This is good and amazing news for girls and more can be done.
However.
You actively neglect your boys.
Set out to demonise them.
Call all their activities toxic.
Call them privileged because of skin tone.
Remove all support networks.
Decry when they need mental heath support.
Place then as the enemy to humanity.
This tells me we need better mixed schools, not more girl only schools.
Is this controlled for income and whether these schools are selective or not?
As much as I don’t think it’s good for boys, I can see why parents of girls send them to girl only schools. I probably would if push came to shove.
While boys are neglected and we constantly push the narrative of girls not being provided equal education, lacking opportunity and boys being privileged whilst majority of further education students are women and that trend continues to further divide the degree to which boys are being supported in school.
Haha rubbish! I went to an all girls school (not my choice) and there was no mental health support whatsoever. If anything you got judged for the slightest mental health issues
There are so many variables at play it’s super hard to nail down any one to success.
Boys underperform in schools. We suspect this is due to maturing later. It’s also likely that they do better with girls around them to temper their worst excesses.
It’s also true girls do better socially when boys are around that tends to temper the worst excesses of bullying that single sex environments produce.
I’ve met girls at uni that went ti single sex schools and they were poorly adjusted for dealing with men, just as boys from eton are poorly adjusted for boys.
It’s a tricky one. The best schools on earth are Finnish and they are all mixed.
I’d extremely careful as a parent just assuming my daughter is better off at a single sex school. I suspect it actually comes down to a range of factors like personality type, intelligence etc
The town I grew up in has a highly ranked boys school, a highly ranked girls school and a typically middling/under performing mixed school.
I went to the all boys school, I got great grades and went off to get a law degree. On the other hand, I was about 25 before I was able to exchange more than a one sentence conversation with a girl without being totally overcome by anxiety, and ten years later I’ve still only had one proper girlfriend… I’m no longer conpletelly incapable socially, and I’ve never been inclined towards incelly mentality, but I hold very firmly to the belief that segregated schools are breeding grounds for that kind of thing, and they set up kids who are naturally introverted to spend years as adults developing social skills other kids pick up naturally as teenagers.
Life isn’t segregated, segregated schools set kids to succeed academically and fail at everything that’s actually important.
And yes, I did just go off on a rant without even reading the article, because that’s the kind of behaviour you should expect from people that went to segregated schools.
Maybe but I know a few girls that went to all girls schools and I’d never send my child to one. Every single girl I know who went to one or parents I know who’s daughters went to one had to tackle eating disorders. And the bullying was rife. Plus boys and girls only schools just seem archaic, surely a vital part of being a teen is learning to interact with both sexes like you’ll have to when you get a job.
I wish I’d gone to an all girls school – all my female friends were studious and kind. My male friends, not so much…
I’m honestly not that surprised.
Mixed schools inadvertently cause subject segregation. In them, there tends to be less girls studying physics, chemistry and higher maths. It’s intimidating to be one of only 3-4 girls in a class. That doesn’t happen in a single sex school.
Men still looking for that privelidge and wondering when the patriarchy will start to benefit them.
Just purely anecdotal, but something I noticed going from an all girls school to a mixed college was how much more at ease my friends and I were with not wearing makeup and our appearance in general. We also seemed to have less embarrassment about things like periods and I noticed that girls from mixed sex schools seemed to give up sports and PE a lot earlier than girls from single sex schools. When I went to uni I found the same thing, from up and down the country this seemed to follow the same pattern.
Went to an all girls state school and very glad I did so. Looking back, it gave me the confidence that I could tackle anything because it always discussed women’s roles in history, medicine, religion, you name it. No issues with talking about periods and much less self consciousness about dumb stuff like pulling up your tights in public or having bra straps visible. There was much more safety and a willingness to try and put yourself out there, which led to a really driven cohort, plus fellow weirdos were able to find each other.
