Single-sex schools - better in the long run?

Hotblack Desiato

expectationlost wrote: »

the state should developing a system for secular schools rather then concreting religion into these new community schools

I can't figure out why Quinn is still awarding patronage of newly built schools to religious bodies. The way to get out of a hole isn't to dig more slowly.

Quinn should draw a line in the sand and say that as of today NO more new schools with religious patronage (or which are single-sex) will receive state funding. He should also immediately - and for all schools - repeal the legislation allowing schools to discriminate in enrolment and employment and remove the integration of religion throughout the primary curriculum.

Then we can decide how to deal with the patronage of existing schools, but at least we won't be spending taxpayers' money on building new schools which are not inclusive.

Bannasidhe

ninja900 wrote: »

I can't figure out why Quinn is still awarding patronage of newly built schools to religious bodies. The way to get out of a hole isn't to dig more slowly.

Quinn should draw a line in the sand and say that as of today NO more new schools with religious patronage (or which are single-sex) will receive state funding. He should also immediately - and for all schools - repeal the legislation allowing schools to discriminate in enrolment and employment and remove the integration of religion throughout the primary curriculum.

Then we can decide how to deal with the patronage of existing schools, but at least we won't be spending taxpayers' money on building new schools which are not inclusive.

Agree - apart for the bit about single-sex schools.

expectationlost

ninja900 wrote: »

I can't figure out why Quinn is still awarding patronage of newly built schools to religious bodies. The way to get out of a hole isn't to dig more slowly.

well imho expect atleast 2/3 rds of these schools to be ET or CNS

Hotblack Desiato

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Agree - apart for the bit about single-sex schools.

Why?
If we are agreed that needless segregation and duplication of schools on the basis of religion is wrong, it should logically follow that segregation and duplication of our schools on the basis of gender is wrong.
Gender segregation in schools imposes traditional sex roles - no home ec for the boys and no physics for girls. As a physics graduate and a father of a daughter who I will tolerate no gender barrier upon her, and a son (ditto to the above) and whom I want to be capable of running a household, this makes me want to vomit.

Bannasidhe

ninja900 wrote: »

Why?
If we are agreed that needless segregation and duplication of schools on the basis of religion is wrong, it should logically follow that segregation and duplication of our schools on the basis of gender is wrong.
Gender segregation in schools imposes traditional sex roles - no home ec for the boys and no physics for girls. As a physics graduate and a father of a daughter who I will tolerate no gender barrier upon her, and a son (ditto to the above) and whom I want to be capable of running a household, this makes me want to vomit.

My experience has led me to think that girls, in particular, actually do better in single-sex schools - there is no reason that home ec cannot be taught to boys or physics to girls - the national curriculum doesn't specify any subject as gender specific so those decisions are made by either the patron or board of management.

My all girl school certainly didn't impose traditional gender roles but in my son's mixed primary and secondary schools there were clearly issues around 'boys' subjects and 'girls' subjects (and many the rant he had about that) - it wasn't the school imposing this - it was very much peer pressure.

A good friend of mine is spearheading a very successful literacy programme working in primary schools and her experience is that the majority of girls do far better in single-sex schools.

Sadly, there is still a huge amount of peer pressure on girls to 'dumb it down' as boys, apparently, don't fancy smart girls. :rolleyes:

expectationlost

girls may do better in all girls schools, so what, let them go to school in a bit social reality, you're missing out the whole equality bit.

Bannasidhe

expectationlost wrote: »

girls may do better in all girls schools, so what, let them go to school in a bit social reality, you're missing out the whole equality bit.

How can I be missing out on the equality bit when I am saying I favour same-sex schools because girls are not as likely to bow to peer pressure to dumb it down so they don't show the boys up? That is social reality.

As for - 'girls may do better in all girls schools, so what' - the 'so what' is that girls do better in single sex schools so should they be denied this - how is that equality?

It doesn't matter about education as long as we look pretty for the boys

Hotblack Desiato

Bannasidhe wrote: »

My experience has led me to think that girls, in particular, actually do better in single-sex schools - there is no reason that home ec cannot be taught to boys or physics to girls - the national curriculum doesn't specify any subject as gender specific so those decisions are made by either the patron or board of management.

No but a smaller school will always have a narrower subject choice and isn't going to have the resources to offer subjects which only a handful of pupils might take up.
Many towns/areas have 3 or 4 secondary schools segregated on the basis of gender and religion, to me this is needless balkanisation and wasteful of resources.

