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?

I don’t really care about the views of a handful of super successful corporate women, glass ceiling feminism isn’t particularly useful to the generation of girls who are currently growing up in a culture of extreme porn, subjected to ever rising rates of sexual assault perpetrated by male classmates.

My daughter currently attends an inner city girls high (not a nice grammar or a private) where the majority of girls are first or second generation non-white immigrants, some of whom are expected to defer to all males in the family, even their younger brothers at home.
Girls school gives those girls temporary respite from male bullshit and the time and space to prioritise their own education, which may not be readily available to them in overcrowded housing, especially if they are expected to help with childcare and household tasks (and lots of them are).
The school also provides a safe, well-regarded option for girls in the looked-after system, some of whom have past traumas and ongoing risk factors that make attendance at a mixed sex schools near-impossible. These girls can benefit enormously from a few years in a female-orientated environment, just as adult women survivors of male violence benefit from women only refuges and support services.

A significant percentage of the girls who attend the school will grow up to become GPs, pharmacists, dentists, accountants and surveyors. Ordinary, necessary, STEM related occupations that can fit into standard family life, even if your family is ultra conservative or orthodox religious by western standards.

We can’t all be entrepreneurs and CEOs, thankfully lots of us don’t want that anyway.

Inner city girls deserve a safe and supportive learning environment free of violent and sexual crime. If you can female STEM CEO a way to end the culture of teenage boys forming gangs, carrying knives and watching hardcore porn on their phones in the playground, I might be more open to doing away with single sex schools.

Until that’s sorted I’ll be filing your posts over in the ‘luxury beliefs’ pile and carrying on as usual.

I think parents and their children decide what they'd prefer - given the constraints, or possibilities, of their choices. There are good reasons why many parents would choose single sex for their daughters if it was available, and as you've read, many of us believe we benefited from single sex environments in a variety of ways ( obviously there are always some male teachers in girls schools, though), and certainly enjoyed them.

Oh and FWIW I just looked at the language provision for my daughter’s girls comp and compared it to the 4 nearest state secondaries, two coed comps (one of which probably qualifies as ‘leafy’ in MN parlance) one catholic coed and the school that once-upon-a-time was the boys school twinned with my daughter’s girls school.
Both schools were grammar schools until the end of direct grant funding in the mid 70s, at which point the girls grammar became a girls comp and the boys grammar went coed but remained selective and became a private school instead. It was private for 30 years until the mid 00s when it became an academy.

The two comps and the catholic offer French and Spanish at both GCSE and A Level

The former grammar offers French, Spanish and German at GSCE and A Level.

The girls comp offers French, German, Spanish, Arabic and Urdu at GCSE and A Level on site (and wherever possible will assist pupils to sit additional language GCSEs at other exam centres locally, in acknowledgement of the 43 different first languages the students speak at home).

So yeah, I’m definitely not convinced that sending my daughter to a girls school in the UK will result in an impaired ability to function as part of an international workforce.

As an ex English teacher, one thing I definitely know is impacted when you have mixed sex classes, and that is the choice of class novel. Girls are more receptive to a variety of text, whereas boys have a tendency not to be drawn to novels with a female protaganist; so for example in a mixed sex class - I might end up choosing Charles Dickens which tends to have central male characters, over Charlotte Bronte - who tends to feature strong central female characters, (such as Jane Eyre). In an all girl glass, I'd be much more comfortable choosing Jane Eyre.

Where I live there are still many single sex schools- mostly church schools. These are especially popular with many minority ethnic families in the city, who prefer single sex for their daughters. Many of these families have especially high academic expectations that their daughters go on into the professions.

Sounds a lot like my DD’s school, Crow, I just looked it up and 77% of the girls speak English as a second language (compared to 20% at the nearest coed leafy comp) and 49% of pupils qualify for pupil premium (compared to 14% at the leafy).