On the flipside, the bullying was much more psychological (but hey, at least you didn’t have to worry so much about sexual assault), and I had a tough time with that at the beginning as my primary school bully ended up in my form. I definitely think we didn’t get enough mental health support either, but it was the 2000s and things were Not Great then. I’m certain there was a TONNE of undiagnosed ADHD (like me) or autism, but things are definitely changing now.
I work in a high achieving comprehensive girls school. My take on this is girls are just nicer to teach, this leads to better teachers applying for the job and much better staff retention when many schools struggle to retain staff.
Not being harassed by male students certainly help
The elephant in the room is that (especially white) poorer boys aren’t always encouraged to work hard in school by their parents the way girls are. It’s not coming from the teachers; it’s coming from the parents and the adults in the community. In some cases *even if* the teachers are supportive it doesn’t make much of an inroad, because the teachers are mostly women and the kids have already learned they don’t need to listen to women.
I understand peoples concerns about social development in single sex schools.
However I have plenty of friends who went to these schools and they’re fine. The key is to not let school be the only place they interact with peers. Mixed after school activities and friendships with kids in their local areas is enough to make them well adjusted.
Conversely, sexual harassment and assault in schools takes place on a massive scale. I personally faced this in school and it made me incredibly anxious around boys for years. Had I attended a single sex school that almost certainly wouldn’t have happened and I would have had a better relationship with boys in my teens
The first thing I thought when I read the headline was “no shit they have better mental health support”.
To start, single sex schools are usually private schools made of smaller classes and therefore are already better experiences compared to public mixed-schools.
Second, boys/men generally get the short end of the stick when it comes to mental health anyway. Maybe if we give boys better mental health support than “man up and suck it up”, and stop actively trying to stop boys from expressing their emotions and telling them their feelings are irrelevant or wrong, then this will start to line up more evenly.
When I was about 16 I was invited to a taster day at the all-girls college at Cambridge university. I was the only girl there who had gone to a state school and the only person from a mixed-sex school. All the other girls there were so lovely, polite, intelligent, and I guess *ladylike.* I honestly felt like I’d met my tribe too late and I wished I could have gone to school with these girls.
​
This will sound reductive but in my experience girls always act differently when they are in a group of just girls compared to when there is a boy/boys around. They become much more catty when guys are around. I think going to a mixed school meant that I put being liked by boys above academic success.
​
That’s why I want to send my daughter to an all girls school, whether private or grammar or state, I think she will come out of it more confident, with better grades, and more like the girls I met at Cambridge.
All girls schools are generally private or grammar schools. The former has 3x as much spending per head vs state schools.
So yeah, I think it’s more about affluence than ‘girls vs boys’.
I mean, it makes sense, Our current school system is set up in a way that girls fit into more, wheras boys constantly chafe against the system instead of working with it
So this can be looked at once of two ways, either mixed gender schools are failing girls because those rowdy boys keep distracting or discouraging them
Or schools in general are failing boys because boys tend not to fit in with a system that expects you to sit in a chair and listen to people waffle for hours a day.
This feels very much judging a fish on it’s ability to climb a tree, the school system works *better* for girls as they tend to be calmer.
So is it the entire Male gender that is at fault? or is it perhaps the way we teach the problem?
Perhaps because many single sex schools are private and as such have better funding for student mental health services and better educational resources
I would 100% send my daughter to an all girls school but there isn’t one in my area. The list of problems my daughter has come home with due to boys is endless
“Looks like the boys aren’t doing as well this year.”
“Better chuck them overboard then. Can’t have them sullying our Ofsted rating.”
Speaking of my younger years, boys were left to their own devices, and it was a sink or swim mentality.
Majority of school teachers are female, so they also lack a role model in school
majority of teachers are women. So girls do better in school. That simple. Bias. But no one dares speak it.
We already know that girls are objectively given higher marks for the same work submitted, and you can show this by just changing the name on the front of the exam. It doesn’t surprise me at all that you can apply this effect to a whole school.
Genuinely, the way some of these *very highly upvoted* comments talk about young boys is disgusting… Guess we’re not past the “dont judge people for immutable characteristics” phase just yet, or is it okay because theyre male?