My all girl school certainly didn't impose traditional gender roles but in my son's mixed primary and secondary schools there were clearly issues around 'boys' subjects and 'girls' subjects (and many the rant he had about that) - it wasn't the school imposing this - it was very much peer pressure.

Peer pressure will always be with us, but in an all-boys school he simply wouldn't have had the option of doing those subjects in the first place.

A good friend of mine is spearheading a very successful literacy programme working in primary schools and her experience is that the majority of girls do far better in single-sex schools.

Don't they still do better than the boys though, even in mixed schools? In Ireland you would have to be careful about the admission policy of schools when comparing them, the stated admission policy is one thing but what happens in the real world, and the choices parents make based on the perception of a school, is another.

Dades

recedite wrote: »

2. Reduce and then eliminate the State subventions to fee paying schools. If they want an unfair advantage, let them pay unfairly for it. Let them be completely privately funded.

<can of worms>

This is likely to result in a surge in demand for national school places as a large percentage of prospective parents find the doubling of private fees financially impossible. Their kids then compete for already stretched state school resources. It's cheaper for the state to subsidize the private schools than to have half those kids now needing the complete cost of their educations funded by the taxpayer.

The notion that private schools are filled with the children of property developers and bankers is one many people still have. The reality is that most of the kids are of increasingly screwed middle class parents who save for years to send their kids to a school of their choice.

Bannasidhe

ninja900 wrote: »

No but a smaller school will always have a narrower subject choice and isn't going to have the resources to offer subjects which only a handful of pupils might take up.
Many towns/areas have 3 or 4 secondary schools segregated on the basis of gender and religion, to me this is needless balkanisation and wasteful of resources.

But that will happen regardless of whether a school is mixed/single sex or small/ large.

In history, for example, there are two choices in the national curriculum for leaving cert - Modern or Early Modern - the school decides and only one of these is taught (usually Modern) yet in every Irish university most 2nd year core modules are focused on the Early Modern period.
We need more modularisation in secondary schools to broaden the curriculum and more interaction with PLCs, IT's and Uni's.
Son attended a mixed high school in Oz which had modules - a few core subjects plus a range of options, one of which was computer studies but the school did not have the facilities so pupils attended the local TAFE (like our IT's) for that option - as they did for other technical subjects.

Peer pressure will always be with us, but in an all-boys school he simply wouldn't have had the option of doing those subjects in the first place.

The range of subjects is decided by the Board of Management but in son's school any boy who wanted to do a subject seen as 'female' was derided as a '******', while girls who wanted to do so-called 'male' subjects were 'dykes'. This was not coming from the school but from the pupils.
I used to train chefs, most of the trainees were male and few of them had ever cooked anything in their lives when they began even though many of them attended schools that did provide 'domestic science' courses. Peer pressure in their schools prevented them...

Don't they still do better than the boys though, even in mixed schools? In Ireland you would have to be careful about the admission policy of schools when comparing them, the stated admission policy is one thing but what happens in the real world, and the choices parents make based on the perception of a school, is another.

I see it even in 3rd level where some female students who are gaining high marks in written work tend to keep quiet while the 'Lads' hold forth in lectures - this impacts on the continual assessment component of their marks.
Purely as a matter of personal interest I began to look at the schooling of the female students and discovered that those from single-sex schools were far more likely to speak up not having been conditioned during their school years to be 'demure' and let the men folk take the floor.

expectationlost

what the hell has single sex schools got to do with atheism, can not one thread stick to topic on here?

Bannasidhe

expectationlost wrote: »

what the hell has single sex schools got to do with atheism, can not one thread stick to topic on here?

The evidence would suggest No.

Dades

expectationlost wrote: »

what the hell has single sex schools got to do with atheism, can not one thread stick to topic on here?

It's only a wee tangent that will probably run it's course. It's not as if the whole "schools" thing hasn't been done a dozen times already in A&A this year.

Every individual poster can of course stay on topic, if they wish.

joseph brand

expectationlost wrote: »

what the hell has single sex schools got to do with atheism, can not one thread stick to topic on here?

You must be new here.

We're highly disorganised. Like a clowder of cats.

expectationlost

this thread is about not creating artificial divisions in childrens schools, lets not create another one with 50% of the population.