GCSE results are above average for region and broadly in line with the better comps nationally and the school is rated ‘above average’ for both Progress 8 and Attainment 8.

Which may or may not say something about what can be achieved when a school doesn’t have to spend significant chunk of resources tackling male antisocial behaviour (or it may be because the staff are fantastic, probably a bit of both).

Eh, what are you on about? The women listed there aren't all CEOs and entrepreneurs, they're inspirational women in STEM who have opened the doors for all the women who came after - all the GPs, doctors, scientists, engineers and even the nurses, teachers and police women. Have you looked at the % makeup of GPs, lawyers, accountants etc who come from single sex vs co-ed? No, because these stats don't exist and it's sad really because without it parents still think getting good grades is the only pre-requisite to a job/career like it was in their time. It really isn't. AI and RPA are replacing SO MANY jobs now, no one realises how much is changing - contract law used to be a big recruiter, tax accounting used to be too, back office finance - software is replacing most of what trainee solicitors and accountants would do, soon there will be even fewer roles in this industry and grades aren't going to count - people skills will. And pupils from single sex schools have a much higher hill to climb than pupils from co-ed schools. The same way someone who's never left the country won't cope as well in an international team as well as someone who's travelled.

I grew up in Bangladesh if it helps and went to a co-ed school in Dhaka and am a hiring manager in a a big corporate in the UK (not a CEO or entrepreneur). We do not get a significant number of girls from single sex schools coming through to make a tangible difference. I didn't even realise when I first moved to the UK for a job that single sex schools were so popular because I hardly came across any at work or socially. I work for a large retailer so it's a pretty diverse workforce.

No one discusses the number of girls we get through who do not stick around because the pressures and competition now in any job are so intense, and they weren't prepared for it in the artificial environments they grew up in - home and school. Not just single sex, just generally tbf. Because frankly schools are so focused on grade attainment and exam results, skills like resilience, compassion for diversity of thinking, collaborating with different types of people are left hugely under developed. Even more so in single sex or any environment without diversity.

I also find it incredibly weird that you are comparing girls from conservative backgrounds to adult survivors of sexual abuse! Do you know that a lot of 'conservative' countries have a larger proportion of co-ed schools than single sex? There is so much emphasis on removing women from isolation and allowing them to interact and engage with boys as peers - which has done wonders for the economy and why so many students from Asia, particularly women flourish here. Probably more than local girls in some professions like software engineering. Frankly, I find the education system here more backward and conservative than a lot of other countries. There's a huge divide between the home countries of some communities and how they have evolved - their home countries have changed, the communities here haven't because to them home is what it was in the 60s - so I don't use them as a marker of what education should look like.

But to each their own. I'm just glad more schools here themselves are realising where the world is moving to and making sure they are equipped to prepare kids for what lies ahead.

If you think Arabic and Urdu are going to be game changers for a British woman in her life or career - I'm here to tell you they aren't unless you join the FCO or Army. I speak Hindi, Urdu and Bengali and really I wish I had learned French, German or Spanish because those are the global languages of commerce in almost every sector. In the middle east - the language at work is English, likewise in Pakistan unless you're somewhere deeply rural. Also not sure the middle east, north africa or pakistan are offering a lot of job opportunities for women.... Expats from these countries who work here all speak English so you'll never need it in a team. Hell, I work with an offshore team in India and they still speak in English to me despite knowing Hindi.

It's great that they're offering these languages to help the girls feel more comfortable but it isn't a diversity that means much in adult life.

@renoleno

They offer these GCSEs because they know the girls will probably get decent results and it makes the school look better. Hardly a game changer for the girls.

And, grammars have very healthy numbers of dc from Indian sub continent and Asian backgrounds. Many parents do value education for the girls.

I went to a girls school from age 4-18. My dd went to a mixed primary but is now in a single sex secondary. She absolutely loves it. She said when she started that it was so much easier to concentrate without the boys mucking around.

Urdu or Arabic is taken in addition to French, German or Spanish, so no need to worry about that either.

