single sex vs mixed schools

Dickie10 · 24-03-2023 10:57am

no but they suited some students to do more hands on work, probably no need for students with no interest in academia to be in school after junior cert exam, let them off to an apprenticship college and the world of work. sometimes those students are just a hinderance in a school

rainbowtrout · 29-03-2023 11:06am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120394842#Comment_120394842

Schools offer a wide range of subjects now. Schools can offer LCA if students do not want to take the traditional route. Students tend to do better the longer they stay in school. I'd never describe students as a hindrance. I pity students sitting in your classes that don't live up to your academic standards.

Pawwed Rig · 29-03-2023 6:21pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120414733#Comment_120414733

Half the people in my leaving cert class were a hindrance with no interest in being there

Dickie10 · 29-03-2023 11:05pm

I suppose LCA is a slight help now but pnly to maybe half of those in the classes benefit from it, id say on average the other half should get stuck into a trade and start making money and a life for themselves plus contribute quicker to the country in the form of taxes.

Caquas · 11-02-2024 12:42pm

Brianna Parkins has a change of heart about single-sex schools.

She went to a girls-only school in Australia and wanted to send her (hypothetical future) daughter to one but then she saw men who didn't want an elite boys-only school to go co-ed. I suspect she would have had the opposite reaction if she met women trying to stop a girls-only school going co-ed. She compares the bogus Limerick study with an Australian study which got the opposite results and calls this "mixed results". In fact, there is a vast library of contradictory studies on this topic which prove one thing beyond question - social "science" is a creature of politics and researchers never stop torturing the data until it yields the "right" result.

Anyhow, the campaign to abolish single-sex schools is gathering pace. It has been decades since a new single-sex school was approved. Parents are gradually coming to favour single-sex schools, mainly for convenience but also no doubt influenced by bogus research. The new admission rules will reduce the numbers of parents who attended the children's schools i.e. those who have any idea whether the school's traditions are worth preserving.

There are currently 2,895 mixed national schools with just 132 boys national schools and 96 girls national schools remaining.

There are 97 boys post-primary schools and 124 girls post-primary schools remaining, with 514 mixed post-primary schools. At this rate, 10 years from now there will be only be around 50 single-sex post-primary schools left and the clear advantage that girls hold over boys in the Leaving Cert will have eroded. The most elite schools will remain single-sex and their powerful "Old Boy" and "Old Girl" networks will be ever more exposed. Then parents will start clamouring for single-sex schools, especially for those who identify as girls.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/education/2024/01/22/number-of-schools-switching-from-single-sex-to-co-ed-increases-significantly/

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2024/02/10/i-was-sent-to-an-all-girls-school-in-case-i-dumbed-myself-down-in-front-of-boys/

lainers99 · 12-02-2024 1:30pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120339117#Comment_120339117

Out of those catholic schools, there is a growing proportion of students that are non-catholic. In my daughter’s single sex catholic school, there are a large number of Muslim children attending. Same with my son’s school.

Dickie10 · 17-02-2024 12:22am

i have noticed that what id imagine might happen is, in the case of a good performing all girls school that is now going co ed, theres going to be a lack of technichal subjects ready for all students so you will get a certain cohort of very academic boys. at the applying to the girls school which will leave less room for non academic girls, in time the good all girls school will just morph into a very elite academic high league tabe school who can pick and choose their students. at the moment most all boys and girls schools have a varied enough mix of boys and girls

Caquas · 17-02-2024 1:00pm

The transition to co-ed will, inevitably, be disruptive. While things will eventually settle down in a few years, the data shows the co-ed schools are academically inferior, especially compared to girls-only schools. Of course, we are fed nonsense by the media who used biased research by the likes of the team down in Limerick.

