The switch to co-ed dilutes the legacy of heroic women

RATHDOWN School, the private all-girls boarding school in Glenageary, Co. Dublin, will throw open its doors to boys this year, a sign, says its principal, of the rise in need for co-education.

The school claims the demand is led by parents who want to see their sons and daughters educated together. But there is bound to be mixed feelings about it.

Co-ed schools are the norm across the world and are gaining ground here with two thirds of postprimary students educated in classrooms with both boys and girls. As society changes with the march of equality, it’s possible that single-sex schools will become obsolete and their benefits redundant.

After all, if women and men play increasingly similar roles at home and work, why would a school set out to arm young women with the tools to make it in a so-called man’s world while another separate establishment grooms boys for leadership?

It might be best to educate boys and girls together in preparation for the world they will inherit, rather than a bygone place of unrelenting male privilege and power.

Yet saying goodbye to single-sex schools closes a chapter on some formidable women, often, but not always, nuns who pioneered girls’ education, both daughters of the elite and those of lowly povertystricken families. Mary Ward,

Mary Aikenhead, Catherine McAuley and Teresa Ball are owed as great a debt as Christian Brothers founder Edmund Rice for their services to Irish education, yet we hear of them rarely.

Co-ed schools may hasten social progress and encourage camaraderie between the sexes. The downside is that it will dilute the legacy of a series of remarkable women who gave their lives to rescuing girls from the darkness of ignorance.