The Post reports:
New Zealand is not planning to build any new single-sex state schools, even as research suggests some students – especially girls in some settings – can do better in them.
- UE rates for boys in boys-only schools was 48% and 28% in co-ed schools
- In low decile (1-4) boys’ schools 32% gained UE, versus 15% in co-ed
- For Maori in low decile schools, 22.7% gained UE, versus 7.6% in co-ed
- UE rates for girls in girls-only schools was 55% and 39% in co-ed
I would say the research does more than suggest some students do better.
That has disappointed principals at single-sex state schools, who say parents should have more choice.
Single-sex schools are not for everyone, but I believe any parent should have the choice (and be zoned) for both a co-ed school and a single sex school so they can choose what they think is best for their child.
That has disappointed principals at single-sex state schools, who say parents should have more choice.
Single-sex schools are not for everyone, but I believe any parent should have the choice (and be zoned) for both a co-ed school and a single sex school so they can choose what they think is best for their child.
For more than six decades, the state has continued to operate boys’ and girls’ schools where they already existed, but has not added new ones to the network.
Isn’t this astonishing? Look at the difference in achievement, and the last new single sex school was in 1961!
The Ministry of Education told the Sunday Star-Times it was not planning to build any more single-sex schools.
The Ministry said that was not about hostility to single-sex schooling, but about how it planned for a modern and sustainable network. …
But a 2021 Ministry briefing said “constructing a single co-ed campus is more cost effective than building more schools”.
Of course one large school is cheaper than two smaller schools, but this comes with a huge future cost of denying parents and children choice. If your aim is to let each child reach their potential, then you are failing.
Erica Stanford has been the most amazing education minister. But she would be even more amazing if she announced she was overturning the Ministry ban on single sex schools, and that in areas of high population growth, new schools will be both co-educational and single sex.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
4 comments:
The single-sex high school issue was settled decades ago: they produce better academic results than co-ed schools, and liberate girls from traditional stereotypes with regard to the subjects they take - it is in all-girls schools that girls were found to be taking subjects such as Physics that in co-ed schools were widely regarded as 'boys' subjects'.
A point I have myself made in the academic literature is that all-boys high schools can make more effective use of technical/vocational streams - in a co-ed school, the facilities associated with tech/vocat tend to be underutilised.
Single-sex high schools are part and parcel of the British school model that NZ inherited and chose to stay with. It ought to be a matter of parental choice whether their son and/or daughter attend one in preference to a co-ed. Parents who are highly-educated professionals with high expectations for their kids tend to show a strong preference for them because of their academic prowess.
Note that I keep qualifying 'single-sex' with 'high [school]' as I do not have the same feelings about primary schooling.
Note also that I am thinking of day schools - boarding schools are another kettle of fish altogether.
It could be that parents who choose single sex schools are more conservative and therefore the schools have retained more traditional teaching methods, to reflect parents beliefs which is really the issue . More and more traditional values , content and teaching methods are shown to be considerably more effective.
Of course our education system being strongly Progressive in ideology places little value on academic achievement and focuses on socialization and socialism instead as it has for at least five decades.
Oh come on Barend! If you can have ‘co-ed’ Infantry units where both sexes can be cut to pieces hanging on the wire, what’s the beef about schools? And surely the Min of Ed knows far more about efficiency than some poo-bah researchers? Look what they have achieved over the last 30 years! Oh…wait on. Strike that last bit.
Anon 1129, you have quite correctly pointed out a recurring problem with this kind of research - the 'experimental' and 'control' groups being different from the word go. However, after regressing confounding variables such as parental education and income away, differences remain between the cohorts when they leave high school. There does appear to be a 'single-sex high school' effect in its own right.
That girls are more likely to choose 'male' subjects in all-girls high schools is well documented and is a continuing trend. There is even plenty of evidence to show that boys are more likely to choose 'female' subjects (art, music, literature.....) in all-boys high school than in co-eds.
Teenagers tend to be rather conservative little beasts with very fixed ideas about what constitutes masculinity and femininity. Physics and Chemistry are boys' subjects, theatre and literature are girls' subjects, and many 16- and 17-year-olds worry about being being labelled according to traditional stereotypes on the basis on their subject choice. Of course this does not apply to all, and the situation now even in co-ed high schools is better than it was 50 years ago, but the issue persists and both girls and boys are more likely to choose 'non-traditional' subjects with respect to gender at upper secondary level.
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