Single-sex schools are a bad idea

Why is there so much prestige associated with a single sex school? The education might be good, and on paper it might be difficult to fault certain grammar or private schools in terms of quality of teaching, but there are far more important social issues that a same-sex education actively promotes.

I loved going to my all-girl school, but it wasn’t until I left that I realised how certain things that seemed totally normal at the time could have turned out to be quite damaging. Being grateful there weren’t boys there to distract us was something we were fed, not something we had learned ourselves.

It’s not that I didn’t know how to communicate with boys or that it wasn’t possible to socialise outside of school, but by dividing people based on gender it becomes easy to see the opposite sex as the other, especially at the lower key stages.

From the age of 11, students at same-sex schools are exposed to an environment prone to misunderstanding and discrimination, since it’s the most stereotypical aspects of each sex that breed and take over.

My school definitely created a competitive environment, but not always based on grades. Having the smallest lunch brought with it an element of kudos.

Dieting became a trend to the extent that one of my friends used to eat an apple and drink a diet cola for lunch – the apple for calories and the cola to expand in your stomach to kid yourself into feeling full. I counted out six cashew nuts each day to make sure I wasn’t eating too much fat.

This might be the same in a mixed school, but I can’t see how it can’t be worse in such a small bubble where you can only compare yourself to other girls. Being pleased you don’t have to wear make-up to class because there aren’t boys there is not progressive, it’s the opposite.

Cerys Liddiard, now a student at Sheffield, said: “My girls’ school shared a field with the boys’ school and there was an invisible line down the middle which dinner ladies patrolled, and if you were seen socialising with the other sex you were told off and made to move.”

Of course you can still really enjoy your time at a single sex school, but segregating people based on gender is old-fashioned and unnecessary.

A friend who went to Latymer Upper School, told me: “The worst thing was girls arriving for sixth form, totally ruined it,” proves how being split into the sexes promotes and encourages differences between them. Especially when I knew people who hated moving to the boys’ school near me for Sixth Form because they were picked on so badly.

The girls I went to school with were great and the education was fantastic, but I can’t help feeling slightly sad about some of the ideas that were able to generate there. If you’re going to wait outside the school gates for the opposite sex to walk past anyway, you may as well be learning with them.

Your school might not have made you a bigot and you might not worry about talking about your period in public, but the single-sex school still creates issues that can continue until you are sat at a pub table in your 20s with boys on one side and girls on the other.