Girls’ schools: what are the benefits?

• 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 that 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 21st 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 feeling 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, extracurricular 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 coeducational schools boys are much less likely to opt for subjects that are the 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 their 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, anti-learning 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, extracurricular 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 extra-curricular 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, 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.

   




WHY SEND YOUR DAUGHTER TO A SINGLE-SEX SCHOOL?
- Mrs Jan Scarrow, Head of Badminton School



An English education is valued the worldover and is perhaps still one of the biggest gifts parents can give their children. Parents looking for UK boarding schools have a vast number to choose from and perhaps the first question often asked is whether to plump for co-ed or single sex.




So what do girls’ schools do differently?

Well firstly, they create a safe, risk-taking environment where girls can learn from their mistakes without fear of being put down or dismissed. They provide an environment where there is no shame in working hard or being successful. This enables girls to develop confidence on their own abilities as individuals, and not define themselves by their gender.


Secondly, single sex schools counter mass media influences by freeing girls from the pressure to conform to sexist patterns of behaviour, and providing them with a framework with to judge the image of girls in today’s media. Girls are therefore free to grow up at their own pace.


We at Badminton, support a ‘can-do’ philosophy. Girls here hold all the senior positions in the school: all the scientists are girls, all the mathematicians are girls. There is no subject area or activity of the school in which girls do not excel. This leads undoubtedly to a ‘can-do’ philosophy in this school.


We also recognise the qualities of girls and how they learn. Girls’ schools are expert in recognising the qualities of girls and understanding what makes them tick and how they learn. This knowledge is built up over years of experience of teaching girls.


This experience has led to girls’ schools adopting specific girl-centred learning strategies such as using relevant real-world applications from girls’ lives, teaching in collaborative and co-operative ways, calling pupils by their name and waiting for them to reply before moving onto the next pupil, encouraging risk-taking, exploring mistakes and acknowledging their value, teaching alternative solutions rather than just a single right answer to a given problem, using writing as a means of learning any subject, explaining through stories and lastly helping pupils to see themselves as sources of knowledge.


Perhaps one of the most valued elements of girls’ school for parents is that they celebrate learning without social distractions. Girls’ schools offer an environment in which girls can concentrate on learning without the distraction of boys. Without the presence of boys, girls tend to display their intelligence and curiosity regardless of powerful age-determined notions of popularity, attractiveness or negative peer pressure. However, please be assured that at Badminton, outside the academic curriculum we warmly welcome the presence of boys and go to some lengths to organise mixed school trips, clubs, activities and social events.


Badminton also employs staff who are experts in the teaching of girls and ensure that there is no sex stereotyping of subjects. Girls are more likely to take subjects that are less traditionally popular with girls because subjects don’t acquire a masculine or feminine connotation.


We also, celebrate the female perspective. Girls’ schools celebrate the female perspective and way of doing things, are places where girls are accustomed to being heard and being valued for who they are, irrespective of what they look like or what they wear. The girls’ school environment affirms and encourages young women in their capacities as confident individuals, leaders and agents of social change.


Lastly perhaps, Badminton provides leadership opportunities and models. Girls’ schools are institutions where all the leadership positions in the school are held by girls and where girls can find strong role models amongst the staff, ethos and philosophy of the school. The Headmistress is female, as are five of the six senior managers and although about a third of our staff are male, the other two thirds are female.


So what are the benefits of girls’ schools?

Well, not only do single-sex schools dominate the top of the examination league tables, a girls’ school may also be the right decision for your daughter. You as a parent are really the only person to be able to make that decision, but do look at both single sex and co-ed schools and see the differences.


It is well known that boys and girls mature at different rates. Parents with both sons and daughters know that they learn in different ways. We at Badminton are experts in teaching girls and with the small class sizes that we offer we know that we are able not only to achieve individual potential, but our CAT testing proves that we also surpass it. Girls 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, which is why we believe that there should be no limitations on their ambitions, either professionally or personally. Women are expected to juggle many roles during their lives and their paths to future success will require leadership, confidence, independence, integrity and an instinct to achieve. This is what we provide at Badminton.


So when looking at the options for your children remember that girls’ schools in the twentieth century offer modern, relevant, exciting and challenging learning environments and help young women prepare for the complex and rapidly changing world they will face. Here at Badminton we don’t just offer equal opportunities, but every opportunity.