Hotblack Desiato

expectationlost wrote: »

what the hell has single sex schools got to do with atheism, can not one thread stick to topic on here?

The subject of the thread is school patronage not atheism

The reason we have so many single sex schools in this country is because of the overwhelming domination of school patronage by religious organisations.

Bannasidhe

expectationlost wrote: »

this thread is about not creating artificial divisions in childrens schools, lets create another one with 50% of the population.

Or alternately - This thread is about how the State should not facilitate the indoctrination of children into one religion via the school system which led to a discussion on segregation along religious lines which had broadened into discussing segregation along gender lines.

There is an argument to be made for all schools to be mixed, there is also an argument to be made for single sex schools - in this instance I am arguing for the latter as under the current format (which would exist even if it were secular) girls perform better in a single sex environment.

Hotblack Desiato

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Peer pressure in their schools prevented them...

No doubt there's some parental pressure in there too, I would imagine there would be uproar from many parents if boys were made do home ec.

Anyone can learn to cook later in life, but if girls are scared away from honours maths or engineering or hard sciences in school then they're unlikely to get another chance. These perceptions/pressures are going to exist whether the school is mixed or not (or even worse the subject is not offered at all, not many girls' schools offer physics but they all do biology, the 'female' science :rolleyes: )

Purely as a matter of personal interest I began to look at the schooling of the female students and discovered that those from single-sex schools were far more likely to speak up not having been conditioned during their school years to be 'demure' and let the men folk take the floor.

Segregate third level as well then so? :eek: or maybe we should be dealing better in society as a whole with the issue of gender stereotyping etc. I think we really are drifting off topic now though

Bannasidhe

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Son attended a mixed high school in Oz which had modules - a few core subjects plus a range of options, one of which was computer studies but the school did not have the facilities so pupils attended the local TAFE (like our IT's) for that option - as they did for other technical subjects.

Going purely on hearsay though, I don't think we'd be much like that here. Or maybe I was lucky on schools I went to here. Girls had no problem being in the applied maths class or honours maths (I'm sure that was at least half girls) and same for physics.
I have heard the "girls do better in single-sex schools" via studies though.

The speaking out in lectures thing can be an issue for both though - when I sat in some lectures in tcd, they complained we didn't engage enough with them. We did in nuim though, so I reckon it was the lecturers really

Bannasidhe

bluewolf wrote: »

The speaking out in lectures thing can be an issue for both though - when I sat in some lectures in tcd, they complained we didn't engage enough with them. We did in nuim though, so I reckon it was the lecturers really

I found bringing in sweeties to reward those who make relevant contributions works quite well. Really good contributions get a lollypop.

robindch

Bannasidhe wrote: »

I found bringing in sweeties to reward those who make relevant contributions works quite well. Really good contributions get a lollypop.

I used to avoid doing that with snowflake -- six years old last month -- but following your advice, am currently handing out small chocolate coins for good questions or jokes, while excellent jokes and especially, questions I can't answer definitively, get a large chocolate coin. Coins which she has to share, of course

BTW, how did Romans light their fires? She suggested rubbing sticks which I recall from somewhere, but I assume they just kept a fire going somewhere in the larger places too. I don't recall that they used flint. Suggestions welcome.

Dades

recedite wrote: »

Look at it this way; if you buy a private house in a posh area, nobody gives you the price of a council house to go towards the cost.
If you buy private health insurance, you don't get your PRSI refunded.
In other words, when you want special treatment, you normally pay for it in full.
Except in the case of private schools, where you only pay the difference. This is what keeps religious schools viable.

You're addressing my post with some ideological argument when my point was that it would probably cost the state more to pull funding to private schools.

recedite wrote: »

BTW the "surge in demand" for state schools would be met by a surge in changes from private school patronages to public. In this scenario, there is no net change in the overall number of kids.

Of course there's no net change in the number of kids but there's an increase to the cost the state burdens to educate some of those kids. It costs the state more to put a child through state school than part fund their education in a private school.

strobe

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Purely as a matter of personal interest I began to look at the schooling of the female students and discovered that those from single-sex schools were far more likely to speak up not having been conditioned during their school years to be 'demure' and let the men folk take the floor.

Better to try and address that issue if it does exist rather than simply throw our arms in the air and wail "the girls will be made act shy and silly so the boys will want to kiss them!!! The poor dears...", Shirley?

Edit: Interesting tangent... petition to have the "mixed versus single-sex schools" topic split off into a thread of it's own to be discussed please Mods?

