All-girl schools succeed because sex stays out of the way, says head

ALL-girl schools are better for female pupils because they can study subjects traditionally regarded as male ‘without letting sex get in the way’, said a leading headmistress yesterday.

Jane Lunnon, head of high-flying Wimbledon High, bemoaned the fact some girls at mixed schools ‘wear make-up like armour’ and constantly feel their looks are being ‘assessed by boys’.

She said some could be put off studying maths, science and engineering because the boys might consider it ‘unsexy’.

In contrast, girls in single-sex schools ‘know they can do things free from the pressures of sexual attraction’, she told parents at the Tatler Schools Live! conference in London.

Mrs Lunnon, 46, was previously deputy head at co-educational Wellington College in Berkshire.

But after being at her independent all-girl school since 2014, she is now ‘a passionate advocate of single-sex education’.

She said: ‘It is a good thing to give them the room and space to be girls. Girls free and simple, uncompared and uncomparing. Not girls as opposite to boys, not girls measured and assessed by boys – physically and intellectually. Not girls who feel the need to present overtly feminine versions of themselves.

‘Not girls who are unconsciously pushed away from academic choices because those are not “girls’ subjects”.’

At Wimbledon High, more than half of girls opt for a science or maths A-level.

Mrs Lunnon added that while mixed schools have many benefits, they can sometimes also push boys to be ‘loudly and uncomfortably laddy’.