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Do children learn better in a single sex school? Well that depends on your definition of learning, and the values you place upon it. Certainly there is data to support the argument that both girls and boys benefit academically from an environment free from the distraction of the opposite sex. My concern is the amount of weight given to the pursuit of academic excellence at all costs, regardless of the negative aspects of separating the sexes at the precise time when they are most needful of the contact. Healthy relationships aside, it is the development of healthy and balanced attitudes to the opposite sex that are crucial to the social development of both boys and girls.

Here in Melbourne we have recently been plagued by a series of sexually based attacks in our schools. The one common aspect of these attacks has been that the demographic of the perpetrators and the victims have been identical: a group students from all male private schools preying upon girls from co-educational government schools. Apparently this is not an uncommon occurrence, but just recently these type of attacks have become more public. What lessons, then, are being learnt at our premier single sex schools?

Indeed, the single sex school is almost exclusively an upper-middle to upper class phenomenon, and the fact that these attacks were made upon girls from a perceived lower echelon of society begs further questions about the attitudes promoted by wealth and privilege in a concentrated form.

It is interesting to note that the data collected over the past ten years in Victoria indicates that those from private school backgrounds, although far more likely to achieve a place at university, are less successful than their state school counterparts. Perhaps we need to take a broader view of success in general.

Learn more about this author, Edward Heskett.
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