Mrs Jan Scarrow has been Head of Badminton School since 1997 having been Deputy Head of Stonar School in Wiltshire. She chairs the Girls’ Schools’ Association boarding committee and is a member of the Boarding Schools’ Association Executive Committee

 

 

 

 









WHY GIRLS’ SCHOOLS ROCK
– Dr Helen Wright, Head of St Mary’s, Calne

 

You may recall, a while back, a cartoon that appeared in one of our national newspapers, reflecting on the fact that a daughter of a famous rock star had been excluded from a girls’ school. The cartoon showed an old-fashioned staffroom, with dusty book-lined walls, rather uninspiring tables with more faded books on them in the background, and two rather old spinster teachers in the foreground, with twin set tweed and pearls, leaning on their walking sticks. The part we were meant to laugh at was that – underneath their cardigans - these two formidable ladies were wearing rockers’ T-shirts, and the caption was “Does this mean he won’t be coming to parents’ meetings any more, then?”


We did of course laugh, but in fact this cartoon was really rather disappointing for its underlying expectations of what life in a girls’ school is all about, and the notion that in no way whatsoever do people expect that girls’ schools will ever actually ‘rock’...


Prejudices about girls’ schools abound: that the atmosphere is stultified and oldfashioned and that girls in a girls’ school are perpetually unkind to one another. As parents, our ideas about schools are often heavily influenced by vaguely remembered impressions of a quarter of a century ago, and it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that girls who go to girls’ schools emerge timid, unable to say boo to a goose (let alone a boy!), and that somehow girls from girls’ schools are less well prepared for life than girls from co-educational schools.


Nothing could be further from the truth! St Mary’s Calne, in common with all the girls’ boarding schools I know, is a warm, vibrant, happening place – where, incidentally, we recently played host to an up and coming rock band. It is a place where the girls are extraordinarily supportive and kind to one another; where they learn to live with one another, respect and value one another (a particularly strong feature of boarding); where they lead nourishing lives in all respects; where there is healthy competition; and where, above all, girls learn who they are, where they learn to be, and learn what they can be in life.


Teenage years are very formative years, where our children are still learning to be adults, and they need to be able to do this in a place where they can grow free of inhibition, and with an incredible breadth of opportunity – a place where anything and everything is possible. The girls do not lack a social life – far from it – and nor do they lack contacts with boys, both academic and social; what they gain from being at an all-girls’ school, however, is the best preparation for life that they could ever imagine: a grounded sense of themselves and of their potential to do, and to be, whatever they would like to be in the world that awaits them.


Girls’ schools are far from being an outdated concept – in fact, they have evolved into a very modern concept, providing a relevant and stimulating learning environment, and a strong space for girls to learn to understand themselves and the roles they will have the opportunity to play in society. Girls’ schools celebrate girls and young women, and in a very real way, let them just learn to be themselves, to be the very best they can be, and to realise the outstanding personal potential that they have.


There are many arguments for sending your daughter to a girls’ school, from the academic (the exam results and the classroom experience) to the social (the career opportunities and career models), and these are listed comprehensively elsewhere in this issue; far and away the most powerful, however, is the personal argument – what a girls’ school will do for your daughter. A girls’ school – and a girls’ boarding school in particular – will give her the opportunity to discover who she really is, and will prepare her to be whatever she chooses to be in life.


This, of course, is the real ‘rock’ in girls’ schools – the rock of self-belief that we give them, to be able to go out into the world and to like themselves. Girls will have many roles to play in life - in careers, leisure, relationships and family - and we want them to be able to embrace them all, and to be happy and successful in them all.


The girls of today are the women of tomorrow - they should experience no limitations as they pursue their goals.
Girls’ schools give our daughters the opportunities to explore these roles and to work out who they are – and they are fantastic, amazing places to work and be. Girls’ schools rock – and so do the young women we help create.


Dr Helen Wright has been Head of St Mary’s, Calne since 2003. Having taught at St Edward’s, Oxford as Head of German and Deputy Housemistress she was then appointed to Heathfield, Ascot, first as Deputy Head and then, when she was just 30, as Headmistress which made her the youngest Head in the GSA. She completed an MA in Applied Linguistics in 1998 and a Doctorate in Education on understanding moral leadership in schools, during her first year at St Mary’s, Calne.





BOYS ONLY
– Dr Ralph Townsend,Headmaster of Winchester College


To the best of my knowledge, Winchester College is the only boys’ school to have conducted a public consultation among all its constituents on the question of whether or not it should admit girls. One might have thought, in the case of a school that has educated boys (only) since 1382, that the overwhelming view would be to maintain the status quo, but that turned out in fact not to be the case, and so we had a genuine debate and a real choice to make.


