Virtues of single-sex education
What are the advantages of boys-only schools? Many parents choose single-sex schools for their sons and daughters in their teenage years. Often these teenagers have been to co-educational prep schools. But they benefit from being in a single-sex school for the five years when they are growing fastest physically. Here's why.
- Boys and girls are especially aware of their appearance when they are adolescents. The pressure of this self-absorption is reduced if they are educated in single-sex schools.
- A proportion of boys and girls find that their academic work suffers if they form a close relationship with a member of the opposite sex at school. Virtually all the schools with the best exam results are single-sex schools - despite the fact that co-educational schools have twice as many potential applicants.
- Boys and girls are less self-conscious if educated in single-sex schools. They are more likely to engage in activities which might otherwise embarrass them. Boys, for example, are happier to sing in choirs and girls are more willing to do outdoor sports. In fact sport is much stronger in both the boys and girls-only schools.
- In co-educational schools boys are much less likely to opt for subjects which are traditional strengths of girls, such as English and French, and girls are less likely to opt for Physics or Chemistry. In other words, gender stereotypes are reinforced in co-educational schools.