The number of single-sex schools is rapidly declining, with 83-87% of the schools in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales being co-educational. This number is increasing, but is it really a bad thing?
The times are changing, and single-sex schools are no longer in demand. Like Sia Goutzas, a teacher and mother in Sydney say, “single-sex education may have made sense when men became workers and women wives, but those days are over.”. And we must say, this statement does have truth in it. Many single-sex schools have recently been converting to co-educational, now that single-sex schooling is not as popular, leading to schools receiving less funding.
Although the stats do show that single-sex schools tend to have higher academic ratings, especially girl’s schools, recent studies show that results coming from these single-sex schools have more to do with the student’s advantaged background than the gender mix. On top of that, influences such as teaching quality and a school’s culture have more of an effect on academic results than the inclusion of both genders. Not only is it from an educational aspect, but secluding these genders is shown to have a long term impact on many. Confidence, friendships with the opposite gender, freedom- these elements are crucial parts of schooling lifestyles, yet in single-sex schools, these elements have been very little among many students. After students leave this segregated environment and go out into the wide world, without the proper life skills and ability to work with the opposite gender or even make friends in the workplace could be a struggle for many. The use of these single-sex schools further drifts the gap between the male and female gender, one that has been there for a long time. Many students go on to be nervous or anxious around the opposite gender, resulting in dozens of anxiety issues and illnesses and creating a large fear of the other sex. Dr Terrance Fitzsimmons from the AIBE Center for Gender Inequality at the University of Queensland has held many experiments and studied this topic for a long time. He found that in single-sex schools (especially girl’s) their confidence is stunted much more than children attending school in a co-educational environment, which is an endless cycle. Children graduate with less confidence, have kids, and those children, having those parents as role models, learn the same thing from them which they eventually pass on to their kids.
Children should be taught in an environment that is similar to or mimics real life. Single-sex schools harbour gender stereotyping and large amounts of sexism towards the opposite sex. Single-sex schools are also not mindful of the other genders out there, such as bisexual, transgender, gay, lesbian, etc. These schools foster no care for these people and anyone in these categories attending school in single-gender environments, and students tend to get harassed and bullied on a daily basis, even just discriminated against for being “different”. This again plays a large role in confidence. If students find it hard to stand up for themselves and are not equal to their classmates, they are bound to feel alone and unloved, which eventually decreases their confidence level, making them ashamed or even scared to talk to people. They are laughed at for wearing a slightly different uniform, or doing their hair differently or even talking in a different manner, which puts a large damper on someone’s social skills. In fact, many teachers are not even trained to teach only one sex and use gender-specific teaching techniques. This is a huge disadvantage, especially for teachers of the opposite gender who do not know how to handle or deal with some situations. On top of that, by separating boys and girls, when they come together in real life, they will have no idea how to act. Boys without being around girls for the majority of their time will have never learned the proper manners and right way to talk and the same goes for girls. By still using single-sex schools are we setting our children up for failure? And if we are, what is our society going to look like?
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