29 comments
This is good and amazing news for girls and more can be done.
However.
You actively neglect your boys.
Set out to demonise them.
Call all their activities toxic.
Call them privileged because of skin tone.
Remove all support networks.
Decry when they need mental heath support.
Place then as the enemy to humanity.
This tells me we need better mixed schools, not more girl only schools.
Is this controlled for income and whether these schools are selective or not?
As much as I don’t think it’s good for boys, I can see why parents of girls send them to girl only schools. I probably would if push came to shove.
While boys are neglected and we constantly push the narrative of girls not being provided equal education, lacking opportunity and boys being privileged whilst majority of further education students are women and that trend continues to further divide the degree to which boys are being supported in school.
Haha rubbish! I went to an all girls school (not my choice) and there was no mental health support whatsoever. If anything you got judged for the slightest mental health issues
There are so many variables at play it’s super hard to nail down any one to success.
Boys underperform in schools. We suspect this is due to maturing later. It’s also likely that they do better with girls around them to temper their worst excesses.
It’s also true girls do better socially when boys are around that tends to temper the worst excesses of bullying that single sex environments produce.
I’ve met girls at uni that went ti single sex schools and they were poorly adjusted for dealing with men, just as boys from eton are poorly adjusted for boys.
It’s a tricky one. The best schools on earth are Finnish and they are all mixed.
I’d extremely careful as a parent just assuming my daughter is better off at a single sex school. I suspect it actually comes down to a range of factors like personality type, intelligence etc
The town I grew up in has a highly ranked boys school, a highly ranked girls school and a typically middling/under performing mixed school.
I went to the all boys school, I got great grades and went off to get a law degree. On the other hand, I was about 25 before I was able to exchange more than a one sentence conversation with a girl without being totally overcome by anxiety, and ten years later I’ve still only had one proper girlfriend… I’m no longer conpletelly incapable socially, and I’ve never been inclined towards incelly mentality, but I hold very firmly to the belief that segregated schools are breeding grounds for that kind of thing, and they set up kids who are naturally introverted to spend years as adults developing social skills other kids pick up naturally as teenagers.
Life isn’t segregated, segregated schools set kids to succeed academically and fail at everything that’s actually important.
And yes, I did just go off on a rant without even reading the article, because that’s the kind of behaviour you should expect from people that went to segregated schools.
Maybe but I know a few girls that went to all girls schools and I’d never send my child to one. Every single girl I know who went to one or parents I know who’s daughters went to one had to tackle eating disorders. And the bullying was rife. Plus boys and girls only schools just seem archaic, surely a vital part of being a teen is learning to interact with both sexes like you’ll have to when you get a job.
I wish I’d gone to an all girls school – all my female friends were studious and kind. My male friends, not so much…
I’m honestly not that surprised.
Mixed schools inadvertently cause subject segregation. In them, there tends to be less girls studying physics, chemistry and higher maths. It’s intimidating to be one of only 3-4 girls in a class. That doesn’t happen in a single sex school.
Men still looking for that privelidge and wondering when the patriarchy will start to benefit them.
Just purely anecdotal, but something I noticed going from an all girls school to a mixed college was how much more at ease my friends and I were with not wearing makeup and our appearance in general. We also seemed to have less embarrassment about things like periods and I noticed that girls from mixed sex schools seemed to give up sports and PE a lot earlier than girls from single sex schools. When I went to uni I found the same thing, from up and down the country this seemed to follow the same pattern.
Went to an all girls state school and very glad I did so. Looking back, it gave me the confidence that I could tackle anything because it always discussed women’s roles in history, medicine, religion, you name it. No issues with talking about periods and much less self consciousness about dumb stuff like pulling up your tights in public or having bra straps visible. There was much more safety and a willingness to try and put yourself out there, which led to a really driven cohort, plus fellow weirdos were able to find each other.
