Girls do better in exams at all-girls schools than mixed, research finds | Schools

18 comments

1. >Thomson said the “very slight difference” for girls’ schools was equivalent to a tenth of a grade improvement in each subject at GCSE.

   so statistical noise?

2. Probably because they’re less likely to be sexually harassed and be in classes with disruptive boys.

3. > Pugh said one possible explanation for the difference in performance between boys’ and girls’ schools was that girls were very good at emulating their successful schoolmates and the techniques they used.

   > “Careful independent learning habits like making mind-maps, practising essays, making flash cards, working through practice papers, are demonstrably effective for GCSE success. If boys in an all-boys environment aren’t seeing the learning habits which lead to success, they can’t copy them,” Pugh said.

   So can similar approaches be used to help boys?

4. >nearly a quarter of pupils in London attended a single-sex school

   Higher than expected

5. ‘All girl schools’ are almost exclusively independent schools which have more funding and smaller class sizes. There’s no way you can ‘adjust’ for comparing two entirely different cohorts

6. All Girls schools are probably better funded and as a result have better teachers and a better curriculum as well as having kids with better home lives.

7. I would love to see a study on how happy kids who go to single-sex schools are a decade later, than those who don’t.

8. That’s old news that girls do better academically in a girls only school. I can’t remember the reason why now. I do know that boys can’t be araed in si gle sex or mixed.

9. Do they do this exact study every single year, because I swear I see it every year

10. No one is surprised by this. Wonder how much this study cost. Fancy removing the sexual coming of age termoil from an education situation and having a better outcome from being less distracted and distressed….. Most people knew this. Without a fucking study.

11. Makes sense. Girls in mixed schools are often seated next to boys to make them ‘behave’, mixed schools drag girls down, it hasn’t got enough time for them since boys tend to be the biggest trouble by far

12. Girls will have better mental health in a mixed school though.

13. Correlation without causation. All girls schools are private schools, the children come from wealthy families. Wealth provides a range of opportunities for better outcomes. The schools have more money, have more resources, and on and on.

14. Turns out the more distractions you remove, the better people do. Who knew?

15. for everyone claiming that it’s because there are “no distractions”, the sexual and romantic shit still happens. i’m a trans guy, went to a posh all girls school (i was the only trans person at the time, i came out in year 9).

    once we all hit 14 the bicurious and lesbian students started coming out. 2 of the older girls in one year group got caught having sex in a locker room. two girls in my class dated for about 6 months and we all had to watch them shoving their tongues down each other’s throats whenever the teacher’s weren’t around. sexual harassment was also rife, hell, i personally had a chick try to shove her entire hand up my ass when i was 15 (while waiting in the lunch queue) 💀

    bc there was no boy’s equivalent of the school, girls would fight over boys from a local (but separate) private boy’s school, leading to screaming matches, cyber-arguments, and a couple fist fights in corridors.

    when we were 13 a couple girls started sending everyone tentacle porn on snapchat. at 16 i remember watching some classmates download grindr because they heard that loads of men send dick pics on there. cue a bunch of 16 year old girls screaming and laughing at dick pics, at like 8.30am before registration.

    without doxxing myself, it was a very prestigious school with incredible test results and a handful of famous people attended.

    however, the various drug related incidents were often swept under the rug, and one of my classmates was “politely asked to leave” at the end of year 7 because she was such a cunt to the teachers, and no one liked her. she was the kind of girl who turned up to a scouts style school trip in white designer leggings and proceeded to scream about how she can’t do anything 😬😬 6 months later we all saw a video of her beating the shit out of another student at her new mixed sex grammar school school, and i know she ended up failing her GCSEs.

    TLDR – anyone who’s gonna fail doesn’t stay at those schools, and any bs is swept under the rug.

    my mom taught at a private boy’s school and they’d expel students left and right too, but they focused more on expelling students for bullying, harassment, rape, etc, than they did for expelling students over grades. hence the school’s results were slightly lower, despite overall being a more solid learning environment.

16. I think we all know from experience that the single biggest distraction at high school is the opposite sex. How can you concentrate on maths when you’ve just discovered woman?

17. It’s less of a biological issue and more of a school/management issue.

18. Something of the sort was known at least as far back as 1974 when I started teaching.

    It seems that boys do better in mixed schools and girls do better in all girls schools. This makes things… interesting. Some consider it’s an argument for mixed schools but single-sex classes in some, or all, subjects.

    Various reasons have been postulated, including those mentioned above. Another is that boys tend to be more pushy in class, offering answers etc. meaning that girls don’t get as involved. That is a teaching issue.