Jess Lair famously stated: "Children are not things to be molded, but people to be unfolded.” Education plays a crucial role in the social development and so-called ‘unfolding’ of children to be well-rounded adults in the future. A key debate in today’s society is that single-sex schools often limit children’s ability to be fully socially developed, as they are unable to form solid friendships and properly interact with the opposite gender. As a student who went to a single sex school in the suburbs of Dublin, the claims made are partially not wrong. Being in a girls' school for the majority of my childhood and early teens had a profound effect on how I perceived the opposite sex and the friendships I formed coming out of my school environment. The deprivation of mixed gender interactions mainly affected me when I went into university, where, for the majority of my years, I was more driven to form female friendships than mixed gender friendships, whereas my peers who went to co-educational schools tended to choose friends based on the person’s personality as opposed to their gender.
Single sex schools have a longstanding history, particularly in societies where religion is heavily involved. The justification of the separation of the sexes in an educational setting has been that students focus better on academics when in an environment surrounded only by members of the same sex. However, this belief has not been so salient in recent years, as trends show that there has been a steady decline in single sex education since 1972 in Ireland as new single sex schools have not been opened in Ireland since 1998. According to 2022 and 2023 student enrollment data, 33% of primary and secondary school students attend all-girls schools, 26% attend all-boys schools, and 41% attend co-educational schools. The same data also indicated that of Ireland’s 720 post primary schools, 511 are mixed and 209 are for girls or boys only. We find similar trends in countries like Australia and the Republic of Korea, which have seen an increase in coeducational schools in the 1980s. In contrast, countries like Jordan have seen an 8% increase of students attending single sex schools.
CSL (Children’s School Lives) and the School of Education at UCD released a new study on the impact of gender in school. The findings of these studies help us understand the social development of kids in single sex schools vs mixed schools.. In the study conducted by CSL, it was evident that gender dynamics played a huge role in children’s friendships and that friendships were influenced by gender norms. According to the report, girls in all-girls schools had significantly fewer friends than children in mixed schools. It was also seen that girls in an all-girls school tended to have stronger social connectivity with their peers in their classrooms compared to girls in a mixed school, whereas boys in an all-boys school tended to have the weakest social connectivity among peers but had higher average popularity scores compared to girls. The infographic below gives us a look at friendship-related statistics across varied schools.
Many educators and psychologists believe that being in a co-educational school is like living in a larger society. In a single sex school, due to limited socialising and no mingling among the sexes, an unrealistic world is created. Dr. Lisa Thompson, an educational psychologist, supports the claim that single sex schooling affects the way kids interact with the opposite sex. She states that “while these students often excel academically, they may find it difficult to form friendships with the opposite gender later in life.” In 2016, the headteacher of Brighton College made headlines when he suggested that students at girls’ schools were at a huge disadvantage, as they would grow up unable to communicate with the opposite sex. In the working world, students from single-sex schools lack experience when it comes to sharing a work environment with the opposite sex. Single-sex schools do not benefit the workplace or a person's ability to build relationships. The working environment is very diverse, with its own share of problems, and a lack of experience with the opposite gender does not contribute to this. The lack of exposure to interactions with the opposite gender can be a cause of social anxiety while transitioning to coeducational university environments where they may be forced to interact with the opposite gender in group projects and extracurricular activities. Another lasting side effect to single sex schooling is that students tend to start dating later then their peers in mixed schools. Research from Hong Kong shows that graduates from single sex schools have fewer romantic relationships in their adolescence and struggle to form friendships with the opposite gender.
Due to limited mixed-gender interaction in single sex schools, students have less of an understanding of the opposite sex, and they are not able to interact and share experiences; hence, children sometimes form opinions on expectations of how men and women should interact, behave and look.
While there is a belief that a single-sex school may provide great academic benefits, its impact on the students' socialization skills and friendship abilities is even greater. Students from single sex schools can make strong same gender friendships but struggle to form mixed-gender relationships. They are exposed to rigid gender stereotypes, which can be seen from interviews published in the CSL report. A second class student from an all-boys school describes a good boy as someone who is “saying nice things, and listening and being smart…, being good at football.” A sixth class student from an all-girls school describes a good girl as determined by what they are “like to older people…to parents and stuff…a good girl is quiet, gets good grades, doesn’t stand out too much, you know?”. Through testimonials like these, it is clear that students are capable of forming singular ideas of gender as a result of leading the majority of their formative years in a single-sex school context.
Although single-sex schools have had their fair share of popularity in the past, in some countries, especially in Ireland, the presence of these schools continues to decline. In the remaining schools, collaborative activities and programs need to be established to help students adjust to a diverse outside world. Social skill workshops and techniques will help build confidence amongst students, which will make them ready for university and work. Education is not just about pursuing academics; it is where young people get equipped to flourish in the outside world. It is therefore up to the government, teachers, parents and educational institutes to help give students tools that are helpful and can help them successfully navigate the world around them.
