It’s been a few weeks since Richard Cairns, headmaster of the co-educational independent school Brighton College, suggested that pupils attending girls’ schools are at a ‘huge disadvantage,’ and I am still seething. Cairns suggested that although girls may leave single sex education with a clutch of A*s, this achievement will mean nothing “if they cannot meaningfully converse and communicate with male colleagues”.
Cairn’s remarks amount to nothing more than low-level misogyny. The fact that girls attending state school single-sex education earn more than their co-ed counterparts counts for nothing; the increased uptake of STEM subjects irrelevant, if they cannot talk to men.
He has a point. Everyone knows what happens if you go to a girls’ school. It stops you from being funny, impedes your ability to communicate with the male gender, and turns you – God forbid – into a lesbian.
Despite the old dictum that men come from Mars and women from Venus, we do in fact speak the same language. Girls who attend single sex schools do not need extra classes to perfect their ‘manglish’, or a translator in the boardroom. In fact, research demonstrates that women who attended single-sex schools earn more than their co-ed counterparts, suggesting a perfect ability to communicate, and more importantly, the self-confidence to believe that their contributions are worthwhile. A study showed that girls who went to mixed comprehensives were earning an average of £7.92 an hour in their early forties com- pared with £8.33 for those who went to girls-only comprehensives. The difference between mixed and all-girl grammar schools were more marked, at £10.18 and £11.18, respectively. Another charge leveled against the girls’ schools is the fear that your daughter will morph into the stereotypical oversexed hockey stick freak, obsessing over every boy who happens to cross her path, from the postman to her male teachers. When I was at school, this was partly true. We would grab token boys for proms or parties. It didn’t matter how pimply guys were, how little they washed, how totally devoid of interesting conversation they were – we would secure them for prom. Girls without brothers or a life outside of school were intrigued by boys, only to arrive at university and realise within two seconds that not all men were inherently funny, dashing and charismatic. We often professed undying love for our male teachers; one girl even gave my best friend a life-sized cardboard cutout of the beautiful maths teacher for her birthday – surely every girl’s dream. Another got the name of her English teacher tattooed on her butt after a drunken night in Ibiza.
The ‘bitchiness’ myth – the idea that any building with too many women inside it will dissolve into a cesspit of cat-fighting – is part of an ingrained misogyny that rears its pale, male and stale head whenever we talk about single-sex education. Believe it or not, women can survive just fine without men before the age of 18. Teenagers are cruel. For many people, secondary school is the most miserable time of their life, as you are forced to navigate a toxic mix of hormones and increasing responsibility. But this has nothing to do with being in a single sex environment, and everything to do with the thorny process of transitioning into adulthood and finding your place in the world.
Are girls’ schools pupils oversexed? Well, yes, obviously. But so are all teenagers. And what’s fantastic about a girls’ school environment is that students become less afraid to embrace their sexuality, and less insecure about their bodies. Other girls at mixed schools lived in fear of a tampon falling out of their pencil cases and revealing their secret uteruses (usually so well hidden!), while in my single-sex school we were busy under the desks, casually popping them in and out in the middle of French. There was an openness around sexual desire, where girls spoke about how keen they were to lose their virginity, professing it as loudly as any stereotypical teenage boy would.
On the other hand, studies show that single-sex education can have a detrimental effect on boys. It shows that boys taught in single sex schools are more likely to be divorced or separated from their partner by their early 40s than those who attended a mixed school by. So, send your girls to girls’ schools, and your boys to mixed schools – I see no flaw in the plan.