Bannasidhe

strobe wrote: »

Better to try and address that issue if it does exist rather than simply throw our arms in the air and wail "the girls will be made act shy and silly so the boys will want to kiss them!!! The poor dears...", Shirley?

Edit: Interesting tangent... petition to have the "mixed versus single-sex schools" topic split off into a thread of it's own to be discussed please Mods?

Absolutely.

robindch

Ah, new thread created, ex nihilo, and content moved from patronage thread.

kylith

When I was in school I bemoaned the fact that it was single sex. Looking back I think that it was good to not be distracted by members of the opposite sex.

Obliq

My main distraction in the co-ed school I went to was how not to get a knife in the back over not being a follower of the cliques of girls who determined whether you were cool enough to enter these based on your clothes and make-up. In my experience, girls were less distracted by boys and more by each other in terms of their position in the pecking order.

In a girl's school, I'd have been lost and many times more miserable than I was. I spent the whole six years hanging about with the male misfits, wearing combats and a series of dodgy Run-DMC t-shirts. I'm aware that this is only my story, but to my mind, a girls school could do more (in social terms rather than academic) to perpetuate that VERY female thing of one-up-man-ship based on the perfect body/looks.

As for the choice of subjects, I think it's a generational thing. There wasn't ONE girl in my year who did metalwork for example, and I regret not having had the nerve to be the only girl. However, these days, in my eldest's school, there's a much larger percentage of boys doing home ec than I thought there would be, and a number of girls doing metalwork. The best student in technical graphics (wants to be an engineer) is a girl. My young fella and the lads he knows just assume equality these days (of course, the girls might tell a different tale) and don't see home ec as a girlie subject at all.

Must be all their Dad's cooking the dinner these days?

MagicMarker

Bannasidhe wrote: »

...in this instance I am arguing for the latter as under the current format (which would exist even if it were secular) girls perform better in a single sex environment.

What do these studies say about boys in single sex schools? Do they do better than boys in mixed schools?

rainbow kirby

I *hated* my all-girls school - was in a very bitchy and conformist year group, and as a sporty (but not in the accepted camogie or hockey sort of way), nerdy girl who always got on better with guys anyway I spent 6 years finding it exceptionally difficult to make friends. Also got a lot of stick from people over my choice of subjects, and ended up not getting the full selection I wanted anyway as I was the only person in the year who wanted to take 3 science subjects. The graduation speech about how we would make wonderful wives and mothers made me want to throw up too.

I will not be sending any child of mine to a single-sex school unless it is absolutely the only available option. I don't think segregation by gender really benefits anyone.

Gbear

One obvious solution to the gender-defined subjects like home ec, is to make home ec mandatory, as it really should be.


It's probably our best bet in fighting childhood obesity. We'll also creative a generation of world class chefs, no doubt.:)


My experience of the gender divided education is that boys who go to all-boys schools end up as poorer people for it. An awful lot of them seem to have a ****tier attitude to women than those who had to spend time with them in school for several years. I'd imagine that's usually remedied later in life but that's certainly my impression of them when they out of school. That's just my own experience so I'm not sure if it's born out in general across the country.

If there are issues around having both genders together I think the first port of call is to try to fix those issues rather than just avoiding them with gender segregation.
I think it's a lot easier to be, for example, homosexual or black in schools nowadays. Even if kids are sociopathic little ****ers at times they do seem to be moving in the right direction along with most of the rest of society. I see no reason why attitudes to gender can't move along too.

iguana

Gbear wrote: »

One obvious solution to the gender-defined subjects like home ec, is to make home ec mandatory, as it really should be.


It's probably our best bet in fighting childhood obesity. We'll also creative a generation of world class chefs, no doubt.:)

Cooking and food science is only a small part of Home Ec. In fact for the LC there is no cooking at involved in the higher levels of the subject. A lot of it is actually about household finance and budgeting, which would arguably have been just about the most important thing many young adults in this country should have learned.

Gbear

iguana wrote: »

Cooking and food science is only a small part of Home Ec. In fact for the LC there is no cooking at involved in the higher levels of the subject. A lot of it is actually about household finance and budgeting, which would arguably have been just about the most important thing many young adults in this country should have learned.

There's a whole host of things young people heading off to college haven't a ****ing clue about. Cooking is one example. Basic DIY, finance, tax and the work environment, how to drive in some cases.

