Are co-ed or single-sex lessons best?

Co-ed schools are increasingly keen to teach their boys and girls separately,
according to one Cambridge academic. But is this really a good idea?

Yes
Dr Chris Nicholls is headteacher of Moulsham high school, a
comprehensive in Chelmsford, Essex, with 1,600 pupils aged between 1118.

My school started teaching girls and boys separately 38 years ago. It was
felt that as the grammar schools in the area were single-sex, the local
authority should offer that option too. It wasn't feasible to open a single-sex
comprehensive, so Moulsham, along with two other schools, began teaching
both sexes separately.
The two other schools quickly reverted to a more traditional mixed model,
but Moulsham continued and when I became headteacher in 1991 I
analysed the effects of the separation. The results weren't clear-cut, but
they did suggest our children were developing normally and there was
nothing to indicate we should stop.
I wouldn't want to run a school that was entirely single-sex and all our
children mix socially from day one. But, academically, in the first three
years ages 11-14 boys and girls are educated entirely separately. At key
stage 4 ages 14-16 we try to maintain the separation, where possible,
especially for the core subjects of English, maths and science.
In subjects where we don't separate the sexes, it's more a question of
staffing levels than anything else. We offer a wide range of GCSE options
and set the children according to ability and it's often not feasible to further
sub-divide the classes by gender. At sixth-form, all classes are mixed.
This shift from total to partial separation to full integration reflects
children's learning styles. Children are at their most different when they are
youngest; there has been a great deal of evidence to suggest boys and girls
have different behaviours and respond to different learning styles. Boys
tend to need more direction, while girls work better in groups, and we are
able to tailor our classes accordingly.
However, merely separating children by gender is not enough on its own to
either modify behaviour or affect learning outcomes. In particular you need
teachers capable of handling the situation. In the wrong hands, a class of
average to below-average boys could be a recipe for disaster as you
potentially have your most challenging students all in one classroom, with
no girls to modify their behaviour.

But with a strong teacher, who understands how boys behave with each
other and can manage that situation, the results can be surprisingly good.
Not that we're after some holy grail of neutralising the gender gap between
boys' and girls' academic achievement. Rather we are trying to adjust the
performance of both, so that both groups achieve the best possible results.
If that means that girls still out- perform in some areas, then so be it. Our
girls consistently do better in English GCSE; in maths and science there are
no gender differences; results in other subjects are more volatile, so it's
hard to draw any strong conclusions either way.
What is clear is that our students seem to understand and enjoy the way the
school operates. Having had three years of learning on their own, the girls
know how to work together in the classroom and have the confidence to
deal with the sudden influx of boys. Last year's Ofsted report highlighted
the exceptional maturity of our sixth- form students, something that must
be at least in some part attributable to the time the boys and girls have had
to learn separately from one another.
As a school, we're very comfortable with how we operate. Certainly,
students and parents seem to like what we are doing and we see no reason
to change.
No
Dr Anthony Seldon is master of Wellington College, an independent school
in Berkshire with 950 pupils aged between 13-18.

The argument, if one can call it that, that girls and boys do better
academically if taught separately is depressingly familiar. Such a case is
misleading and dangerous, especially as the evidence does not support it,
and evidence really does matter, in education as elsewhere.
The one key survey in this field was conducted by Professor Alan Smithers
of the University of Buckingham who, with Dr Pamela Robinson, published
in 2006 an extensive analysis of the evidence in various countries. His
conclusion was clear: there is simply no overwhelming evidence that singlesex education is better academically for young people.
On the other hand, abundant evidence exists that children do better socially
if they are educated in mixed groups. It is not enough to just be part of a coed school that teaches girls and boys separately in class, because the really
valuable interaction in co-ed schools occurs in lessons. For much of the rest
of the time, boys and girls are separate, socially and at games. So what
happens in lesson time in terms of learning about each other is crucial. In
English lessons, it is invaluable to have both female and male perspectives
on texts. Girls learn about how boys see poems, plays and novels, and boys

understand the very different readings girls often give. They learn to
understand and respect different views and opinions. In science and even
maths girls and boys respond differently, with boys being quicker to express
themselves, and girls being more thoughtful and considered.
Good teachers will draw out the girls and moderate the boys. Girls also
learn the confidence to be able to express themselves in the atmosphere of
kindness and humanity encouraged by a gifted teacher. Otherwise, they go
to university having had the key period of their intellectual development
taking place in lopsided and artificial environments.
And where does the argument about single-sex stop? Should we educate
races separately? Should we educate different religions separately? Should
we deliberately educate members of different social classes separately?
We have to remember what schools are for. They are not exam factories,
purely there to maximise exam grades at GCSE and at Alevel. Schools should be there to teach the whole child. The word
"education" means "to lead out". What is it that is being "led out"? It is all
the different intelligences or aptitudes that go to make up each child. Even
if there was a clear argument that children do better with their logistical
and linguistic intelligence if educated in single-sex schools and there is no
clear case what of the other aptitudes that schools desperately need to
draw out if they are to educate the whole child? The development of the
creative intelligence critically needs male and female perspectives; so does
the personal and the social, the spiritual and the moral.
This is an argument not led by the head, but led by the heart. Parents who
were educated themselves in a single-sex setting often want to visit the
same experience on their children. Neither my wife nor I were happy in our
own single-sex schools, and our three children have been gloriously happy
in co-education schools. Other parents should follow this example.
In the final analysis, however, a far more important factor than single sex or
co-education is the quality of the school, the leadership and the teaching.
There are many outstanding single-sex schools in Britain, state and
independent, and some rotten co-educational schools. Even though I have
become convinced by the evidence and by experience that co-education is
better, I would still sooner a child attended an excellent single sex school
than a bad co-ed one.