Boys do much better at single sex schools

Stuff reports:

Boys in single-sex education are performing better than in co-educational and appear to be ditching the sporty stereotype for one where it is “cool to achieve”, an education researcher says.

Forty-two per cent of boys-only school leavers between 2010 and 2012 attained University Entrance, 83 per cent at least NCEA Level 2, and 8 per cent gained no qualification.

This compared with 23 per cent of male co-educational school leavers attaining University Entrance, 69 per cent with at least NCEA Level 2, and 17 per cent without any qualification.

But a Canterbury co-educational school principal argues the quality of the school is more important than gender variables.

The research clearly shows that single sex schools do better overall.

Of course an individual co-educational school may do better than a particular single sex school, but 42% gaining UE compared to 23% is a very significant difference.

This makes you wonder why (off memory) successive governments have had a policy that new schools must be co-educational. A while back I read there had been no new single sex boys school for over 25 years.