Single-sex school debate rages on

“Putting boys and girls in single-sex schools is not going to change everything. You need the home, the school, the community, the social services, Ministry of Education.”

“You need support from all of them,” said Dr Casmir Chanda, a consultant with the Commonwealth Secretariat education section who was part of a panel discussion last week at the Ministry of Education’s consultation on Single-Gender Education at Crowne Plaza.

She noted that the Education Ministry had several programmes which provided support to students and teachers among them Student Support Services, Performance Enhancement Unit, Centre of Excellence for Teacher Training.

Speaking on the topic “Gender as an Education Strategy” Chanda referred to several studies supportive of the single-sex school.

She quoted research which indicated that graduates from single-sex schools were self-confident, had higher self-esteem and made autonomous decisions without pressure from the opposite sex.

Speaking on “The Single-Gender Classroom as an Educational Strategy” Professor John Spence was applauded for saying he did not think there was enough evidence for a decision to be made to have all schools as single-sex or co-ed.

He was again applauded when he suggested that schools did not have to be single-sex in order to get the benefits of single-sex classes.

Spence said the literature suggested that the arguments used in favour of single-sex schools “really apply to single sex classes, mainly that there are learning differences between boys and girls.”

Starting with the 2010 SEA placement, students of 20 selected schools will be assigned to single-sex classes from Form One. Over a five-year period the schools will be gradually converted to male or female only.