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The debate about the relative merits of single-sex education and co-education continues, as hotly as ever. However, you now have an alternative that can give your child the best start in life – and the best of both worlds!

A significant number of schools are now making the move to adopt what is known as a ‘diamond’ model school. In such schools children are educated in a co-educational environment up to age 11 (i.e. united at the base of the diamond). They then transfer to a Boys’ Division or Girls’ Division, where they are taught in single-sex classes (i.e. the separate side points of the diamond) until the end of GCSEs. In sixth form, boys and girls progress to a co-educational sixth form (i.e. the single top point of the diamond). In this way, families enjoy the practical and social benefits of a continuous education on a single campus, with the optimal combination of coeducation and single-sex classes.

The diamond model has a distinctive educational philosophy underpinning it. Those governors and heads who have chosen to adopt this gender-based structure have done so for particular reasons that have the personal development of each child as the top priority. The vast majority of single-sex schools that have gone coeducational in the last 20 years have typically done so for two main reasons. First, the move may have been to address falling pupil numbers or to increase their market share, usually for economic reasons. Second, the reason may have been motivated by resultsdriven pressures following the advent of league tables in the early 1990s, with the hard evidence this supplied that girls’ schools produced superior academic results in comparison overall to boys’ schools. It is notable that most girls’ schools have resolutely remained single-sex and continue to dominate league tables.

Many traditional boys-only schools quickly discovered a new ‘mission’ to educate girls, and a conviction that co-education was truly the best way forward. On the whole, those boys’ schools that are now co-educational are performing better academically and, on one level, the move they made was prudent. However, having spent my early career teaching in a number of girls’ schools, I am well aware that many girls were short-changed by a move to schools that, while purporting to be co-educational, were still described by many staff as a boys’ school even after a decade of admitting girls! There emerged a certain conundrum: girls seemed to perform better academically in girls-only schools, while boys appeared to benefit more from co-education. Or, as one parent put it to me, ‘I want my daughter educated in a girls’ school but my son educated in a school with other people’s daughters!’

It is the diamond model school that presents a practical and innovative solution to this. Up until age 11, most parents and children are happy for boys and girls to be educated together in classes, and there does not appear to be any overriding advantage with educating them separately. The remaining single-sex preparatory schools that continue to run successfully do provide a valuable diversity of choice, but there is no demand for an increase in such schools from parents. However, as young people enter adolescence, very different factors come into play.

While girls’ schools often focus on the academic arguments in favour of single-sex senior education, I believe the main benefits derive from the ability of these schools to tailor their pastoral and academic provision more sensitively and expertly to the needs of adolescent girls (i.e. when boys and girls are developing at significantly different rates and in different ways). The advantages of single-sex education at this stage are primarily in relation to the distinctive, gender-specific support they can give to young people going through the physical, emotional, hormonal and social upheaval of adolescence. Girls who are generally entering a challenging stage of development from Year 7 are helped by being in classes and common rooms where their peers are experiencing similar changes and issues. In the same way, boys benefit from an educational system that recognises their needs and can respond effectively because the pastoral and academic structures are designed for them. Where girls and boys are taught separately, positive peer influence can replace negative peer pressure.

There are distinctive academic advantages, too. In terms of the curriculum, when, for example, girls go to lessons in physics, mathematics or technology, or boys go to lesson in music, cookery or modern languages, everyone experiences the subjects as genderneutral, because the classes are single-sex. In an ideal diamond model structure, the curriculum provided for the Boys’ and Girls’ Divisions (11–16) is near identical, so no gender stereotypes are communicated to the students. Since boys and girls often have quite different learning styles and behaviours in lessons, if taught together there is a risk that, for example, boys might be seen as disruptive or less able when in fact the activity chosen is not best suited to their attention span or energy levels. Comparing girls and boys in the same classes at this stage of their development can result in labelling students unfairly. The students, too, can feel immense peer pressure by having to perform in mixed classes. One excellent illustration of this came from a parent recently, who wanted to move her son to the Boys’ Division of a diamond school because his co-educational preparatory school had only three boys in the top set. His friends were teasing him for being in the ‘girls’ set’ and, unable to cope with the ongoing taunts, he had stopped working until his standard had deteriorated sufficiently for him to move to a class with other boys.

Up until the end of GCSEs, the diamond model senior school provides the opportunity to combine the academic benefits of singlesex education with the social advantages of co-education. Around the campus, at lunch and in extra-curricular activities, boys and girls will mix and make friends. This provides a balanced, all-round education, and the practical benefits that sons and daughters can be educated on the same campus, with the same term dates.

If school is to be a sound preparation for adult life, then young people need to learn at some stage how to work with and relate to members of the opposite sex. Therefore, while gender issues still need to be taken into account at sixth form level, most students in this older age group will gain in the long term from a curriculum that is fully co-educational. The diamond model provides this mixed environment to help the transition to adulthood. The particular emphasis on pastoral care remains, so that students mature educationally, emotionally and socially before embarking on the independence of university life and future careers.

While views are divided on the single-sex and co-education debate, it is interesting to note that parents and students do not tend to see any significant disadvantages of a diamond model school. Students overwhelmingly comment that they enjoy being part of a Boys’ or Girls’ Division, especially since they can still make friends with students of both genders. When children are happy, they learn better. Therefore a diamond model school really does give the best of both worlds.

