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The Education of Service Children - the boarding option - Introduction
Service Children's Education (SCE)
CEAS
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Single-sex or co-Education? The pros and cons
Girls’schools: what are the benefits?
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• Girls’ schools dominate the top of the examination league tables.
• Boys and girls mature at different rates – they learn in different ways.
• Boys and girls are less self-conscious if educated in single-sex schools. Boys are more likely to participate in activities that might otherwise embarrass them. There are greater opportunities for boys to express themselves artistically, and boys can follow a diverse range of interests and talents in the artistic sphere of such pursuits as music and drama.
• Boys and girls can be overly aware of their appearance when they are adolescents. This pressure is reduced in a single-sex environment.
• Girls can benefit from being in schools that recognise these differences and can provide an education geared specifically to their needs.
• The girls of today will be tomorrow’s leaders, there should be no limitation on promoting these ambitions, either professionally or personally, while at school.
• Women are expected to balance many roles during their lives, and their paths to future success will require leadership, confidence, independence, integrity and an instinct to achieve. • The girls’ school of the twenty-first century can offer a modern, relevant, exciting and challenging environment.
• Girls’ schools prepare girls for the complex and rapidly changing world they will face. Parents want their girls to feel confident and comfortable about who they are.
• Girls’ schools don’t just offer equal opportunities but every opportunity.
• All single-sex schools arrange plenty of joint activities with brother and other boys’ schools, covering curricular, extra-curricular and social links. Also, many are based in towns or cities rather than the country, so that in a variety of ways the girls have regular contact with boys – their lifestyle, therefore, is a natural and normal one.
Boys’ schools: what are the benefits?
• The best exam results tend to come from single-sex schools.
• Boys approach their learning in a different way to girls and are therefore best taught separately. Research shows that boys and girls react quite differently to classroom discipline, long-term coursework assignments and examinations.
• There is less gender stereotyping. In co-educational schools boys are much less likely to opt for subjects that are traditional strengths of girls, such as English and French, and girls are less likely to opt for physics or chemistry.
• Boys are often short on self-confidence during teenage years and worry about their ability to cope with conflicting pressures. They respond well to direct teaching to work on short-term objectives and explicit guidelines.
• Some teenage boys feel that they cannot outperform girls in some subjects and this fear of perceived failure has a negative effect on their self-esteem.
• Boys and girls are less self-conscious if educated in single-sex schools. Boys are more likely to participate in activities that might otherwise embarrass them. There are greater opportunities for boys to express themselves artistically, and boys can follow a diverse range of interests and talents in the artistic sphere of such pursuits as music and drama.
• Boys and girls can be overly aware of their appearance when they are adolescents. This pressure is reduced in a single-sex environment.
• Starting at the adolescence stage, the girlfriend/boyfriend factor can become more than just a minor distraction, and can be detrimental to academic progress.
• The ‘laddish’ or ‘macho’ culture, now promoted through teenage magazines and other sources, has become an increasingly adverse influence on boys. Central to this culture is a rebellious, antilearning attitude, which means it is simply ‘not cool’ to show a real interest in academic work. This macho culture seems to be more in evidence in co-educational schools: without the girls, the boys seem far less likely to succumb.
• Team sport is usually stronger in single-sex schools.
• All single-sex schools arrange plenty of joint activities with sister and other girls’ schools, covering curricular, extra-curricular and social links. Also, many are based in towns or cities rather than the country, so that in a variety of ways the boys have regular contact with girls – their lifestyle, therefore, is a natural and normal one.
Co-education: what are the benefits?
• Boys and girls learn to mix easily socially with each other. Pastoral care as well as spiritual life are strengthened by co-education.
• Both girls and boys should be able to benefit from the high quality of teaching, excellent resources, strong pastoral care and extracurricular programmes schools can offer
• The intellectual and cultural life is far richer, and the sporting and the social dimensions have broadened dynamically. Art, drama, music and debating in particular can benefit from the mix.
• Co-educational schools can take brothers and sisters.
• In the co-educational classroom there are more different academic strengths and weaknesses, and a wider variety of approaches to academic challenges. Less stereotyping develops.
• Career opportunities can widen.
• Boys’ and girls’ strengths are in many respects different from each other, but they need to be given the same opportunities and horizons.
• Co-education provides a better preparation for a co-ed world .
• Men and women, boys and girls, must work side by side throughout their lives.
• A school’s major commission is to prepare young people for becoming the adults, parents, employees and leaders of the next generation.
• Co-education presents itself as more ‘balanced’ and, often, less narrowly focused on academic results to the exclusion, or minimisation, of all else.
