Editorial: Schools in a co-ed world

Scots College’s decision to go co-ed in its senior school raises deeper questions. The world is coed, so why are so many schools single-sex? Those areas where the world is still segregated – ‘‘men only’’ clubs, for instance – now look peculiar and are becoming much rarer. And that is in general a good thing.

Co-ed schools, it can be argued, are a much better preparation for children who will live in a co-ed world. Why is segregation still considered okay during our school years?

The usual answer is that both girls and boys do better academically at segregated schools. But research has certainly cast doubt on the conventional wisdom.

Girls and boys learn in different ways and do better at segregated schools, goes the argument. Boys are said to learn better by doing, and are more physical.

Another argument, especially favoured by the parents of girls, is a feminist one. Girls in segregated schools get more chance to be heard and to learn without the domineering presence of boys. Girls can do anything if unshackled from male domination during the vital years of adolescent learning.

But the idea that girls and boys learn in fundamentally different ways has been seriously questioned by neuroscientists.

And research has also shown that a good deal of the greater educational success of segregated schools is due not to different learning styles or alleged girlfriendly traditions, but to the effects of social class.

Children who go to segregated schools tend to be from wealthier homes and as a result tend to do better at school anyway, regardless of whether their school is segregated or co-ed. The link between class and educational achievement is pervasive and extraordinarily difficult to break. It is, in fact, the great unsolved problem facing mass education, which was supposed to give everybody a fairer go in life.

A major 18-year longitudinal study of New Zealand children in 1999 showed that children at segregated schools tend to come from more settled families. This means those schools benefit from less disruptive and difficult students.

When these social and economic factors were taken into account, the supposed educational advantage of segregated schools is much lower than raw achievement scores suggest, the study found. There was still, however, some difference.

One possible reason is that the parents of segregated school children tend to be more motivated and aspirational than parents in co-ed schools. This leads to greater performance by their children.

The other side of the argument is that segregated schools are less likely to prepare pupils for a co-ed world. And here the evidence seems substantial, although inevitably it cannot be as easily marshalled as by a comparison of academic achievements.

Many former pupils from both sorts of segregated schools say that they were less ready both for working and forming relationships in a world where the sexes mixed freely.

This, in the end, is the stronger argument for co-ed schools, and may be one reason why segregated schools such as Scots are moving slowly to change.

Co-ed schools offer a better preparation for the real world.