Home ec is close to that. I think it should be a little broader (and I think the food part is extremely important) and mandatory through all secondary school, irrespective of gender.

kylith

Obliq wrote: »

My main distraction in the co-ed school I went to was how not to get a knife in the back over not being a follower of the cliques of girls who determined whether you were cool enough to enter these based on your clothes and make-up. In my experience, girls were less distracted by boys and more by each other in terms of their position in the pecking order.

In a girl's school, I'd have been lost and many times more miserable than I was. I spent the whole six years hanging about with the male misfits, wearing combats and a series of dodgy Run-DMC t-shirts. I'm aware that this is only my story, but to my mind, a girls school could do more (in social terms rather than academic) to perpetuate that VERY female thing of one-up-man-ship based on the perfect body/looks.

As for the choice of subjects, I think it's a generational thing. There wasn't ONE girl in my year who did metalwork for example, and I regret not having had the nerve to be the only girl. However, these days, in my eldest's school, there's a much larger percentage of boys doing home ec than I thought there would be, and a number of girls doing metalwork. The best student in technical graphics (wants to be an engineer) is a girl. My young fella and the lads he knows just assume equality these days (of course, the girls might tell a different tale) and don't see home ec as a girlie subject at all.

Must be all their Dad's cooking the dinner these days?

Maybe I was lucky in that I had a band of misfits to hang around with in school, and I hung around with a lot of boys outside school hours.

I honestly think that the bullying about my general lack of girlishness would have been worse if there had been boys around for the harpies to try to impress.

I'm fully in favour of doing away with any gender taboos in relation to classes, and I think that some form of Home Ec and General DIY (changing a plug, fixing a puncture, hanging a picture or whatever) should be mandatory in all schools.

Hotblack Desiato

kylith wrote: »

When I was in school I bemoaned the fact that it was single sex. Looking back I think that it was good to not be distracted by members of the opposite sex.

What about young good looking teachers though :eek:

and not everyone in a single sex school is attracted to the opposite sex!

Seriously I think if you've been in mixed schools all the way through it should be no big deal. It might be, for a while, if you were moved into a mixed school for the first time at age 15 or something. But, if you don't do it then then you'll have the same problem when you move to third level / work, you will be a bit older yes but not always that much more mature

Bannasidhe

ninja900 wrote: »

What about young good looking teachers though :eek:

and not everyone in a single sex school is attracted to the opposite sex!

You called?

I just had to listen to them talking about the opposite sex all the time. :mad:

Jimoslimos

ninja900 wrote: »

What about young good looking teachers though :eek:

+1 to that. Now looking back at my hormone-fuelled teen years in a single-sex secondary school you can add the slightly older average looking teachers...actually scratch that, any female teacher!

Bannasidhe wrote: »

I see it even in 3rd level where some female students who are gaining high marks in written work tend to keep quiet while the 'Lads' hold forth in lectures - this impacts on the continual assessment component of their marks.
Purely as a matter of personal interest I began to look at the schooling of the female students and discovered that those from single-sex schools were far more likely to speak up not having been conditioned during their school years to be 'demure' and let the men folk take the floor.

I'd have imagined it would have been the other way around, girls from single-sex schools, of which the majority would have been convents with a strong religious ethos, would be more likely to be conditioned to be demure. I think the advantage might lie in the fact that students from single-sex schools tend to be wealthier and receive better education than the underfunded co-ed VECs. Certainly students from disadvantaged backgrounds can often feel intimidated when they enter a university setting.

Plus it raises the question if girls do better in a single-sex setting, but boys perform in co-ed how do you resolve this - because either way you're disadvantaging one gender over another.

Peregrinus

Jimoslimos wrote: »

I'd have imagined it would have been the other way around, girls from single-sex schools, of which the majority would have been convents with a strong religious ethos, would be more likely to be conditioned to be demure.

Absolutely not the case, according to a (female, strongly non-religious, mildly anti-clerical) relative who lectures in a third-level institution. The female students from single-sex convent schools arrive confident, assertive and expecting to be listened to and taken seriously much more so than female students from mixed-sex schools. She doesn’t think that this is related to socioeconomic class.

Jimoslimos wrote: »

Plus it raises the question if girls do better in a single-sex setting, but boys perform in co-ed how do you resolve this - because either way you're disadvantaging one gender over another.

