Co-ed or single-sex schools? Are all-boys or all-girls schools still relevant?

Christopher Scanlon gives below a pretty good summary of the evidence that the social background of the pupils underlies the  degree of success that different schooling types have in getting pupils through their final exams.  And that is true because IQ underlies socio-economic status.  As Charles Murray showed decades ago to great outrage, the richer are smarter on average.

Scanlon does however treat social class very gingerly and thus overlooks the one thing that DOES give private schools of all types an advantage.  Particularly for boys, the friends they make at school will be the core of their friendship group for life.   And they will tend to marry their friends' sisters. So they will tend to have both bright friends and bright wives.  And that is gold for an easy progression through life.  They really will have class "privilege"


As a parent of a school-aged daughter it feels like I’ve engaged in, or overheard in playgrounds and kids’ parties, roughly a million conversations about the pros and cons of single sex schools vs co-ed schools.

The angst-ridden nature of these conversations would make you think that school choice is one of the most important decisions a parent is ever going to make for their child. Many of these conversations feature “facts” about the benefits of single-sex schooling.

But how well do these facts stand up to scrutiny? While single sex schools typically outperform co-educational schools in terms of academic results, it’s unclear whether this is due to the absence of the opposite sex or other factors, such as socio-economic status of parents.

Kids who attend well-resourced schools tend to do better academically than kids at poorer schools, unfair as that may be.

As most single-sex schools in Australia are private schools or select-entry schools, the benefits may have more to do with the socio-economic backgrounds of the kids, rather than the gender make-up.

Yet the results factor is most often brought up by parents in terms of gender exclusivity, fuelling anxiety about school choice.

One particularly entrenched view is that single-sex schools are good for girls’ science and maths education. Girls, it’s suggested, will “dumb down” to fit with persistent gender stereotypes about girls not being innately good at these subjects. But the evidence is hardly compelling.

Sociologist Dr Joanna Sikora from the Australian National University found that while girls at gender-segregated schools are slightly more likely to pursue science in their final years of schooling compared to their peers who attend co-ed schools, it’s unclear whether this has to do with the absence of boys.

Other factors, such as coming from a wealthier family and, in the case of physical sciences at least, being born overseas and speaking a language other than English at home, appear to be important factor in girls’ selection and performance in science subjects (not the gender of fellow students).

And even accepting that girls from single sex schools are more likely to opt for science subjects in their senior years, it doesn’t seem to have a lasting impact.

Dr Sikora found that while boys attending single-sex schools are likely to express an interest in careers in medicine or physiotherapy compared to boys at co-ed schools, girls attending single-sex schools don’t aspire to careers in science any more than girls who share classrooms with boys. How lasting the effects of single-sex schooling are is a theme that comes up in other research.

Dr Katherine Dix from the Australian Council of Education Research compared NAPLAN literacy and numeracy results for boys, girls and co-educational schools at years 3, 5 and 7 and found that while students attending single-sex schools start out strong, the benefits declined over time.

In Year 3, for example, students at all-girls schools start out 7.2 school terms ahead in reading compared to their peers at co-educational schools, while students at all-boy’s schools are 4.6 terms ahead of their co-ed peers.

But by Grade 7, girls at all-girls schools are only 1.9 terms ahead and boys at single-sex schools are than half a term ahead of their co-ed peers. Similar results apply to numeracy. Students in Grade 3 at an all-boys school start out 4.3 terms ahead of their peers at co-educational schools while girls start out 3.1 terms ahead.

But by Grade 7, the boys from single-sex schools are only 2.8 terms ahead and girls are less than a term ahead of their co-ed peers.

“The most important outcome of having single-sex schools in any educational system”, says Dr Dix, “is not that they may be better, but rather that they offer families choice.”

Schools, however, do more than provide academic outcomes. They also play a role in the development of children’s identity and socialisation. And when it comes to single sex schools, that includes a strong pitch to parents about how the school will inculcate gender identity.

Single sex school marketing often includes statements about the type of young men and young women schools will produce.

