Sex and the Single School
National’s education spokesman, Bill English, says parents are lining up to send their kids to single-sex schools because they outperform the co-eds. Are single-sex schools coming back into favour, and why aren’t more of them being built? Sarah Boyd investigates.
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The NCEA results are stark. Girls-only schools dominate all three levels of the new qualification, and girls and boys in single-sex schools do better academically than their counterparts in co- educational schools. It’s not just the private schools in leafy suburbs that top the tables, but ordinary state boys’ and girls’ colleges around the country.
That alone is enough to convince some parents, but, for others, it’s a more complex decision based on several factors, such as their child’s personality, the reputation of the local school and their own schooling experience many years before. There might not even be a choice. Single-sex education is available only to a minority — it helps to be well-off or Catholic.
There are 95 single-sex state secondary schools in New Zealand and another 22 private single-sex schools. That compares with 236 state co-ed secondary schools and 100 state “composites” — co-ed schools combining primary and secondary levels. Of those state single-sex schools, 37 are Catholic. Others — such as Hutt International Boys’ School — have a non-denominational Christian character. If you live in the Hutt Valley and do not have Christian beliefs, there is no single-sex secondary school option beyond bussing into Wellington. In Wellington, some suburbs are not zoned for any single-sex schools.
National’s education spokesman, Bill English, reckons parents want more choice. He says single-sex schools cannot meet the demand for enrolments and National would look at building new ones. “I’m not talking about building dozens of them — it’d be pretty small- scale,” he says. “When governments consider building a new school or changing the classification of a school, the single-sex option has not been on the menu. We’ll be putting it back on the menu.”
It’s true that some single-sex schools are highly sought after and hold ballots to allocate places to out-of-zone students. But other single-sex schools are not so popular and they are inevitably the ones with a lower socio-economic catchment.
Mr English admits that his information on demand for places in single-sex schools is anecdotal and the Ministry of Education cannot help — it doesn’t collect information on how many schools have enrolment schemes because they’re over-subscribed.
In central Wellington, parental opinions about schools may be more polarised than in other areas because the only two co-eds — Onslow and Wellington High — don’t have uniforms. Other co-eds, such as Tawa College and Hutt Valley High School, do, so the immediate contrasts are less striking with students from single-sex schools.
Tawa has no single-sex options, but Tawa College principal Murray Lucas estimates that less than 5 per cent of students in the area travel past the school to a single-sex college in town.
Wellington College is a popular state boys’ school. It typically gets 450 applications for 260 places for its third-form intake. It used to take 40 or 50 out-of-zone students through a ballot, but that’s decreasing each year. Last year it took just 18. The 1400- roll school has to be judicious with its numbers because every year, some parents of boys who miss out on ballot entry sell up and buy a house in the zone, where they’re guaranteed a place.
Gae Neill was prepared to do that when her son decided he wanted to go there. The family lives in Khandallah, which is out of zone. They researched and house-hunted and even made offers on places, then were able to relax when he got a place through the ballot.
Zoning didn’t exist when they first moved to Khandallah and Mrs Neill finds it bizarre that they didn’t have the option of a single- sex school other than through the stressful ballot system.
Her son is very sporty and she didn’t feel sport was particularly strong at the local co-ed. “It seemed to us to be important that that area of his life be valued and acknowledged by his school and that he had the opportunity within the school to pursue a wide range of physical activities that are well taught,” she says.
Interaction with girls wasn’t an issue — her son has a twin sister and an older sister. Rather, the idea of an education geared for boys appealed.
“Boys can be measured against girls for things that are hardly fair, such as neatness and ability to sit still. A school that understands boys will gear their activities to the way boys are.”
Mrs Neill and her husband both went to single-sex schools, but were adamant their children would go to co-ed primary schools before making a choice about the secondary years. She says she might have leaned toward co-ed if she had all boys or all girls in the family.
Alison Bartley also went to a girls’ school, but has taught in co- eds and prefers them. “I think teenagers have a much easier time of it growing up in a co-ed school,” she says. “They learn to have the opposite sex as friends, whereas it took me quite a while at university to stop seeing every male as a potential boyfriend.”
She left it up to her twin boys to decide where they would go. They were not in the Wellington College zone and opted for Wellington High.
“What I want out of secondary school is for them to have a well- rounded education. I think having a social life is really important, and ideally with boys and girls.”
She doesn’t see a downside to the choice, though she has followed debates about boys’ education. “It does worry me, but I think able kids are going to do well anyway. They have to learn how to motivate themselves.”
Mr English says no single-sex schools have been built in 45 years, but, in fact, 13 have. Most, like Hutt Independent Boys’ School, were established as private schools then integrated into the state system. The Ministry of Education says 174 co-eds were set up in the same period.
With the falling birth rate in recent years, the question of whether more single-sex schools should be built becomes rather academic. However, two co-ed schools, Alfriston and Botany Downs, were established in Auckland last year and the ministry estimates another 40 secondary schools will need to be built around the country in the next 20 years if population projections pan out.