It’s important to remember that these are both generalizations - girls tend to do better academically in single-sex environments than in mixed-sex environments, but there are many girls for whom this is not the case. And vice versa for the boys. So if you only provide one of these two types of school you are disadvantaging the group that would do better in the other type, and there’s some correlation between that and gender, but it’s far from a perfect match.

It’s also important to remember that this comparison usually looks at academic performance. It doesn’t necessarily hold across a range of educational outcomes. It’s possible, for example, that a girl would have a better academic performance in a single-sex school, but acquire better social adjustment in a mixed-sex school. If a girl is bright, and will do reasonably well academically in any environment, then you might prefer the school which will develop her socially, but the other way around if she has strong social/emotional skills, but needs support to develop academically. And similar considerations apply to boys.

Horses for courses, in other words. There are both boys and girls who will do better in both single-sex and mixed-sex schools, and the best outcome can be expected if, so far as possible, people have a choice about which kind of school to choose for their child. It’s not, of course, possible to give everyone that choice, but giving it to no-one is probably calculated to produce a poorer outcome, since it will maximize the number of students who have to attend a school that is, for them, suboptimal.

Rev Hellfire

I would have thought economically there would be a stronger case for ensure future schools are co-ed, simply to pool resources, provide greater flexibility to student and maximize the use of land.

Peregrinus

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

I would have thought economically there would be a stronger case for ensure future schools are co-ed, simply to pool resources, provide greater flexibility to student and maximize the use of land.

Not necessarily. Two co-ed schools take up pretty much the same amount of land as a boys' school plus a girls' school.

Sure, a single co-ed school that is twice as large might save on land and buildings to some extent, but by the same token a co-ed school that was ten times as large would save even more. There's a range for the optimal school size, and if single-sex schools are within that range there's no great advantage in having co-ed schools.

Obviously, there'll be places that can only support one good-sized school or two too-small schools and, in those places, a single co-ed school is a no-brainer.

kylith

ninja900 wrote: »

What about young good looking teachers though :eek:

*Thinks of male teachers in secondary school*
*shudders*

Bannasidhe

kylith wrote: »

*Thinks of male teachers in secondary school*
*shudders*

*Thinks of my all female teachers*
*shudders*

Hotblack Desiato

Could be worse. You could have had a husband and wife on the teaching staff like we did. The mental image of that pair jumping bones didn't bear thinking about :eek: but she was on maternity leave twice during my school years...

recedite

Jimoslimos wrote: »

Plus it raises the question if girls do better in a single-sex setting, but boys perform in co-ed how do you resolve this - because either way you're disadvantaging one gender over another.

I suspect both sexes are going to be disadvantaged in the long run.
Even if its true that girls from single sex-schools get better grades in their Leaving Certs, they will enter a world where segregation, fixed gender roles, and "glass ceilings" seem perfectly normal to the males.

BTW it looks like Ireland's first Islamic secondary school is on the way.
We can assume it will be a private, single-sex, state funded school which also serves as a vehicle of religious indoctrination. As such, it should fit in very well with our existing educational system.
There was once an A&A thread about the government of Saudi Arabia planning to establish a school in this country, with the ongoing maintenance costs and teacher salaries funded by the Irish taxpayer. I presume we are now looking at this master plan coming to fruition.

Hotblack Desiato

Buuuuuut.... religious dogma leathered into kids in school is a good thing, never did us any harm, provided it's Irish Roman Catholic religious dogma.. not that foringe stuff...

Peregrinus

recedite wrote: »

I suspect both sexes are going to be disadvantaged in the long run.
Even if its true that girls from single sex-schools get better grades in their Leaving Certs, they will enter a world where segregation, fixed gender roles, and "glass ceilings" seem perfectly normal to the males.

Maybe not. The usual account for why girls in mixed schools underperform academically is that they get less attention, and are taken less seriously, than the boys, and that is how they learn to regard and evaluate themselves. Girls in single-sex schools may hear about such things, but they are not exposed to them, not formed by them at the time of their lives when they are learning their own gender identity. Or, at any rate, they are not formed by them in school.

So, counterintuitive as it may seem, there is some reason to think that sex-segregated education may be beneficial in helping girls to form a positive and confident image of themselves as women, and of their place in society, at least when it comes to academic/intellectual attainment. Or, at any rate, it may be more beneficial than mixed-sex education.