Forget “gender whisperers” as Prime Minister Scott Morrison labelled strategies to support transgender students in schools, many single sex schools use a gender megaphone to tell the world how they will shape student’s gender identity.

While many parents might regard that as a plus, the ideal of gender they promote — sport-loving future male CEOs or community-minded, forthright yet agreeable, young woman leader —may not suit every student.

What about the artsy boy, with little interests in sports? Or the young woman who feels constrained by "traditional feminine" expectations of behaviour?

While the benefits or otherwise of single-sex schooling may be up for debate, what is clear is that single-sex education is in decline in Australia, and has been for some time.

According to Dr Katherine Dix’s work, data shows that that the proportion of students from independent schools attending single-sex schools fell from 31 per cent in 1985 to just 12 per cent of students in 2015.

If your head is spinning at the research results, a better approach might be to consult another kind of expert.

Rather than worrying about the advice of educational consultants, school marketing departments or, dare I say it, the academic researchers, my wife and I have decided when the time comes, we will consult the experts in our own house.

I’m talking about our children. Involving them the question about school choice is about empowering them to think about the kind of learning environment they want.

It’s about finding out who’s in their friendship network. If you daughter has many friendships with boys or your son socialises with girls, then these friendships may well be key to their engagement with schooling — and their academic success.

Ask them about what subjects they like best, and about what they do. Do they take opportunities to show leadership, or do they work best when they’re supporting and following?

If nothing else, including your child in this discussion and really listening to and observing them during it, show them you take their views seriously, and help them to begin a lifetime of making important decisions for themselves.

After all, they’re the ones who are going to be most affected by your decision.

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Higher Education — Part of the Battle for America’s Soul

There is a battle raging for the soul of America, pitting the forces of progressivism, with its clamor for an ever more intrusive and costly government, against those of us who believe in classical liberalism and limited government. A major front in that battle is our higher education system.

Last week, Roger Ream, president of The Fund for American Studies, gave an address for the Martin Center in which he explained how that battle is playing out, and today’s article condenses his talk.

Ream writes, “Today, the American experiment in liberty is threatened, perhaps as never before, because the dangers lie within our once-respected institutions. Furthermore, an ever-growing, powerful state with unsustainable financial obligations, called “entitlements,” coupled with a dangerous and widening cultural divide, has put the future of our Republic at risk. The ideas and institutions that provided Americans with the space to invent, innovate, invest, create, and build the most prosperous nation in human history are in serious danger.”

The great principles of personal freedom, individual responsibility, and free enterprise that allowed our nation to prosper are threatened. Ream poses the question of how we can reclaim those principles. His answer: “Reform and renewal of our universities is vital,” adding that “when those who despise America and disparage our nation’s founders and founding ideas control our schools, we have little hope of preserving our fragile experiment of liberty.”

Among the ways concerned Americans can act to counter the trends in higher education is to be more careful with their money. Don’t just automatically write a check to your college or university, since it’s apt to be put to no good. Target your giving.

Ream also suggests that concerned Americans challenge “progressive” notions that so dominate many of our campuses. And we need to up our game. He writes, “If we believe that free men and women can accomplish remarkable things when left free, we must be more persuasive in making our case. Those of us who favor the use of ‘persuasion over force in human relationships’ (Ben Rogge) must present our case in such a way that we will attract others.”

That’s absolutely right. The case for progressivism/socialism/statism is weak and thanks to the enlightening but tragic case-study of Venezuela, getting weaker by the day. We need a counterattack against the deceptive allure of leftism where it’s most entrenched — our colleges and universities.

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How Progressive Elite Control of Education Embitters Americans

Does the educational establishment give students a fair chance to succeed?

Let me share two seemingly disconnected items. The first comes from the New York Times. Yesterday it profiled five Harvard College freshmen as they discussed how they gained admission into one of the nation’s most selective universities. It was striking how keenly aware they were of the admissions committee’s quirks and biases. It was as if they knew the stew the committee was trying to create, and their challenge was to market themselves as the right kind of ingredient.

