Oceania Australia In Australia, most single sex schools are fee paying independent or Catholic schools. There are a small number of single sex government schools, while within the independent sector the proportion of pupils attending single sex schools has dropped from 31% in 1985 to 24% in 1995. Nevertheless, single sex
education in Australia is much more popular than in the US. In 2001, after six years of study of more than 270,000 students in 53 academic subjects, the Australian Council for Educational Research showed that boys and girls from single-sex classrooms "scored on average 15 to 22 percentile ranks higher than did boys and girls in coeducational settings. The report also documented that boys and girls in single-sex schools were more likely to be better behaved and to find learning more enjoyable and the curriculum more relevant."
New Zealand In New Zealand, almost all primary schools are coeducational (1,935 co-ed, 7 boys-only, 4 girls-only), while there are more examples of single-sex secondary schools. There are 45 boys-only secondary schools, 53 girls-only secondary schools and 274 mixed secondary schools . During the mid-20th century, several state coeducational secondary schools split into two single-sex schools, with one school moving to a new site, to alleviate overcrowding. These included
Hamilton (1955),
Gisborne (1956),
Hastings (1956),
Tauranga (1958),
Rotorua (1959),
Westlake (1962),
Kelston (1963), and
Marlborough (1963).
South Asia Bangladesh In Bangladesh, a large number of government and non-government schools and colleges are single-sex institutions except for the universities. Notably, all Cantonment schools (non-residential schools run directly by Military), Zilla Schools (run directly by Government [First starting in early colonial ages]), Cadet colleges (residential schools run directly by Military) are single-sex schools. Conservative parents in Bangladesh tend to send their children to single-sex educational institutions.
India Figures indicate that, as of 2002, 53% of girls in the Indian population actually attend schools. Some conservative parents may decide to withdraw their daughters at puberty onset because of fear of distraction. It is also believed that by having single-sex classrooms, the students will be able to focus more on their education, as they will not have the distraction of the other sex. The study argues that coeducation schools provide opportunities for students to interact with their peers, which de-stresses students and creates a friendlier, more relaxed environment.
Pakistan The education system in Pakistan is generally divided into six levels: preschool (for the age from 3 to 5 years), primary (grades one through five), middle (grades six through eight), high (grades nine and ten, leading to the Secondary School Certificate or SSC), intermediate (grades eleven and twelve, leading to a Higher Secondary School Certificate or HSSC), and university programs leading to undergraduate and graduate degrees. Most of the private schools in major cities like
Karachi,
Lahore,
Faisalabad,
Hyderabad,
Islamabad and
Rawalpindi have co-education systems but all public schools adhere single-sex education. In some cities, single-sex education is preferred, like
Peshawar and
Quetta, where many schools are single-sex educational. However, there are also schools in the urban areas which are coeducational. Most colleges are also single-sex education institutions till graduation, but many private and public sector universities have coeducation systems. There are some women's universities in Peshawar and Rawalpindi as well. However, most of the higher education in Pakistan is coeducation.
Middle East In the Middle East, public schools in several countries are all gender-segregated. In some countries, there are single-sex private schools as well.
Iran In Iran, single-sex public and private schools have been in place since the
Islamic Revolution. Universities are mostly coeducational in Iran but schools are single-sex. University of Kosar (Bojnourd, Iran) and Narjes Rafsanjan University (Rafsanjan, Iran) are two examples of female-only universities.
Israel In Israel, secular public schools are coeducational. Many, but not all, Orthodox public schools are single-sex; the private ultra-Orthodox schools are almost always gender-segregated, usually starting in elementary school.
Lebanon In Lebanon, most schools are co-educational schools.
Saudi Arabia All schools are sex segregated, there are only boy or girl schools. The first private formal school for girls, the Madrasat AlBanat AlAhliah, was established in 1941.
Syria In Syria, private schools are coeducational, while public schools are mostly, but not exclusively, segregated. Universities are all coeducational.
United Arab Emirates Private schools are coeducational in all Emirates but Sharjah, where segregated sex schooling is mandated for those grade 4 and above.