There is (as yet at least) no conclusive research as to whether or not boys and girls learn better separately or together. In the end, we decided to stick to boys only, but not for reactionary reasons. One reason was that there are very few of boys-only full boarding schools left, and so there was an incentive to maintain a market choice. But more substantive reasons were that:


• Winchester has been educating boys for a very long time and we have built up a great reservoir of know-how about how to bring the best out of boys, especially those of an intellectual cast of mind. In treading their own path through the adolescent maze, the presence of girls can cause boys to hide their vulnerability and innocence, both of which are qualities to be respected and appreciated.


• The work of developing cultural sensitivity and confidence in adolescent boys (who retreat easily into macho postures in the face of feminine articulacy) requires careful handling: we want them playing the violins as well as the trombones!


• Given the right circumstances, boys like to take intellectual risks. They will chance their arm for the original idea, but not easily if girls are there to (unintentionally) inhibit or embarrass them!


• Some boys, at least, need time and space to develop away from the pressure to measure up to the conventions of “social adequacy” perpetrated by jiggling hormones. You can’t do everything at once, and not every kind of adequacy has to be achieved by the age of eighteen! With imagination and organisation, it is possible to ensure that meeting girls and engaging with them intellectually and socially is a regular part of life in a boys’ boarding school. For these reasons and more, we continue to believe that there is a legitimate place for the boys-only model, perhaps not for all, but certainly for some.

 


Dr Ralph Townsend became Headmaster of Winchester College in 2005. He was previously Headmaster of Oundle School and before that Headmaster of Sydney Grammar School. He has taught in the Theology Faculty at Oxford and held teaching appointments at Dover College, Abingdon School and Eton. He has written books, articles and reviews and is a governor of a number of schools. He is an Honorary Liveryman of the Grocers' Company.






SINGLE-SEX BOYS’ EDUCATION
- Ian Jones, the Editor, re-examines the case


 

I have always been a strong advocate of single sex education and to prove the point both my sons attended boys’ boarding and day schools. Consequently I have been able to observe some of the changes of the past few decades. Initially we saw some traditional single sex boys’ schools, mainly in rural locations, open up their sixth forms to girls mainly to offer girls subjects on the science side and to top up their numbers. This move was not popular with the girls’ schools, but despite their sometimes fierce opposition the numbers of coeducational sixth forms steadily increased. In 1997 there were 174 all-boy HMC schools and 200 all-girl GSA schools, in 2007 there were 133 all-boy ISC schools and 185 all-girl ISC schools. In short more boys’ schools had changed over the decade. So what now is the case for the single sex boys’ school?


Most of the remaining boys’ boarding schools are large, many near or in large towns allowing a day-boy intake, and most strongly traditional – Winchester, Warwick, Tonbridge, Oratory, Monmouth, Merchiston, Harrow, Eton, Dulwich, Campbell, Bedford. On an earlier page the Headmaster of Winchester has kindly elaborated on the consultation undertaken about whether or not it should admit girls. It was a genuine debate driven by educational criteria. Other schools were less fortunate when faced with the same issue. Visit the websites of the other remaining boys’ schools and you will notice not many of them put the case for single sex education as powerfully as the girls’ equivalents.


Harrow summarises the case by pointing out the benefits for the five years, when boys are growing fastest physically. There is an emphasis on the difficulties of adolescence. Boys and girls learn differently, and so they are best taught separately. They react differently to discipline, long-term coursework assignments and examinations. Gender stereotyping is more likely to occur in co-educational schools. Sport is stronger in the single sex schools and examination results tend to be better. It is best to keep the sexes apart for at least part of their lives.


The Master of Dulwich provides some post sabbatical reflections on the Dulwich School website. A strong supporter of co-education up to the age of seven, he has always felt that increasingly from the age of seven boys need an environment which is geared to their specific learning preferences, and which encourages them to take up a wide range of co-curricular activities. A view he found mirrored by heads of boys’ schools in Hong Kong and New Zealand. He is convinced there is an academic advantage to boys learning in a single sex environment, and also that boys involve themselves more in co-curricular activities. In support he provides his parents with a number of authorities from outside the UK.


The Head, incidentally an ex-Army Officer, of the Oratory School, near Reading, stresses the most important criterion for the school is that it is a good school regardless. He then talks about his experiences as a classroom teacher. Girls approach their work with a radically different attitude. He believes there are differences between boys and girls that require a separated education. He elaborates on this in some detail and concludes that any one who has taught in a co-ed school will agree with him that boys by themselves act in a dramatically different way to boys who are in the presence of girls and vice-versa.


