at that school, by most people's standards. I got A stars in the arts and humanities subjects, As in maths and science and a couple of Bs. Because I considered maths and science to be my weaker subjects, and being a girl, was never really pushed in the direction of STEM subjects, I dropped those subjects immediately after GCSE, which severely limited my further education and career options later.

I can't help but feel that if I'd gone to a super academic girls' private school I would have been equally pushed and challenged in all my subjects and would probably have got straight A stars across the board. I didn't really socialise with boys anyway, so I'm not sure whether having them in my classes really made all that much difference to my social skills. I went to 6th form and university with plenty of girls who had been at single sex schools until 16 or even 18 and I simply don't recognise this stereotype of girls who have had a single sex education going off the rails as soon as there are boys in the vicinity. I think that's a myth.

If I had an 11 year old daughter today and I had the opportunity to send her to a single sex secondary school, I think I would. For all the reasons mentioned above, but also because teenage boys these days are so porn addled and all have smartphones in their pockets and I have no idea how we are supposed to given our teenage daughters the skills to cope with all of that when they're at school and supposed to be learning.

I don't know, I understand "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" to mean you're well meaning and trying to effect positive change but you get so overzealous about trying to get rid of the bad thing that you end up getting rid of a lot of the good stuff as well.

I don't really see this stuff as trying to effect positive change. Sure, it will all be conceptually bundled together with stuff like marriage equality, which is obviously a hugely positive thing for gay people.

But the gender identity stuff is really a separate issue and I do think that in many ways it is a replacement for God and religion for people who think they're too intelligent and modern for God and religion, but who still crave that heady mix of authoritarianism coupled with the belief that we are better than animals and our lives have some deeper meaning than just, "you're born, you eat, sleep and shit, you probably procreate, and then you die".

That's what it means - if you throw out everything ( including the baby), you also throw out what was worthwhile and valuable as well. Some things are worth preserving because their creation came out of the wisdom of experience.

Single sex spaces arose from the experiences and needs of women in mixed sex environments. If you abolish them then at some point the need to re-create them is going to arise. -inevitably.

Yes, I get that. But the implication is still that you are doing it in order to pursue something worthwhile instead.

I don't see that here with gender identity. They're actively embracing something which is in many ways analogous to the old religion.

It is imagined that throwing everything over is going to be a force for good, to create something better - but it usually doesn't end up that way.......because with time you realise that were things of value in some of those old conditions, and you then have to re-build them,or start all over again from scratch.

What is the stat about women from all-girls school being more likely to pursue STEM careers based on please? STEM is a very global industry and given most countries do not have single sex schools anymore - not sure the relevance anymore? Also do women studying STEM subjects in school translate to making careers of it i.e do they apply for the jobs and clear the assessments as well as girls from co-ed schools? Also are they more likely to turn to academic/theoretical STEM careers like research or application heavy like tech/engineering - because I see more applications from women in software engineering now than 20 years ago - but 20 years ago single sex schools were more prolific than they are now. In my entire 17 year career in STEM I've met hardly any women from single sex schools. A quick look at the top jobs or Directorships in all the cutting edge companies - I cannot see any noticeable number of women from single sex schools to back up your stats..

research.com/education/most-important-women-in-science

How many of these women went to single sex schools? A quick look tells me a lot of them if not most went to co-Ed schools...

STEM is a very global industry and given most countries do not have single sex schools anymore - not sure the relevance anymore?

It's cultural anyway - not everywhere in the world has ideas about maths being a "boys' subject." In some parts of the world, STEM careers are actively encouraged for girls, because they're clean jobs, unlike cleaning or agriculture.

It is still relevant to the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and Northern Europe, because most STEM careers are still male dominated (especially tech - at least, that's what i know most about,) but I don't know how it correlates or not to prevalence of single sex education in different countries.

www.forbes.com/top-tech-women/list/

Even this list - haven't checked them all but the few i did were co-Ed schools. Chantelle Bell and Anya Roy are particularly cool as they're so young and run a fem tech business. Both co-Ed schools.

If these are the inspirational women we want our girls looking upto and they went to co-ed schools and are top of their field - not sure why single sex schools are better?

Well I guess this is my point - all the stats available for the benefits of single sex education is a bit pointless. A better study would be checking where all the women in STEM professions (a sample obviously across all the fields and professions) come from - particularly in management or entrepreneur roles. Easy enough to do as I'm part of Women in Tech networks and all the info is easily available for anyone who wants a true view. There are similar networks for other industries - banking, ESG, sports, law etc so easy to get stats. This is just for the UK as well.

My worry is we don't update our view of education in line with modern and global developments. We can't operate as a small island anymore when such a large number of our workforce are educated abroad particularly at school level. And there's probably things to learn from other countries who have made STEM more mainstream without isolating women from men. If these are the women defining and managing our future in the UK, they're doing something right!!

@EBearhug this list of women is just UK, Northern Europe, North America, Australia...

Thanks for that link, JurassicParkaha it's really interesting.

When it comes to women in STEM, there's STEM and, there's STEM.
What I mean is that there are areas of science, technology, engineering and maths where you can find a better representation of women, and other where you'll find next to nothing. Areas which are graduate/post-graduate level seem more mixed, but the more hands-on techie you get, the fewer women you'll find.

'Technology and engineering' is not just the shiny stuff, it's also things like cars and cabling and bridges and solar panels and buildings, and it's still very rare to find women involved in hand-on production or maintenance jobs. The people who design, install, fix, maintain hardware - your car, your boiler, your WIFI equipment, your triple-glazed windows - are almost all men.

I've noticed that what's called the 'Just Transition' to green energy involves retraining people who are losing their skilled/semi-skilled jobs in the old technologies to work in retrofitting homes, installing solar panels etc. A good idea obviously, but a side effect is that the male dominance in the old jobs is being carried forward into the new 'green' jobs.

And then there's Arnold flipping Schwarzenegger advertising powertools for Lidl - could they be more retrogressively gendering tools as boys' toys??😠