The Media

Expert research finds "No academic advantage to single-sex schools"

Our Politicians

"It has been proven time and again that there is no academic advantage to single-sex schools"

Actual research conclusions

We find significant raw gaps in reading, science and mathematics scores between females in single-sex and mixed-sex schools and in mathematics scores for males across the same school types. However, after controlling for a rich set of individual, parental and school-level factors we find that, on average, there is no significant difference in performance for girls or boys who attend single-sex schools compared to their mixed-school peers in science, mathematics or reading

English translation

Girls in single-sex schools do much better in reading, science and mathematics than girls in co-ed schools. Boys in single-sex schools do better in maths. We "controlled" the numbers to make these differences disappear.

Of course, some of the advantages of the single-sex schools may be due to other factors e.g. teaching resources, parental involvement. But there is no justification for "controlling" this data until it yields the favoured result. Or do you imagine these "scientists" are objective and would publish findings which opposed their preferences?

My preference would be for parental choice but there is a systematic effort to eliminate parental choice in many aspects of education and the next generation of Irish girls and boys will be educated in co-ed schools, whether their parents like it or not.

am_zarathustra · 18-02-2024 6:08pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121779604#Comment_121779604

Controls are a very standard part of science. It's one of the first concepts you teach a child learning science. Comparing a mixed inner city DEIS to Alex or Mount Anvil will indeed lead to better raw scores.....quelle surprise! We control so data has context and meaning. Whatever your bias is for, disparaging research for using the scientific method and ensuring you are not comparing apples and oranges shouldn't be the basis of your argument.

The Limerick study, to be fair, is one of the better studies with a strong statistical underpining you often don't get in Irish research contexts. It's an open source journal so you can look at the raw stats yourself if your so inclined.

I found the urban/rural split, the staff shortage numbers and the ratios to be a far more interesting part of the study to be honest. We know these are real and tangible indicators of the quality of education students receive. That, and the teaching material quality being so biased towards single sex, boys schools

Caquas · 18-02-2024 9:22pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121784716#Comment_121784716

Correction - Controls are a very standard part of social science.

I said it was reasonable to control here for non-gender factors which could influence the data but what has happened instead is what we see ever more frequently - researchers applying a plethora of controlling variables which eventually give the desired result or at least, as in this case, eliminate the undesirable. Do you honestly believe that the University of Limerick would be all over the media promoting the wonders of single-sex education if this research confirmed what is evident in the raw data.😃

In any event, I say let the parents choose but that is exactly what the State is working against,

Dickie10 · 19-02-2024 3:45pm

would anyone agree that your going to get a large cohort of academic boys going to a good Loreto school performing high on league tables? Particularly if that schools cant provide some practical subjects like metal work and woodwork

am_zarathustra · 19-02-2024 8:59pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121785629#Comment_121785629

Do you have a background in a hard science? I've never seen a paper, bar a theoretical physic paper perhaps pr aspects of geology, without some form of control, granted it can mean different things in different contexts and specialism.

Which aspect of their control do you have an issue with? The method is clearly outlined in the paper so it should be easy to point out.

am_zarathustra · 19-02-2024 9:09pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121788573#Comment_121788573

I think that's a real issue that mixed schools help with, the lack of those subjects in girls schools a real pity with how useful even JC engineering or material technology can be in your every day life. Same with subjects like Home Ec in boys schools, with some exceptions. The new schools, when the buildings are finally built, are amazing, and they do have a wide selection of specialist rooms with the initial funding making them modern, pity we don't just do that as the bare minimum.

But yeah, I think academic student pushed from stable homes, who grew up with a healthy respect for themselves and their futures will generally do well anywhere. There are girls schools down the country where boys might even come in senior cycle as they'd be considered "good schools".

I think most people want their kids to be in a good, well run school with a wide curricular, good facilities, reasonable class sizes and the option of extra curriculars. Our energy should really be focused on the funding and allocation inequality.

Nermal · 19-02-2024 9:45pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121790004#Comment_121790004

They don't outline how the controlling variables were chosen. They picked a few, including one that PISA itself constructed. But just the basic PISA questionnaire for students was over 80 pages in length (I didn't bother looking at the myriad other questionnaires or the final dataset). You could construct any correlation you liked out of this much information.

am_zarathustra · 19-02-2024 10:11pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121790216#Comment_121790216

They absolutly do in the methods,and give a clear description of how these variables were used and what level or weight on control was given and how they constructed the linear regression models along with other methodologies they utilised with references to where they have been used before and how they are in line with internationally accepted standards.

