Single-sex schools vs mixed enrolment: what's best for schoolchildren?
Munities 2020 Dozen Since Two Have Ireland School Sex Moved In More Single To Coeducation Than From
Ireland is an outlier in its tendency to segregate children by gender, but there is a growing movement away from it. More than two dozen of our school communities have moved from single sex to coeducation since 2020.
A myth has circulated for some time — that single sex schools were more effective academically, particularly for girls. However, an analysis of data from 5,000 15-year-olds in Ireland published in 2023, found “no academic advantage” for attending single-sexed or mixed-sex schools.
But once children are in that mixed setting, what gender politics are still at play? And what factors still hold us back from creating truly equal spaces?
Some parents are less than enthusiastic about the gender dynamic in their child’s mixed school.
Mary lives in a small West Cork coastal town. Her two little girls attend the local Catholic primary.
She’s happy it’s mixed, possibly because of small numbers, but she has concerns: “Every morning the children are separated into rows of boys and girls, and the same happens at the end of the day for pick-up.”
Mary reports feeling alone in her concerns as most other parents seem not to notice.
“It just seems odd to me to organise them that way. Why have them together if you are going to separate them into boys and girls? Is that worse in a way, than having them in separate schools? Couldn’t they be arranged by the register, or by their tables? I worry that they are separated in other ways during the school day too.”
Conversely, Maureen, a parent in Clare, is happy with how her local school manages gender:
“I went in as a volunteer last week, and they were all sitting mixed up. They don’t separate by gender and in the pictures on the app, they’re all in a happy jumble. I did have a bit of a culture shock when my girl first started. Little boys overall have a different energy but very quickly you see how similar they are in terms of being sensitive and getting upset. I think gender roles are enforced more by external factors like clothes and what they watch. If anything, school has expanded my daughter’s horizons.”
Professor Dympna Devine, head of the School of Education at University College Dublin, highlights that the gender of students can affect teaching practices in the classroom.
“Girls were invariably categorised as calm, pliable, timid, mature, focused, ‘tale tellers’ and easier to discipline,” says Prof Devine.
“Boys, by contrast, were spoken of as lively, boisterous, energetic, competitive, show-offs, spontaneous and potentially disruptive.”
Head of the social research division at the ESRI, Professor Emer Smyth, agrees that teachers are more likely to have lower expectations for boys, and to see them as ‘underachievers’.
Research indicates that teachers often give higher grades to girls but can equally penalise female students in certain subjects that are traditionally associated with boys — such as maths.
One primary teacher with experience in numerous settings notices a difference in gender relations by location.
“In rural schools, I’ve seen all the children play together in the yard, boys and girls, and on the pitches. In the more urban and town settings, girls tend to use walking tracks and walk around chatting, playing in groups, or dancing together. The lads tend to play football or team sports.”
Often, it is the parents who maintain the divide, she contends: “From a birthday party invite point of view; it is very much separated by gender. The children indicate this themselves with boys tending to do more adventure/sports-based birthday parties than the girls from about 8 or 9 years old.”
Classes are never separated by gender, she reports, expressing confidence that teachers are good at handling gender diverse groups: “I’ve never seen or heard of any other practice. Within classes then, having taught for almost 20 years, a mix of genders at a table group works better as it breaks up the chatter, and it also really helps to bond the class as a full class group doing project work together. It’s gorgeous to see unexpected friendships develop when they find a common ground. Sometimes this can transfer beautifully to play time on yard. It makes, then, for a more cohesive group of children who are more likely to maintain friendships outside of school. This then really helps to dispel the awkwardness that some children experience with those of the opposite sex from age 11 upwards.”
She notices a trend in how this awkwardness is being felt earlier and earlier now, brought on by easy access to technology: “There used to be a time during ‘sex talk week’ in one of my past schools, where you might see some awkward giggles and glances from January of fifth class, now it’s happening in fourth class.”
David teaches in a mixed secondary. For him, mixed is best because it caters to the child who doesn’t fit the norm, or the gender stereotype.
“Boys and girls absolutely tend to stay together in groups, but they overlap too, especially when they go outside. It’s nice to see that one boy in a group of girls or the other way round. I often wonder how that child would fare in a single sex environment — not as well, I’d imagine.”
David agrees that hormones can play a bigger role as young people go through secondary school. There is still far more segregation by gender at secondary level that primary: “We have had some tricky situations in the past. We deal with issues single-sex schools must avoid quite a bit of the time, where two students are in a couple, and the whole community experiences their highs and lows.”
He concedes that it can be a distraction. “On the plus side, we are there as professional adults to help them through it. If you separate young people by gender, you are not seeing the whole picture — all of that happens outside school, and potentially away from any adult supervision. They are still children at the end of the day, so teachers play a key role in helping them navigate those early romances — just by being there, and emphasising things like respect and care.”
Schools also guide them towards what is appropriate or inappropriate behaviour, he says: “We don’t allow any physical contact in school. They learn very quickly to respect those boundaries.”
Another obvious benefit of mixed setting is in the likelihood of more subject choice, but do students tend to navigate towards gendered options anyway? Paula, a teacher in an urban community school says: “I would say students are independently choosing what they would like to study. The pattern remains the same, however — girls choose home economics and boys choose metalwork and woodwork. But there are plenty of exceptions, and Design and Communication Graphics is seeing a significant increase of girls at senior level.”
Another secondary teacher, this time in a rural setting, feels it is of huge benefit that all students get a taste of every subject in first year, regardless of gender.
“Gender differences still exist but the options are there — that makes some difference. Teachers play a vital role in breaking stereotypes. One thing that bothers me in my school is that boys are less likely to take a foreign language at senior cycle. It would be great to have more male language teachers and female construction teachers as role models. We might offer all subjects, but students don’t believe they can really be something until they can see it being done by the adults around them.”