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EDITS Education
Why send your
daughter to single
sex school?
“When I’m asked about the benefits of
single-sex education, I think back to how I
personally benefited from going to all-girls
schools while growing up, and how my two
daughters and two step daughters flourished
in that environment too.
Interestingly, the evidence increasingly
confirms that girls really do achieve more in
this setting. In single-sex schools, girls are
less likely to conform to gender stereotypes,
are less constrained in their choice of
subjects, show a greater propensity to
take risks and innovate, perform better in
examinations, have more opportunities to
show leadership and, eventually, are more
successful in the job market.
These effects do not, of course, follow
inevitably from the separation of the sexes
in education. Single-sex education, to be
successful, must be more than just an
organisational device – the principles and
practices of a school must be set up to
ensure that girls can be nurtured, challenged
and empowered.
Excellent schools design their structures,
lessons, activities and teaching styles to
suit the range of needs of their pupils; and
one of the ways in which they do this is
organising pupils into sensible groupings
according to learning styles and preferences.
Differentiation in the classroom can then
focus much more sharply and effectively on
individuals as individuals.
This kind of organisation is done in all
schools to a certain extent - the most obvious
way of sorting pupils out is by age; another is
by ability. But an equally fundamental way of
sorting pupils into sensible learning groups is
by gender.
Girls, for a variety of reasons,
learn differently from boys.
This is because they tend to have a number
of attributes and dispositions that, crucially,
have their greatest impact in childhood and
adolescence, and which mean that girls’
learning needs, styles and preferences are
different from those of boys.
Typically girls prefer cooperative,
discussion-led learning environments,
they adapt better to coursework tasks and
collaborative, project-based activities, they
respond to different forms of
curriculum content and are more
likely to disengage from co-ed
sports activities. In coeducational
classrooms, boys tend to
monopolise discussion, and take
more domineering roles in group
work and in practical exercises.
This, in turn, means that teachers
inadvertently adopt styles and
use content that seek to maximise boys’
engagement and optimise their behaviour. It
is only in girls-only environments that girls’
needs and preferences come to the fore.
Girls also face external pressures to conform
to gender stereotypes, which are stronger in
the presence of boys. These pressures can
be checked and challenged in an all-girls
school where they have a protected space in
which to develop their full potential, and to
make informed but unconstrained choices
about interests, subjects and careers.
For example, studies have shown that
women who went to girls’ schools are more
likely to study stereotypically male subjects
like maths, physics and chemistry, both at
school and at university. We know this to
be true from our own experience, with girls
at the 26 Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST)
schools and academies over twice as likely
to study A Level physics or chemistry than
girls nationally, and overall nearly half the
students in GDST Sixth Forms taking at least
one science A Level.
GDST schools are able to offer an ideal
learning environment dedicated to girls’
learning needs, styles and preferences, and
free of gender-stereotyping and distraction.
This is reflected in the design of the schools
themselves, the timetable (including the
length of lessons and structure of the school
day), the curriculum and co-curriculum offer,
teaching and learning approaches, and
indeed in their whole-school culture.
There is a common misconception that
teaching girls separately is intended to
protect them, to provide an educational
bubble-wrap. In fact, I believe that GDST
schools serve to subvert, rather than support,
gender stereotypes and assumptions. We
seek to give girls space to develop a strong
sense of themselves and their value, and to
give them the confidence to make their own
choices, free of any sense that the script has
been written for them.
Sometimes parents can worry that girls
won’t know how to interact with boys if they
go to an all-girls school. Day schools offer
a good balance, offering a girls-only space
which can fit in to the rest of their lives - and
of course our girls socialise with boys in their
spare time and have opportunity to do so as
well through joint activities with local boys
schools, such as drama productions.
As a mother of two girls, I know that they
tend to be hard-wired to please. Girls can
feel the weight of self-expectation, and they
can put themselves under immense pressure.
Their social skills are advanced when they are
small, but that makes them daunted if they
get things wrong. The right school can build
their confidence and the Girls’ Day School
Trust does this by focusing on increasing
girls’ resilience, and encouraging them to
take risks.
In March, for example, Wimbledon High
School held a ‘Blow Your Own Trumpet’
week, challenging the assumption that it’s
bad for girls to shout about their successes.
Last term Putney High School trialled
lessons in improvised comedy as a novel
way of building Sixth Formers’ confidence
and encouraging them to think on their
feet. Next year, Oxford High School will be
introducing a programme to address girls’
tendency towards perfectionism, which can
be damaging to their learning if taken to
extremes.
Girls need time, security, and clear but
supportive boundaries as they grow up. They
need to have their learning needs, styles and
preferences taken into consideration and
space away from societal pressures to help
them find their own sense of self worth and
to develop confidence. There is no better
setting for this than an all-girls school.”
When it comes to education, there seems to be more and
more evidence that the tradition of separating boys and
girls is definitely beneficial for learning. Helen Fraser, Chief
Executive of the Girls Day School Trust, tells us why she feels
keeping the genders separated is still relevant.
Helen Fraser,
Chief Executive of
the Girls Day School