I assume we all agree that socioeconomic background and student-staff ratio have a measurable effect on outcome. They have included the big hitters from the research contexts they are working in. If I was studying cystic fibrosis I might include lung capacity as a variable for life expectancy, in a research context I wouldn't need to explain why to those reading the journal article in the "Journal of Lung Health" or such why I was including that, it's evident.

You can argue or not ague for single sex schools but this is one of the few purposeful bits of research I've seen come out about Irish Education in a long time, willfully misunderstanding it does no one any favours. There are bit for the methodologies I could maybe half take an issue with but it's not a hatchet job and there are plenty of those knocking around. It also misses some of the nuance thrown up by it that will and do cause far greater inequalities in our country than whether Jack sits beside Mary or John in Physics

Nermal · 19-02-2024 11:33pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121790333#Comment_121790333

Quote the passage where they describe the criteria for choosing them.

am_zarathustra · 20-02-2024 12:36am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121790678#Comment_121790678

"specific calculations to obtain reliable standard errors. Jerrim et al. (2017) outlines some of the problems derived from said structure and how to overcome them. As suggested by them, we employ the REPEST command within STATA, developed by Avvisati and Keslair (2014), to analyse the data. REPEST carries out estimations using the balanced repeated replicate weights method proposed by the OECD (2009), and is suitable for use with plausible values, such that the average value of the estimations is obtained and the imputation error is incorporated into the variance of the estimated parameter. This allows us to run models such as standard linear regressions that are technically robust and meet the criteria of the usual OECD studies. When considering the relationship between performance and single-sex schooling, selection bias is a key issue. Thus, our models control for a range of observable socioeconomic and school-level factors likely to be correlated with performance in PISA, and attending a single-sex school, such as those outlined in Table 1. Given this, to examine our relationship of interest we estimate three separate standard linear regressions"

In the same way we understand why we measure cholesterol in heart studies, we know we should control for socio economic class in eduction studies! The OECD employ fairly good statisticians.

What precisely are your issues with the controls? Which ones specifically are you quereing or is it the statistical analysis you have and issue with?

Nermal · 20-02-2024 10:44am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121790952#Comment_121790952

Only the second-last sentence in the paragraph you quote is relevant; it just states that they chose the variables in Table 1 because they felt they were likely to be correlated with performance in PISA.

The problem is that in a dataset of the size studied here a near infinite set of variables could be chosen.

Perhaps this was the first set they tried, and they were happy with the result they found.

Perhaps they tried multiple sets, got different results, and decided this was the best one.

Tombo2001 · 20-02-2024 10:51am

The challenge with this debate for me is the snobbery it comes with - inevitably, mixed is the way forward, single sex is backwards, thats the way it is in the EU, what the hell is wrong with this country type narrative.

As the Irish Times letter states - be respectful of choice. (A lot of people are all for choice, when it suits them).

And the other thing is, in my experience in Dublin anyway, mixed sex schools are choices that are predominantly available to the middle classes. (Hello Educate Together, yes I am looking at you!!).

People that send their kids to co-ed schools are privileged to have that option, a lot of people dont have that option.

So please dont double down by telling everyone what a great parental choice you have made. (Which would be a very Irish Times opinion columnist thing to do).

Caquas · 20-02-2024 3:05pm

The Limerick study has an incontrovertible finding in favour of parental choice:

To our knowledge, no studies have found that single-sex schools hinder students or that mixed-sex schools have positive academic outcomes

The most amazing thing about this study, apart from its plethora of "controls" to fix the data, is that it has to rely on limited samples from an international test - PISA - to measure the quality of Irish schools. And hence many of the controls depend on "proxies" e.g. the researchers don't know the level of parental involvement so, instead, they control for the proportion of parents who actively participate in the school management.