“It was built to support the learning of the community and the community is co-ed,” principal Mike Leach says of Botany Downs. “They weren’t going to build two schools.”
It’s a dilemma the Catholic sector has faced in recent years, when economic realities forced it to amalgamate several of its single-sex schools in provincial areas into co-eds. That’s despite the feeling of Catholic Education Office chief executive Pat Lynch that parents are increasingly in favour of single-sex schools.
“It’s a matter of does the community want a Catholic school or not? If it does, the only viable configuration is co-ed. It doesn’t please everyone.”
He says that where they can run single-sex schools, in the cities and bigger provincial areas, they are very popular. He says parents have long been keen on single-sex education for girls, but now they are starting to think their boys are better off in single-sex schools as well.
“Some kids thrive in co-ed schools. But I think parents are moving more into the single-sex model than they were 10 years ago.”
Like other aspects of education, it may be cyclical. Research in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s suggested co-ed schools were better placed to meet the social and educational needs of children. There’s now renewed interest in single-sex education, particularly for boys, though the research findings are not always consistent.
In New Zealand, a Christchurch medical school study using data from an 18-year study found that children from single-sex schools had higher exam success and were less likely to leave school without qualifications. The researchers found much of the difference could be attributed to pre-entry differences in social and family background, but that didn’t account for all of it.
Socio-economic differences play a part in the differences in NCEA results — the higher the decile (a measure of socio-economic status) the school is, the better its results, whether it is single- sex or co-ed. But even when results are compared across school types in the same decile, students in single-sex schools do better.
Economist Brian Easton analysed the NCEA results in 2003, and concluded that between a third and half of the apparent pass superiority of single-sex schools was due to the higher socio- economic intake of the schools. As for the rest, he felt parental attitude was very important and he said there was enough variation between individual schools to encourage parents to look at factors beyond the co-ed/single-sex issue.
Cath McKone’s just been through that weighing up process with her daughter. She attended a fairly ordinary Catholic girls’ school herself and, though open to either option, is pleased her daughter decided to go to Wellington Girls’ College. “I like the idea that you can express yourself, that you can just be a girl. I didn’t like my schooling but I liked the girl thing,” she says.
She thinks people get caught up in a lot of rumour and myth about schools, much of it out-dated or wrong. And she says there’s more to schooling than marks.
Seventeen-year-old Vita Bryant has experienced both single-sex and co-education, having moved from Wellington Girls’ College to Onslow College after the fifth form, mainly for the subject choice at senior level. “The co-ed environment was a bit intimidating at first. I found I had to be more aggressive in class participation work. It wasn’t really different from a social point of view — I’ve always had an equal number of male and female friends.”
She says her new school has a fantastic music department and a wide range of extra-curricular music activities. She’s pleased she made the change, but she says there are no rules.
“I think different schools suit different people. It’s far too simplistic to say one is better than the other.”
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WHERE THEY WENT
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MAI CHEN
Ms Chen, a lawyer, attended a state girls’ school: “I didn’t enjoy it. I always had a feeling I had missed out — it was like being in a prison with girls for five years. But now I look back and wonder if I would have achieved everything I achieved if I’d gone to a co-ed school. Because it was an all-girls school, you just did everything. I was very sporty and I was dux and head girl. My husband went to a co-ed school and he loved it. The jury is still out about where we’ll send our son (aged two). In some ways, I think the best mix might be a co-ed school which has single-sex classes for some subjects.”
BILL ENGLISH
National’s education spokesman, Mr English attended a Catholic boys’ school: “It worked really well for most of the kids I went to school with. For some, it didn’t. Some would have been better in co- ed schools. But I liked the competitiveness, the structure, the male role models. It leaves some kids — boys and girls — less socialised to deal with the other sex, but I didn’t find that a problem. I don’t have a preference for single-sex education for my children. We’ll make the decision based on what we think will suit our kids. Being in the Catholic system is more important than whether it’s single sex or co-ed.
MURRAY LUCAS
Mr Lucas attended co-educational state school Tawa College, where he is now principal: “I loved it. That was my whole motivation for teaching here and then becoming principal — I wanted to put something back. Things like being in shows — you don’t need to bring in students from other schools. I do think single-sex schools are different than they were when I was young — they’re much more sensitive to boys, in particular, but I prefer the co-ed environment. I have two sons, both of whom go to Tawa College.”
MELE WENDT
Ms Wendt, executive director of Fulbright New Zealand, an education foundation, attended co-educational schools in Samoa and Fiji: “I loved it. My parents wanted me to go to the single-sex church school in Suva because it was more academic, but it was full. So I went to the co-ed school, which was of dubious quality, but I did well academically. When people ask me whether they should send their child to a single-sex or co-ed school, I always say it depends on the child — their personality, their academic ability and where they want to go. My son is at Wellington College as I felt he needed a more traditional, structured approach.”