And obvs they also do English Language and English Lit too.

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That is actually true. They are not considered 'second languages' in the way that French is, and the exams are less rigorous. My ex used to set exams for Gujurati, and it was quite obvious to me that this was the case. I am not saying the languages are easier (had go learning Gujarati, and the are not) but that the school sees them as easier because the candidates already speak them. Funnily enough, the don't see English Language as easier!

@Grammarnut

English is set for students where it's assumed its first language. It's our native language. So it's a different exam.

English language and literature are set for native speakers. The actual equivalent to a French or Gujerati GCSE would be the iGSCE English as a Second Language.

https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/programmes-and-qualifications/cambridge-igcse-english-second-language-oral-endorsement-0510/#:~:text=Cambridge%20IGCSE%20English%20as%20a%20Second%20Language%20is%20for%20learners,in%20a%20range%20of%20situations

As someone who has bilingual children, getting to GCSE level by 16 in a “home language” that you have grown up with is a really low level, honestly. The aim should be to either do the GCSE earlier, or to do other qualifications in that language that are better regarded.

Or doing Welsh as a first language or Welsh as a second language.

I am aware. And also that you can do any language as a first language or as a second language. The point I was making is that when my ex set Gujarati exams it seemed that they were less rigorous than the equivalent e.g. French (mind, the French GCSE exams I have come across I would have whizzed through, and I failed O level French three times).

Thankfully all girls schools are still going strong in the north of Ireland. I went to one and had a blast. My nieces go to one. My dd didn't want to. She wanted to go where her friends were going so is at a mixed grammar. Just last week two boys got into a fist fight in class and it scared the life of her (probably because of the blood!). I know that fights can happen in girls schools but I never saw one and my nieces report that they haven't either.

My dd now says she wishes she'd gone to all girls. At her school they have single sex PE, games and a house system where she's with girls only for reg and form. She much prefers this.

Interesting discussion. What I would like to know about the co-ed schools mentioned abroad is what the behaviour is like. Are the boys allowed to dominate discussion as research has shown often happens in UK co-ed schools? Are there problems with sexual harassment and even assault of girls by boys, which seems to be massive problem here? How many female school leaders are there to provide role models for the girls?

None of these things were an issue at my girls' school back in the 1970s. It was an academically selective school with extremely high academic standards and for most of my time there an entirely female teaching staff, all graduates or equivalent. Out of my year group of around 90 girls I believe around 10 went to medical school, one to veterinary college, one did a dentistry degree, at least 3 did Engineering degrees, and at least a dozen did other degrees in the STEM area - Maths, Astrophysics, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Biochemistry.

Many years later the school merged with the boys' school and is now fully co-ed. I get the alumni newsletter. It saddened and enraged me when in one issue a piece written by a well-meaning sixth form girl for younger girls was included. It explained to them that science and maths weren't just boys' subjects! Girls could do them too! Nobody ever needed to say that to the girls in my time.

Our local comprehensive girl's secondary consistently outperforms the co-ed comprehensive secondarys in our borough. The catchment area gets smaller and smaller each year.

Our local state all girls school is the best in the area.
It does however seem to have a high percentage of trans boys / NB kids. Which is interesting considering the OP.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

My DD1 went to an all girls secondary. DD2 went to a girls' prep, a girls' secondary and a girls' 6th form. At no point were they taught exclusively by women. Thank God the other 50% of the population who are teachers were not ignored. Men can be brilliant teachers. Women should not be employed on gender. They should be the best to get the job. My DDs didn't aspire to be teachers or SLT in a girls' school. The world is a bit broader than this!

Many girls' schools merged with boys schools when school populations dropped making them poor value for money with a narrow range of subjects. It's important to see all sides of mergers.

Absolutely not what happened with my old school. The all-female staff wouldn't happen now, but this was the 1970s. We had a full curriculum and a very successful oversubscribed school.