My concern about single-sex education would be different. It’s that girls schools would tend not to offer, or not to put resources into “boys” subjects, and vice versa, thus limiting educational options for both sexes. This is a real problem.

As against that, though, in mixed sex schools where you’d expect to find a wider range of choices, it remains overwhelming the case that the boys pick the boys’ subjects and the girls the girls’ ones. So simply having the choice doesn’t really solve the problem, if other pressures, stereotyping, expectations, etc still steer the boys one way and the girls another. And if you can successfully tackle that problem, then the other one should eventually go away, since single-sex schools will then tend to offer a less stereotype-driven subject range.

recedite wrote: »

BTW it looks like Ireland's first Islamic secondary school is on the way.
We can assume it will be a private, single-sex, state funded school which also serves as a vehicle of religious indoctrination. As such, it should fit in very well with our existing educational system.

You;ve been reading the Daily Mail again, haven’t you, recidite? :-)

You can certainly assume all that if you choose to, but assumptions reflecting your own preconceptions are not the same thing as inferences drawn from observation or evidence. Of the twelve state-aided Islamic schools in the UK, nine are mixed sex (and three are girls’ schools). And, of independent Islamic schools, the majority are mixed sex, so it’s not that co-education is being forced on anyone as a condition of receiving state aid. SFAIK, all the Islamic primary schools in Ireland are mixed-sex. So I’m not seeming much evidence of an insistence on single sex schools in Islamic education. And if Ireland is only to have one Islamic secondary school, common sense suggests that the chances of its being a single-sex school are vanishingly small.

jill_valentine

Girls do tend to dumb themselves down around boys. It's not necessarily in order to make themselves attractive - although that effect does have some research behind it - but because it's less threatening, generally. I used to dumb myself down in school all the time, because the guys who set the tone in the classroom were already making my life miserable and I didn't want them to have that to use against me too.

I don't know if I do support the idea of single sex education, although it definitely does seem to have some benefits. While it's true to say that the environment is artificial and unrealistic, it's also conditioning certain expectations into girls during a formative time. When they do eventually go into mixed sex work environments, maybe they'd ultimately benefit from not having been "trained" to keep their heads down.

recedite

Peregrinus wrote: »

You;ve been reading the Daily Mail again, haven’t you, recidite? :-)

You can certainly assume all that if you choose to, but assumptions reflecting your own preconceptions are not the same thing as inferences drawn from observation or evidence. Of the twelve state-aided Islamic schools in the UK, nine are mixed sex (and three are girls’ schools). And, of independent Islamic schools, the majority are mixed sex......

I'd be happy if my assumptions were wrong. Not being from that community, I admit to a certain amount of ignorance. When you say "mixed schools" though, are both sexes definitely present in the same classroom at the same time?
There are other schools in Ireland that have separate classes for each sex within the same year group, but all within the same campus or the same building. Very old schoolhouse buildings often had separate entrance doors for boys and girls, accessing the one building, which was divided into two parts inside.

Peregrinus

recedite wrote: »

I'd be happy if my assumptions were wrong. Not being from that community, I admit to a certain amount of ignorance. When you say "mixed schools" though, are both sexes definitely present in the same classroom at the same time?

Not having personally inspected the schools in the UK, I can’t say for sure that this is the case. I’ve no reason to think that it isn’t, however. I’m pretty sure that it’s not happening in the Islamic national schools in Dublin.

recedite wrote: »

There are other schools in Ireland that have separate classes for each sex within the same year group, but all within the same campus or the same building. Very old schoolhouse buildings often had separate entrance doors for boys and girls, accessing the one building, which was divided into two parts inside.

What you have there, typically, is two schools (with separate principals, staffs, etc) sharing a premises, or using “semi-detached” school buildings but sharing a playground. In my childhood in the 1970s my local primary school(s) followed this model. Locally, it was referred to as “the primary school” and was regarded as a single entity, but if you took the trouble to check official documents you’d find that the boys NS and the girls NS were distinct entities.

(In fact, the structure may survive in some large primary schools, though the teaching and other operations of the two schools are completely integrated. But formally merging the schools would result in the loss of one principal position - and possibly the loss of other positions - and the INTO wouldn’t like that.)

I don’t think that’s happening in Voluntary Aided Islamic schools in the UK; the lists I’ve seen distinguish between single-sex schools and mixed schools, and there is no instance of two single-sex schools sharing premises, or in adjacent premises.