Other heads have commented that they would change to a diamond model if they could. Most have been convinced by the benefits, but few are bold enough to make the change, or else it is not practical in their particular context. I know of one comprehensive school that had struggled to raise standards in a region that has some of the best maintained grammar schools in the country. This school then adopted the diamond model and subsequently experienced a dramatic increase in the academic performance of both genders, particularly boys. The school is now oversubscribed, with excellent inspection reports.

My personal experience has been of leading the country’s oldest Catholic girls’ school, New Hall School, Chelmsford, into a diamond model. Founded in 1642 as a traditional boarding school, this was a major strategic development. The move in 2005 was pioneering for a school of this type, and New Hall was the first Catholic independent girls’ school to adopt this new educational approach. As a teacher with nearly 20 years in girls’ independent schools, as well as four young daughters, I was perhaps an unlikely principal to set up a boys’ senior school! However, by listening carefully to the needs of parents and young people, I became certain that this model was the right way to go.

Over the past seven years, the school roll at New Hall has grown from 580 students to 1,000 today. Despite some dire warnings, and a lengthy governor risk assessment prior to the announcement that we were opening a boys’ school on campus, only one family left the school as a result of the change. Applications from girls at 11+ and 13+ are up by 20%. Applications from boys have been overwhelming and now even outnumber those from girls; I have just finished assessing 180 applications for 16+ entry for 25 places for boys! The early fears that boys would not want to join a girls’ school proved unfounded. In fact, I have discovered that boys gain greatly from the traditional strengths of a girls’ school, namely a clear academic focus and emphasis on pastoral care, good conduct, discipline and what in the corporate world are called ‘softer’ skills. Many boys tell me that they are happy for the first time at school because, at New Hall, bullying, fighting and related aggression is not acceptable to the ethos. I have been struck by how many distressing accounts I have heard from boys who have had to endure the fear of bullies in school environments where this not taken seriously because of an attitude that this is ‘inevitable’ or ‘normal’ for boys. The reality is that boys enjoy a friendly, nurturing and safe school environment as much as girls.

Parents often ask me in what way the school has changed since taking senior boys. All the major changes have been positive. The enormous energy and emphasis on team sports that came with the arrival of the boys has transformed the sporting life of the school. Girls quickly became jealous of the comradeship, team spirit, and regional and national success of the boys in rugby, cricket and tennis. The result has been the meteoric rise of girls’ sports team, with regional and national successes in a range of sports such as hockey, swimming, athletics and riding. In other areas, too, girls have become more competitive, without this changing the overall community ethos of the school.

I have always believed that schools should seek to provide key facilities at the earliest date after a need is identified, since the students will pass that way only once and we want to maximise their opportunities. I interview every student on entry to the school and one question I ask is about their favourite subjects. On starting to recruit boys, a new issue arose when I asked this question. While in all my years of interviewing no girl had mentioned technology as a favourite, this came up in the top three of almost half the boys I interviewed. Our response was to build a £1 million technology centre for teaching resistant materials, graphic design and cookery, a facility that was opened 12 months later. And, yes, these subjects are equally available to, and enjoyed by, girls!

A number of other new facilities were also provided, with the opening of two boarding houses for boys, a fitness suite and changing rooms, a new classroom block, extra common rooms, extensive sports pitches, cricket wickets and indoor cricket facilities, and additional computer suites.

We found that boarding is more popular for boys than girls, with most boys at least flexi-boarding, and the vast majority boarding on Friday nights prior to taking part in Saturday-morning sports training and fixtures. As a result, a decision to open the first boarding house for boys in 2006 (when we could only be sure at the time of one boy boarder) produced so many applications that we have filled two houses and are now expanding the capacity of both of these to accommodate the demand for boarding places. Perhaps parents are keen for their sons to learn the social and organisation skills that boarding requires!

Yes, there have been a few new challenges. Boys wear out uniform and equipment far quicker than girls. They are also noisier. And, I notice, collectively heavier. They jump about more. How do I know this? Their common room is above my office. It took precisely six weeks for them to cause an area of the ceiling of my office to collapse in a pile of rubble, having survived intact since the 1920s, including the bombing of New Hall in the Second World War! (I hasten to add that the ceiling is now carefully repaired and reinforced – and that our inspection reports ranked New Hall in the highest category of ‘excellent’ for Health & Safety.)

Academic standards have continued to go from strength to strength with the new diamond model at New Hall. Our first coeducational sixth form achieved the school’s highest ever academic results at A-level in 2008: 78% of grades were at A–B and there was a 100% success rate overall. A remarkable 81 modules, in a wide range of subjects, were awarded a perfect 100% score. Our top performer overall was a boy, whose five As and one B won him his place at Churchill College, Cambridge, to read Natural Sciences. Of the eight top performers at A-level, who all achieved at least three, four or five A grades at A-level, four were boys and four were girls.

It is often said that there is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to schools. The UK system has a wide diversity of schools and the emerging diamond schools are a welcome addition to parental choice. But I would commend taking a close look at any diamond model school in your area, or one of the half a dozen independent boarding schools nationally that have this model. You will discover a new educational model with distinct advantages that may just suit your child best.