Other schools have consulted widely, a few years back the Governors of the Harpur Trust in Bedford responsible for running two independent boys schools and two independent girls schools sounded out all their parents. The outcome was that the two girls’ schools, one boarding, stayed single sex, one of the boys’ schools stayed single sex and boarding, and the remaining boys’ school turned co-ed. The net result is that within the Trust there are now about five places for girls to three places for boys. Democratic processes do not always produce logical conclusions. Perhaps, though, as already indicated the most significant review was carried out by Winchester College who felt there was a strong case for maintaining the status quo in order to maintain diversity and choice of the highest quality within the sector. They concluded too the case for widening access through bursaries should be a higher priority than widening access through the education of girls.


Finally it must be emphasised the drift towards co-education has not left the boys’ schools standing. Boarding facilities have been improved almost beyond recognition. Closer links with neighbouring girls’ schools have been established and strengthened, combined drama productions, joint choral societies and orchestras have raised the standards in music, drama and the arts to new levels. Holiday expeditions have flourished and many extra curricular activities, including the CCF, have enabled schools to share opportunities and to make far better use of each others facilities and expertise. It is in the evolution of joint and shared activities with neighbouring girls’ schools outside the classroom, whilst maintaining strong academic performances inside their own classrooms, that the boys’ schools can present their strongest case for remaining single sex.

 



‘THE KEY IS THE CHILD AND WHAT THE CHILD WILL WANT’
- Dr Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington College

 


“Girls must be taught in single-sex schools because boys are a terrible distraction”. “Boys need to be boys that means they must go to all boys’ schools where they can play rugby, take part in the CCF and do the kinds of things they can only do when girls are not around”.


“The problem with co-ed is that it may sound very good in theory, but the reality is that if boys and girls are in the same school together, they will be spending all their time thinking about sex. They will endlessly distract each other”. “Co education? It’s obviously a bad idea because all the evidence shows that girls and boys do much better when they are educated alone. All you have to do is look at the league tables”. “Co-education is great for boys, isn’t it, but the girls suffer and are second class citizens”. “If you want your daughters to be leaders, or scientists, send them to an all girls school. There is plenty of time for boys later!”


These statements have all been made by real parents to me, and indeed they will echo the views of many of the readers of the Good Schools Guide. It is rarely a good thing to disagree with prospective parents. But it is, I fear, what I am about to do!


Let’s get some facts clear at the outset. There is absolutely no, repeat absolutely no, firm academic evidence to suggest that boys and girls do better academically when taught apart. Even if there was (which there isn’t!) there are powerful and compelling arguments for having boys and girls in the same school for social and emotional reasons. That’s one canard out of the way.


Boys and girls do spend a lot of time thinking about sex. So do many adults. It’s part of what makes us human beings. To imagine that boys and girls will stop thinking about each in sexual way if they are taught in different schools is the stuff of madness. Of course boys and girls of an adolescent age will be thinking about sex whether they are sitting on the next door desk or whether they are at a school on the opposite end of town, and there is nothing wrong with that. I would argue that far more healthy relationships can be formed if boys and girls grow up alongside each other and learn to accept each other as human beings first and foremost, rather than fantasise about each other as sex objects. Helping young people to form natural and affectionate relationships with those of the other sex is a core part of what a school should be doing, and I think this is easier in a co-ed school.


Finally, one has to appreciate that in co-ed schools, boys and girls spend an enormous amount of time apart from each other, particularly in boarding schools. Houses are (almost always) single sex, so in the evenings pupils are with those of their own gender, they sleep on their own and have breakfast and other meals in their houses in single-sex environments. Games are single sex as are a variety of other activities. A problem with coed schools is that there are too many activities, not too few, when boys and girls are segregated. So girls have ample chance to grow up and be on their own and be with other girls when they want to, as do boys. In their houses, the young will see the older pupils of their own sex acting as the role models who they will want to emulate. In good co-ed
schools, men and women will share the top positions, again giving both boys and girls an abundance of the figure of their own gender to admire. And by the way, in co-ed schools, girls join in both rugby and CCF, and boys take part in lacrosse and horse-riding. It is harder for boys to become involved in activities such as food technology, dance and textiles in all boys’ schools.


All that said, the plain fact is that some of the best schools in Britain, and indeed the world, are single-sex, including Eton, Harrow, Tonbridge and St Paul’s among the boys’ schools, and Cheltenham Ladies College, Wycombe Abbey, Heathfield St Mary’s and Withington among the girls’ schools. If a league table was to be drawn up for schools internationally, comparable to the table for universities worldwide, I would say that some fifteen of the top twenty places would be taken by British single-sex schools. Their contribution to this country over the last 200 years has been immense. Single-sex schools, whether for girls or boys, also offer some of the most economic and affordable education in the country. The girls’ day school trust operates many such schools, which bring superb and reasonably-priced education to many who could not afford the more expensive boarding schools. These schools no only excel in league tables, but also offer sport and the arts at a very high standard.


