Single-sex schooling and academic attainment at school and through life

This study explored the impact of single-sex schooling on a range of academic outcomes for a sample of British people born in 1958. Data was taken from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) longitudinal study of a single cohort born in Britain in 1 week in 1959. The cohort members have been followed throughout their lives and were last surveyed for the ninth time in 2008 when they were 50 years old.

Unlike many other studies of academic achievement in single-sex schools, several variables were controlled in this research. These variables were school sector, pupil’s sex, region, father’s social class, parental educational level, test scores and of course, school sex. ‘Early test scores, social class background, and parental education are all powerful predictors of educational attainment, and previous studies of single-sex and coeducational schooling have been criticised for omitting such measures’ (Sullivan, Joshi & Leonard, 2010, p. 14).

The results were broken into achievement levels at various ages:

Educational attainment at 16 years

  • ‘The raw figures suggest an enormous advantage for single-sex schools in examination attainment at age 16 in 1974’ (p. 14)
  • ‘14% of coeducated girls achieved five or more passes, compared with 42% of single-sex educated girls’ (p. 14)
  • ‘Girls who attended single-sex schools had 1.9 times the odds of gaining five or more passes than girls at coeducational school—a substantial difference’ (p. 15)
  • ‘Girls who attended girls’ schools were likely to achieve more science passes than coeducated girls’ (p. 18)
  • ‘Overall, the results confirm that girls did better in mathematics and science, and boys did better in languages, at single-sex schools’ (p. 18).

Educational attainment at 18 years

  • ‘Binary logistic regression analysis shows that there was no significant impact of single-sex schooling for either boys or girls’ (p. 18)

Post-school qualifications

  • ‘Qualifications by age 33. Among the 8,615 on whom data are available on qualifications at age 33, 11% of the women and 14% of the men had been awarded a degree by 1991. A quarter of men who had attended boys’ schools (compared to 11% of coeducated men) and 21% of girls’ school women (compared to 7% of coeducated women) received degrees. But this apparent advantage of single-sex schooling is in fact entirely due to the association of single-sex and selective schooling, and there is no significant difference once school sector is controlled’ (p. 20).

The researchers made several conclusions:

‘First, girls at single-sex schools were substantially more likely, all else equal, than their coeducated peers to achieve a high level of examination success at age 16, but boys were neither significantly advantaged nor disadvantaged in terms of overall examination attainment by attending single-sex schools.

Second, there was no significant impact of single-sex schooling on the level of later educational attainments for either sex.

Third, single-sex schools were associated with attainment in gender atypical subject areas for both boys and girls.

Fourth, women who had attended single-sex schools were more likely than coeducated women to gain their highest qualification by age 33 in a male-dominated field’ (p. 25).

Perhaps the most interesting finding is the association with girls at single-sex schools and attainment in gender atypical subjects, both at school and later in life. ‘This confirms the view that single sex environments can actually reduce the tendency of students to behave according to gender-typical stereotypes or norms’ (p.26). On explanation for this is that ‘a single-sex environment may make it less likely that students will perceive particular academic subjects as being ‘‘for’’ a particular sex. While in a coeducational school, a girl taking physics, for example, would have found herself in a minority in the class, this would not apply in a single-sex environment’ (p.27).

Sullivan, A., Joshi, H., & Leonard, D. (2010).Single-sex schooling and academic attainment at school and through the lifecourse. American Educational Research Journal, 47(1), 6-36.

Academic self-concept and single-sex schooling

This article assessed gender differences in academic self-concept for a cohort of children born in England in 1958, as part of the National Child Development Study. The aim of the study was to examine the link between gender, school contexts and academic self-concept. A specific focus was whether single-sex schooling had any impact on self-concept for girls or boys. Academic self-concept was defined as ‘a person’s beliefs about their own academic abilities’. A high self-concept is important because it is positively associated with learning and educational achievement.

The longitudinal data in this study was particularly relevant because a quarter of the large cohort attended single-sex schools. Variables such as the individual’s prior attainment and family background were taken into account.

The analysis found that academic self-concept was highly gendered. Boys had higher self-concepts in mathematics and science, and girls in English. However, single-sex schooling reduced the gender gap in self-concept. Girls in single-sex schools were less likely to see themselves as ‘below average’ in maths and science, and less likely to see themselves as above average in English, than girls in coeducational schools. Therefore, single-sex schooling ‘generally promoted a gender-atypical self concept’. Several theories were discussed to explain these results.

Sullivan, A. (2009). Academic self-concept, gender and single-sex schooling.British Educational Research Journal, 35(2), 259-288.

Effects of single-sex education on progress in GCSE

A key aim of this study was to establish whether single-sex schools were more effective than co-educational schools in promoting pupils’ learning and development from theage of 14 to 16, after taking account of variations in pupils’ prior attainment.

Multilevel modelling was carried out on national British data to study the effects of single-sex education on the progress of pupils from 2002 Key Stage 3 (KS3) to the 2004General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE).

The findings suggested that girls attending single-sex independent schools achieved higher progress from KS3 to GCSE compared with their peers in coeducational, independent schools. An alternative model showed that only lower-ability girls might have benefited fromsingle-sex schooling, though this result was not highly significant.In a non-selective environment, only lower-ability girlsappeared to benefit from single-sex education.

It was concluded that single-sex schooling leads to higher progress from KS3 to GCSE;however this advantage reduces withhigher individual prior attainment. These results may be explained by a ceiling effect, ‘as pupils with high prior attainment at Key Stage 3 cannot improve as much as pupils with lower initial attainment’.

Malacova, E. (2007). Effect of single-sex education on progress in GCSE.Oxford Review of Education, 33(2), 233-259.

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