On the flipside, the bullying was much more psychological (but hey, at least you didn’t have to worry so much about sexual assault), and I had a tough time with that at the beginning as my primary school bully ended up in my form. I definitely think we didn’t get enough mental health support either, but it was the 2000s and things were Not Great then. I’m certain there was a TONNE of undiagnosed ADHD (like me) or autism, but things are definitely changing now.
I work in a high achieving comprehensive girls school. My take on this is girls are just nicer to teach, this leads to better teachers applying for the job and much better staff retention when many schools struggle to retain staff.
Not being harassed by male students certainly help
The elephant in the room is that (especially white) poorer boys aren’t always encouraged to work hard in school by their parents the way girls are. It’s not coming from the teachers; it’s coming from the parents and the adults in the community. In some cases *even if* the teachers are supportive it doesn’t make much of an inroad, because the teachers are mostly women and the kids have already learned they don’t need to listen to women.
I understand peoples concerns about social development in single sex schools.
However I have plenty of friends who went to these schools and they’re fine. The key is to not let school be the only place they interact with peers. Mixed after school activities and friendships with kids in their local areas is enough to make them well adjusted.
Conversely, sexual harassment and assault in schools takes place on a massive scale. I personally faced this in school and it made me incredibly anxious around boys for years. Had I attended a single sex school that almost certainly wouldn’t have happened and I would have had a better relationship with boys in my teens
The first thing I thought when I read the headline was “no shit they have better mental health support”.
To start, single sex schools are usually private schools made of smaller classes and therefore are already better experiences compared to public mixed-schools.
Second, boys/men generally get the short end of the stick when it comes to mental health anyway. Maybe if we give boys better mental health support than “man up and suck it up”, and stop actively trying to stop boys from expressing their emotions and telling them their feelings are irrelevant or wrong, then this will start to line up more evenly.
When I was about 16 I was invited to a taster day at the all-girls college at Cambridge university. I was the only girl there who had gone to a state school and the only person from a mixed-sex school. All the other girls there were so lovely, polite, intelligent, and I guess *ladylike.* I honestly felt like I’d met my tribe too late and I wished I could have gone to school with these girls.
​
This will sound reductive but in my experience girls always act differently when they are in a group of just girls compared to when there is a boy/boys around. They become much more catty when guys are around. I think going to a mixed school meant that I put being liked by boys above academic success.
​
That’s why I want to send my daughter to an all girls school, whether private or grammar or state, I think she will come out of it more confident, with better grades, and more like the girls I met at Cambridge.
All girls schools are generally private or grammar schools. The former has 3x as much spending per head vs state schools.
So yeah, I think it’s more about affluence than ‘girls vs boys’.
I mean, it makes sense, Our current school system is set up in a way that girls fit into more, wheras boys constantly chafe against the system instead of working with it
So this can be looked at once of two ways, either mixed gender schools are failing girls because those rowdy boys keep distracting or discouraging them
Or schools in general are failing boys because boys tend not to fit in with a system that expects you to sit in a chair and listen to people waffle for hours a day.
This feels very much judging a fish on it’s ability to climb a tree, the school system works *better* for girls as they tend to be calmer.
So is it the entire Male gender that is at fault? or is it perhaps the way we teach the problem?
Perhaps because many single sex schools are private and as such have better funding for student mental health services and better educational resources
I would 100% send my daughter to an all girls school but there isn’t one in my area. The list of problems my daughter has come home with due to boys is endless
“Looks like the boys aren’t doing as well this year.”
“Better chuck them overboard then. Can’t have them sullying our Ofsted rating.”
Speaking of my younger years, boys were left to their own devices, and it was a sink or swim mentality.
Majority of school teachers are female, so they also lack a role model in school
majority of teachers are women. So girls do better in school. That simple. Bias. But no one dares speak it.
We already know that girls are objectively given higher marks for the same work submitted, and you can show this by just changing the name on the front of the exam. It doesn’t surprise me at all that you can apply this effect to a whole school.
Genuinely, the way some of these *very highly upvoted* comments talk about young boys is disgusting… Guess we’re not past the “dont judge people for immutable characteristics” phase just yet, or is it okay because theyre male?