West Africa Nigeria In Nigeria, public opinion regarding sexes in schools is influenced most by religious and cultural beliefs rather than the idea that students learn better separated into sexes. Because of this, the attitude towards the separation/integration of sexes varies depending on the ethnic makeup of the region. People in northern Nigeria are primarily Muslim and, as a result, are more inclined to choose single-sex education over coeducation in line with their religious beliefs. However, country-wide, coeducation schools are more common than single-sex schools. In contrast to the predominance of coeducation schools, many prestigious educational institutions only accept one sex; notable examples include
King's College and
Queen's College situated in Lagos. Although the sexes are not separated in the classroom at the university level, it is common practice to employ a single-sex housing policy on university campuses, e.g.,
Covenant University.
Western Europe France As was customary in Catholic countries in Europe, girls were educated in convent schools for girls operated by nuns, such as
Abbaye de Penthemont in Paris. A rare exception was
Maison royale de Saint-Louis, founded by
Madame de Maintenon in 1684. After the
French Revolution, it became more common with
girls' schools, often operated by governesses, a famous pioneer school being
Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan. France formally included girls in the state elementary education school system in 1836, but girls and boys were only integrated into the lower levels, while the secondary education of girls was entrusted to girls' schools managed by either nuns or governesses, both of whom lacked the necessary qualifications. When women were formally allowed to attend university in France in 1861, it was hard for them to qualify because of the bad quality of the secondary education. When the problem of unqualified female teachers in the girls' secondary education was addressed by a state teacher's seminary for women and state secondary education for girls, both of these were still gender-segregated. In Protestant Germany, the great Pietist school innovator
August Hermann Francke of Halle founded Gynaeceum, the first girls school or 'Mädchenschule' in 1698. By law from the 1570s (
Swedish Church Ordinance 1571), girls, as well as boys, were expected to be given elementary schooling. The establishment for girls' schools was left to each city's authorities, and no school for girls was founded until the
Rudbeckii flickskola in 1632, and that school was an isolated example. However, schools for boys did accept female students at the lowest levels and occasionally even at high levels: Ursula Agricola and
Maria Jonae Palmgren were accepted at Visingsö
Gymnasium in 1644 and 1645 respectively, and
Aurora Liljenroth graduated from the same school in 1788. During the 18th century, many girls' schools were established, referred to as ('
Mamsell school') or ('French pension'). These schools could normally be classified as finishing schools, with only a shallow education of polite conversation in French, embroidery, piano playing, and other accomplishments, and the purpose was only to give the students a proper minimum education to be a lady, a wife, and a mother. Single-sex schooling was traditionally the norm for secondary schools in most parts of the United Kingdom, especially for private, grammar and secondary modern schools, but most UK schools are now coeducational. In the state sector of the U.K. education system very few single sex schools remain. The number of single-sex state schools has fallen from nearly 2,500 to just over 400 in 40 years. According to
Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at
Buckingham University, there was no evidence that single-sex schools were consistently superior. A major longitudinal study of over 17,000 individuals examined whether single-sex schooling made a difference for a wide range of outcomes, including academic attainment, earnings, marriage, childbearing and divorce. The authors found that girls fared better in examinations at age 16 at single-sex schools, while boys achieved similar results at single-sex or co-educational schools. Girls rated their abilities in maths and sciences higher if they went to a girls' school, and boys rated their abilities in English higher if they went to a boys' school, i.e. gender stereotyping was weaker in the single-sex sector. Later in life, women who had been to single-sex schools went on to earn higher wages than women who had been to co-educational schools.
North America Canada Many single-sex schools exist in Canada, particularly
Roman Catholic separate schools. Examples in the City of
Toronto include:
Notre Dame High School,
Neil McNeil High School,
Chaminade College School,
St. Joseph's Morrow Park Catholic Secondary School,
Madonna Catholic Secondary School,
Brebeuf College School,
St. Joseph's College School,
Michael Power High School, St. Joseph's High School, Islington,
St. Andrew's College,
St. Michael's College School,
Upper Canada College,
Havergal College,
Royal St. George's College and Loretto College School.