As if we didn't have a national examination which tests 60,000 final year students annually across every subject. A research project based on that data would be internationally significant because of the exceptional number of single-sex schools in Ireland. Of course, there is a grave danger that the results might turn out "wrong" but scientists must pursue the truth! However, the treasure trove of testing data from the Leaving Cert has been protected like the Third Secret of Fatima. Even researchers in our Universities do not get access, not even to anonymised data it would seem. Of course, only the raw data would be useful, not the bogus "adjusted" grades that were handed out during and after the pandemic when the Minister started behaving like a social scientist!

Single-sex v. co-ed is a minor issue compared to the question of the pandemic shutdown and its effects on education. There is strong evidence from other countries of serious detriment to students from the pandemic restrictions.

Has anyone among our battalions of education researchers examined the Leaving Cert results to see if our students suffered and what we should do during the next pandemic? I don't suppose the Minister or the Department would want that research in the media.

mariaalice · 20-02-2024 8:27pm

What about single-sexed till 16 then mixed and the single-sexed schools located on the same campus and merge after junior cert.

It the best of both worlds.

am_zarathustra · 20-02-2024 9:22pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121792722#Comment_121792722

I think the Pisa gives a better and more accessible set of variables to work within, it's a very comprehensive test. I'd agree the parental involvement one is a bit sketchy, it's a hard one to objectively measure but the parameters they are choosing are reasonable things to control for and are standard controls in most research of this type. Research is very consistent on things like parental involvement, socioeconomic class, attendence, urban v rural, staff ratio ect being fairly strongly correlated to educational success so the study would be completely pointless without controlling for these variables.

Absolutly a detrimental effect from covid, there are international studies showing it and anecdotally I think any teachers here would certainly attest to it. It'll be hard to judge the real effect for a few years, you'd imagine the early years effect would be present but not openly obvious for another few years.

The almost hysteria around mixed or not mixed is just wasted energy I agree, when you look at STEM funding being allocated by lottery and the acute teaching crisis in urban areas, there are issues far more pressing. But equaly from a practical perspective it would be unbelievably inefficient to put 2 single sex school in an area of growth as opposed to 1 mixed and both would suffer. I went to a single sex achool myself and loved it so I'm not disparaging them at all but I think they will petter out due to practicalities even more than parental choice even.

am_zarathustra · 20-02-2024 9:23pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121794271#Comment_121794271

We can't manage or build extensions to the schools we have.

am_zarathustra · 20-02-2024 9:26pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121791570#Comment_121791570

There are more DEIS mixed schools in Dublin due to the ETB schools being almost all mixed. The first ET post primary was only set up in 2015 so its the new kid on the block and a couple of them have DEIS status too.

I think some ET have that reputation but I think that's a product of parental pressure in particular areas with very active primary parental groups carrying through.

Caquas · 20-02-2024 9:30pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121794271#Comment_121794271

There are a lot of options which could benefit the social development of students from single-sex schools and these schools should be encouraged to experiment in their particular circumstances (e.g. if girls-only and boys-only schools are adjacent to each other) but the Minister and the Department have shown zero interest in anything other than co-ed integration because the welfare of students is not the priority.

am_zarathustra · 20-02-2024 9:35pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121791543#Comment_121791543

They used the variables that are widely understood to effect educational attainment. Plenty of metaanalysis on these studies identifying these variables in the references provided by the author. Research rarely comes whole and from first principals......shoulders of giants and all that.

Dickie10 · 20-02-2024 10:40pm

in how many counties are all girls schools taking up the first two or three places on league tables? how can a study say single sex schools make no difference to academic success if its there in black and white? has anyone the data in front of them on how amny counties have single sex schools top?

Treppen · 21-02-2024 1:26pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121794271#Comment_121794271

Single sex tends to have the religious ethos attached... How is it possible to mix the Jesuit ethos with the Loretto ethos? It simply cannot be done.It would create an abomination.