There was the Asian-American student who joined the Air Force ROTC in part because she didn’t want to be seen as the “typical Asian.” There was another Asian composer from London who says she wouldn’t have “ticked the Asian box” if she had been a STEM student. Another student, a white man, believes he gained admission in part because he was from the Midwest and his family was low-income.

If you’ve ever served on an elite university’s admissions committee, you can see that the students are keenly aware of the game. They highlight their quirks, downplay their privileges, and exaggerate the adversity they had to overcome. (I’ll never forget the young woman who described herself as “formerly homeless” when her wealthy family had merely decided to travel the country in an RV for a year.) Heavily ideological institutions have decided how they want to socially engineer the American elite, and ambitious young Americans must bend to their will.

The second item is a bit strange. This spring we moved from our beloved home in Columbia, Tenn., to Franklin, a Nashville suburb. We were going through boxes as we packed and came across some schoolbooks from my wife’s early elementary-school education. It looked like they were written in a foreign language. You could decipher the words with some difficulty, but they clearly weren’t written in English.

“That’s ITA,” my wife said. “It stands for initial teaching alphabet.” It looks like this:



It turns out that for a time, some American schools initially taught reading through a 45-character alphabet invented by a British man named James Pitman. After learning reading through ITA, students would transition into standard English. It was never that popular. It’s now virtually extinct — just another education-reform idea that’s relegated to the dustbin of history.

Modern America is characterized by an intense grassroots distrust of American elites — with red America especially disdainful of progressive elite institutions. Much ink has been spilled explaining the reasons for this distrust, and I don’t intend for a single short piece to encompass the whole of the argument, but I do think we underestimate the extent to which prolonged exposure to a flawed and biased elite-ordered and elite-controlled education system is profoundly dispiriting and embittering for millions of Americans.

Public education has been marked by diminished local control, top-down reform driven by ideological and educational fads, and failed experiment after failed experiment. For example, the intense opposition to the Common Core in the recent past was driven in part by the too-fresh memory of other grand ideas and technocratic national movements.

As for higher education, its gatekeepers are often explicit ideological radicals. At their worst, they attempt to micromanage a freshman class’s racial and socioeconomic background (and sometimes its political composition) based on theories about privilege that are utterly at odds with the lived experience of the American families at their mercy.

Let’s put it this way: Especially in elite higher education, highly privileged (mainly white) administrators are quite often rejecting less privileged (mainly white and Asian) applicants in part because even that lesser privilege is too much. They deny students’ dreams in the fixed belief that their particular brand of mixing by race, class, and quirk is best for their institutions and best for their students.

Of course, education by its very nature will be considerably elitist — involving the transmission of knowledge from the better-educated to those who know less — but it becomes particularly difficult to swallow that elitism when it is so often distant, ideologically hostile, and (in so many areas) clearly unsuccessful.

And that frustration is magnified when you understand that the broken dreams and manifest failures impact the people most precious to all parents — their own children. Time and again, you see the frustration. These people, parents say, are messing with my kids.

Yes, there are countless good schools in the United States — and parents will pay immense housing premiums to attend those schools — but all too many parents have felt helpless in the face of decisions that directly affect their children and that sometimes seem arbitrary, misguided, or even heartless. In secondary education, “local control” isn’t just a political slogan, it’s an act of civic reform and shared civic responsibility that can decrease that sense of alienation and helplessness.

In higher education, true racial nondiscrimination and actual intellectual diversity can decrease the sense that kids are mere ingredients in someone else’s diversity stew. Of course higher-education admissions decisions have to be made on some basis, but must it always be true that the deciders will come from largely from a highly specific, highly privileged slice of progressive American life? Must it always be true that these admissions decisions are so highly dependent on factors that are completely out of the applicants’ control?

As with any system of immense size and complexity, there is no easy fix, and even the best-laid plans would require perhaps decades of implementation before a culture is changed. You can’t diversify a college administration overnight. Conservative academics will not come springing from the woodwork even if hiring committees remove their ideological blinders. But it’s still important to identify the cost of the status quo. And that cost is clear — embittered Americans who can often rightly feel as if their presumed “betters” never gave their children a truly fair chance to succeed.

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