Coeducational and Girls/Boys Schools

This is a choice which rarely needs to be made in the state or maintained sector (with a few exceptions, for example, where there are grammar schools, or in some London boroughs) but many schools in the independent sector, whether by tradition or ethos, educate either only girls or only boys.

Whether or not a child would benefit from single-sex education depends on quite a number of factors, and is a decision that only parents and their children can make. It is true to say that boys & girls learn and mature at different rates, and express themselves differently, and the differentiation a single sex school can offer can help to provide a curriculum more focused on the needs of boys or girls, free of the distractions that members of the opposite sex can sometimes provide (!).

Importantly, though, a single-sex education does not necessarily mean boys or girls will have no contact whatsoever with children of the opposite sex. Their time outside school is their own, and it can sometimes be beneficial to separate natural emotional and personal development from the rigours of academia and educational development.

Parents considering single-sex education will also be pleased to know that there are boys’ and girls’ schools at every level of education; so a boys’ preparatory school could conceivably lead to a co-ed senior. Alternatively, a girl in single-sex education until she was 16 could then join a co-educational sixth-form for her A-levels.

The terms Boys (some girls) and Girls (some boys) refers to schools which are predominantly single-sex, but have small numbers of boys or girls at a certain level of the school. An all-girls prep and senior school might have boys in the nursery section, for example.

There are also currently nine schools in the ISC which admit boys and girls, but they are taught separately and come together for free time and breaks &c, as well as after-school clubs, combining traditional, single-sex academic values with co-educational social and personal values.

There are also the Diamond Structure schools, a programme whereby boys and girls are educated together at the pre-prep and prep level, apart for senior school, and co-educationally again in the sixth form. Many parents feel that this system affords children a good balance between the benefits of co-education for social and emotional development, and the academic safety and security that comes with single-sex education for the important senior years.

To search for schools matching coeducational or single sex requirements try our school search.