I am a passionate believer in the continuation in single sex schools. They are absolutely right for some boys and some girls (though parents, please let your children decide, rather than yourself, based perhaps on out-dated notions of your own schooling). To my mind, the key is the child and what the child will want. Parents should also avoid bludgeoning their child into going into co-ed school if that child has a sense that they would sooner be just children of their own gender.


Long may diversity flourish. Single sex schools have a unique selling point, and if they moved more onto the front foot and championed their own virtues, rather than trying to attack co-ed schools on false grounds, they would flourish even more. That would be a very good thing for independent education.



Dr Anthony Seldon has been Master of Wellington College since 2005, having been Headmaster of Brighton College from 1997 to 2005. Dr Seldon has written or edited many books and is a political commentator best known as Tony Blair’s biographer, the Blair Effect, Blair and most recently Blair Unbound.






THE ‘DIAMOND’ CHOICE FOR PARENTS
- Dr Priscilla Chadwick, Principal of Berkhamsted Collegiate School



Priscilla Chadwick expounds

Sex is constantly in the news! Are girls’ schools soon to be a thing of the past? Will all boys’ schools finally see the light and admit girls throughout the age range? If selective girls’ schools seem to dominate the top league table places, are they really better than boys’ schools or just more selective? Yet why should parents have to choose between these options when there is a third alternative which offers both single-sex education and co-education: the ‘diamond’ model of single-sex teaching for boys and girls from 11 to 16, followed by a fully coeducational sixth form, undoubtedly offers ‘the best of both worlds’.


It is true that the number of single–sex boys’ and girls’ schools is reducing; boys’ schools are admitting girls to raise their academic standards and smaller girls’ schools are merging or closing, which may indicate that parents or particularly the students themselves are increasingly preferring coeducation, seeing it as a better preparation for adult life and especially for university. In response to this trend, those fortunate independent educational foundations, like Berkhamsted, that historically established both a boys’ and a girls’ school, have seized the opportunity in recent years to offer the third alternative option to parents. They retain their single-sex teaching from ages 11 to 16 and offer full coeducation from 16 to 18, bringing the sixth form students together into a strong academic community teaching a much wider range of A level courses.


Research evidence from Ofsted supports this model of education, suggesting that boys and girls tend towards different learning styles at key stages 3 and 4: notwithstanding generalisations, girls sometimes prefer to take fewer risks, they gain more confidence if work can be drafted first and do better in literacy tasks than problemsolving activities. Boys, on the other hand, tend to enjoy more questioning and active learning, more practical tasks and multiple-choice assessments, allowing them short-term achievable targets. Girls often enjoy team work and more collaborative learning, whereas boys respond better to the challenges of competition. In an ideal world, the students should learn from rather than be put off by each others’ preferred styles, but this is less likely during the upheavals of adolescence: it can be much more easily achieved if they already have confidence in their own identity, which usually becomes evident by the sixth form.


For teachers too, the opportunity to focus on the individual learning needs of the class is often easier, especially from ages 11-16, with single-sex groups. Students at Berkhamsted are less likely to be negatively influenced in their subject choices by gender stereotypes: boys choose languages and English Literature and girls opt for physics and design technology because they enjoy and have an aptitude for it. In the ‘diamond’ structure, students make these critical subject choices while in the single-sex sections of the school, so their choice is likely to be more appropriate for them, and they then benefit from studying in a fully coeducational class, which allows them to learn from each other in preparation for university.


In the pastoral sphere, the benefits of having both singlesex and coeducation in one school are significant. Students can take responsibility as prefects or organise societies within their section of the school, and learn how to motivate others without undue gender pressures. The role-models of the older students, boys or girls, are helpful in this maturing process. At the same time, boys and girls aged 11 to 16 can enjoy music making, drama productions, fieldtrips and theatre outings together, as well as Duke of Edinburgh Award expeditions, so that, by the time they come together in the Berkhamsted sixth form, they know each other as friends. Thus at 16+ they adapt quickly to the more adult world of A level study and the fully coeducational environment, excellent preparation for the world of higher education.


No doubt parents will review the needs of their individual child in selecting the most suitable school for them, be it singlesex or co-education, day or boarding. For the fortunate parents who feel that a ‘diamond’ school meets their aspirations, the choice is so much easier. They have the option of ‘the best of both worlds’.



Dr Priscilla Chadwick has been Principal of Berkhamsted Collegiate School since 1996 having previously been a Head in the Maintained Sector. Dr Chadwick became the first Chairwoman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference in 2005.