United States Until the 19th century, single-sex education was the norm in the United States, although this varied by region. In
New England, there was more mixed-sex education than in the South, and girls in New England had more access to education in general. Mixed-sex education started to spread rapidly with the generalization of elementary education in the 19th century. According to Cornelius Riordan, "By the end of the nineteenth century, coeducation was all but universal in American elementary and secondary public schools (see Kolesnick, 1969; Bureau of Education, 1883; Butler, 1910; Riordan, 1990). However, higher education was usually single-sex, and
men's colleges and
women's colleges were common well into the 20th century. A form of education strongly associated with sex-segregation is
Catholic schools, although many Catholic schools today are coeducational. The idea of educating students differently by sex, formally or informally, was common until the 1970s. A controversy regarding single-sex
education in the United States is its association with racist ideologies in the 1950s in the
American South. After the
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruled racial segregation in education unconstitutional, therefore paving the way to educating together black and white children, many conservatives reacted very negatively to the idea of black boys and white girls socializing together, potentially leading to
interracial romantic couples. As such, segregation by sex in schools became quite common during that era across the Southern US, with many single-sex educational institutions being established. A major event that affected single-sex schooling in the US was when the
Title IX amendments of the
Education Amendments of 1972 were passed. The Encyclopedia of Women and Gender explains Title IX as being "Founded on the premises of equal opportunity, equal access, and full integration, it focused on providing complete access to participation in all functions of schooling, regardless of gender" (Sex Segregation in Education, 2001). Many feminists fought for the passage of this law. The goal was to ban all sex discrimination in any education program which received financial aid from the government. It was stated specifically on the Department of Education website as, "No person in the US, on the basis of sex, can be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance". The leading cause which led to the start of more public schools having single-sex classes or entire schools was when the reforms to the
Title IX of the
Education Amendments of 1972 were passed in 2006. Initially, Title IX had allowed the separation of males and females in certain areas in school before the new changes. For example, they were allowed to have single-gender classes for physical education when contact sports were involved and sex-education classes. Kasic (2008) indicates that the new regulations allow nonvocational public schools to receive funding if they offer single-sex classes or entire single-sex schools, but to start these programs, they have to have a governmental or educational objective. These programs must also be voluntary, so public schools cannot be required to offer these single-sex programs. If they do, they cannot force students to participate in them. Diana Schemo explains in a New York Times article, "Until now, public school districts that offered a school to one sex generally had to provide a comparable school for students of the other sex. However, the new rules say districts can offer such students the option to attend comparable coeducational schools" (Schemo, 2006, p. 2). Since these regulations were approved, the number of public schools offering single-sex programs has been steadily increasing because the rules are more flexible. In the United States, the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of single-sex public education in the 1996 case of
United States v. Virginia. This ruling, written by Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, concluded that single-sex education in the public sector is constitutional only if comparable courses, services, and facilities are made available to both sexes. The
No Child Left Behind Act contains provisions (sections 5131.a.23. and 5131c, 20 U.S.C. section 7215(a)(23), and section 7215(c)) designed by their authors—senators
Hillary Clinton (
D-
NY) and
Kay Bailey Hutchison (
R-
TX)—to facilitate single-sex education in public schools. These provisions led to the publication of new federal rules in October 2006 to allow districts to create single-sex schools and classes provided that 1) enrollment is voluntary and 2) comparable courses, services, and facilities are available to both sexes. The number of public schools offering single-sex classrooms rose from 4 in 1998 to 540 in 2010, according to the web site of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. Education Next and the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University sponsored a nationwide survey conducted by Knowledge Networks in early 2008. According to the survey, "more than one-third of Americans feel parents should have the option of sending their child to a single-sex school".
Gender segregation in American history , class of 1902 In the United States, gender segregation in schools was initially a product of an era when traditional gender roles categorically determined scholastic, professional, and social opportunities based on sex. For instance, leading experts supported gender segregation in higher education because they considered it "to be dangerous and inappropriate for women. Experts claimed that scientific evidence established that women were physically and temperamentally not suited to the rigors of the academy . ... Separate education for men and women paralleled the separate spheres that each was expected to occupy." Furthermore, colleges and universities did not consider female applicants until the second half of the nineteenth century, when the women's rights movement began advocating for gender equality. In response to social progression, "at the turn of the twentieth century, educators, particularly those in the South, fiercely resisted coeducation in elite all-male colleges, and most of the Ivy League institutions would drag their feet well into the twentieth century before becoming coeducational." ==See also==